Orion Taraban | Why Men Cheat | Today's Sexual Marketplace

do you think men can have friends that are girls platonically it's hard if not impossible I think I saw something on YouTube a while ago where a woman was saying oh no no these men in my life they're they don't want me at all they're they're just my platonic friends they care about me as a person and the response was like okay well then as a test text these guys been like hey I really like you do you want to have sex and see how they respond why do men cheat typically they cheat when they

can H that's not comforting either most men have little to no sexual optionality so a lot of the morality that I sometimes hear about men about all of these like famous celebrities or the powerful politicians who cheat it's like these are coming from men who have never been tempted by attractive available beautiful women they've made a virtue out of their necessity it's like no women are tempting them for Affairs loyalty that isn't tested isn't loyalty feel like sometimes I try and get everything from everyone as if I'll never speak to them again like I have

to ask every single question I can possibly think of to make sure I check all the boxes but I'd really like to try and make this come from like the man's perspective because I'm just curious as a girl I love learning about this stuff and of course feel free to you know whatever kind of information about the the man or the woman's perspective cuz I'd love to talk about roles and things like that in relationships but um but a lot of this conversation is going to come from the perspective of like what does a man

need here why does a man do this how do you speak to a man about this is like a woman's Bible to dealing with men and creating like the most potential for a happy happy relationship whatever it is that you want it to look like so I thought I would ask first that why do since since you're a therapist you're a psychologist why do men come to therapy that's an excellent question they come to therapy for lots of different reasons um I've worked with thousands of men over the last like 14 years since I started

in my training to my private practice today the reasons why men come to see me have changed since my YouTube channel has gotten more popular especially because the most popular episodes there on are on intersexual Dynamics so a lot of men now come to me for relationship advice but that hasn't always been the case though to be fair what I found is the vast majority of problems that people come to me with are either like problems or women problems Freud once said that the whole point of therapy was to learn how to work and how

to love that's it like Freud acknowledged that there were limitations to what therapy could accomplish it's not this Panacea that can cure all the ills of humanity in fact he kind of thought that the point of therapy was to to resolve unnecessary suffering so that humans could more capably confront the necessary suffering of being alive so so he thought that the best that therapy could accomplish was to help people learn how to work to be productive members of society and to love to have satisfying relationships and if you can accomplish both of those things you're

actually doing really good and to be honest what I found is that men generally have problems with one or the other some men are super successful they have their status they have their money but they have terrible or dysfunctional or difficult relationships with women or vice versa there are men who have great optionality with women but they are struggling which kind of goes against the idea that you need to have money and status as a man to get women it's absolutely not true right because that would imply that your work is good and then you

get the girl and that everything's great well let's break it down then the work part what makes a man feel fulfilled like what would be the issue about work that they they can't get past usually those are younger guys right so these are guys who may have difficulty failure to launch these are guys who may have been insens snared by marijuana or video games or pornography they haven't really invested in their careers or their education they don't know that overpaying is the cost of winning like how difficult it is to be successful in life it's

not just a measure of talent though obviously Talent is necessary Talent Plus hard work for much longer than you think you might need to work are required to get any kind of level of success especially in hyper competitive Fields where the best rewards are yeah like to just show up and think I want to get rich it's like yes join the club so does everybody yeah and of course you have to go into the fields where it's more likely that you can make that money which could be medicine law finance things like that you're not

going to don't go into education if you want to make a lot of money you know what I'm saying ag1 is a foundational nutritional supplement that delivers daily nutrition through gut health supp support and is backed by multiple research studies so you can trust what you're putting in your body I trust ag1 because unlike so many products their entire formula is backed by research studies not just the ingredients over 14 years ag1 has been focused on Innovation with a trusted nutrient dense blend that's the perfect complement to my diet I can trust their research and

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than you might ever believe that you are even capable of doing if you want some measure of success and some men they just hear that Spiel and they despair of ever achieving it and they think ah why even bother so I'll just I'll just content myself with my with anesthetizing my pain or satisfying my immediate pleasure so it's essentially the Failure to Launch being that they don't know how to grow up they don't want to take on the responsibility I don't know if anyone really knows how to grow up I think the real issue is

that they're enabled to not grow up for longer I mean think about how it was 150 years ago I'm not saying we go back to this time but like you're 12 years old you're in the col mine yeah yeah I mean families were made large to work on the farm like to to to contribute was Labor the reason and I don't think that 12-year-old was emotionally or physically or psychologically prepared for entering into the labor force but they grew up real fast in fact the like there was no understanding of childhood like there is today

like you were basically a adult once you hit puberty at you know 13 what about from the other perspective then the relationships what do most men struggle with why they can't maintain relationships oh there's so many reasons for that there's so many reasons Danica why relationship so hard this is a real question right well let's talk about it first from the perspective of what I was saying before that men generally have problems with one or the other yeah and so often times men are coming to me and they're actually very successful they have a lot

of money they have a stablished status they have good professions they have good earning and provision potential they have either difficulty attracting women or they have high conflict dysfunctional relationships with the women already in their lives and there's a couple reasons for that one is that sometimes men are subject to thinking that wealth and status just organically and effortlessly attract women and that's actually not true or if it does it attracts very dangerous women who are just trying to exploit men for their resources right so if it does work it doesn't work on the women

that you would want it to work on right so I call these attraction proxies sometimes men think that oh I just need to get six figures or seven figures or I just need to get a six-pack or I just need to get the sports car and the women are just going to be lining up and let me tell you that's that's not really the case the only thing that maybe gets women to line up is Fame but Fame isn't necessarily the same thing as wealth and Status especially in Tik Tok culture you can be 19

years old and broke and be and have 10 million followers well I remember you telling a story at some point in time because I've listened to many hours of you um about when you were um an actor and how like you got more girls then when you had less money presumably like I think that was the case than you did moving forward into the next profession because you were like famous you were on stage stress is a common factor that affects everyone in today's fast-paced world leading to various issues what if the answer to a

better stress response is in a key nutrient I'm talking about magnesium actually I'm specifically talking about magnesium Breakthrough by bi optimizers this one-of-a-kind product is designed to reverse low levels of magnesium which could be leading to a multitude of other health problems what sets magnesium breakthrough apart is its ability to support healthy levels of stress hormones like cortisol a better balanced stress response in your nervous and hormone systems and healthy production of Gaba the relaxing neurotransmitter leading to a more peaceful and better Flow State that's why I recommend magnesium ium Breakthrough by bu optimizers it's

the only organic full spectrum magnesium supplement that includes seven unique forms of magnesium for stress resilience and better sleep all in one bottle simply go to buy optimizers c/ pretty intense in addition to the discount you get by using promo code pretty intense there are always amazing gifts with purchase go now to buy optimizers comom pretty intense and get your magnesium breakthrough and find out this month's gift with purchase I mean famous in a very small way I was performing in like Off Broadway theaters in New York City to sometimes crowds of like a dozen

people you know and I'm saying contrast that with with YouTube which is this a platform of incomparably larger influence than anything I could ever accomplish as a stage actor right but yes for that two hours potentially the lights were on me everyone was focused on me the reviews were about me the crowd was it was much much easier to attract and uh sec women versus being a a doctor especially a therapist which by virtue of that profession like you could be the best therapist in the world and no one will know except maybe the 20

people that you work with and what a waste might that be you know what I'm saying thank God for the platforms that we have today because it allows people like yourself and others that uh have really valuable information to reach a much larger audience so much more beneficial I've learned so much from watching YouTube and therapists because psychology is such a fast fascinating topic to me um and that all comes from being able to access it like this I love YouTube obviously there is a huge spectrum of the quality of information and content you have

to use your discernment but it is extremely powerful tool to get access to all kinds of different perspectives and specialities that would be just completely inaccessible and therapy unlike any other profession is really limited by that confidentiality and case load like imagine being a world class Michelin star chef and only cooking for 20 people a year yeah what a waste right yeah but we need that kind of confidentiality and privilege in order to support people being willing to show up and share their sometimes deepest darkest Secrets which is one of the incredible things about being

a therapist is just by virtue of the fact that this is the profession and everyone kind of more or less knows how it's going to go I can sit down with somebody and within 30 seconds they're telling me they're cheating on their wife and with you know behind their best friend's back and they're addicted to uh some kind of over-the-counter prescription medication and they're slipping away for I mean it's it's wild you get to it's like being a priest in the sense that therapy is the modern confessional yeah I'm the Secret Keeper to many many

people which is an honor and a privilege so um a lot of these guys to go back to what we were talking about they think that if we just get the money if we just get the status if we just get the car the women are going to line up and that's not true true you actually have to learn how to seduce to have good optionality with women seduction is it's kind of a creepy word like it has a bad connotation potentially but my definition of Seduction it's the ability to it's the ability to arouse

and direct sexual interest and what we know about women's sexuality is that it's much more responsive as opposed to spontaneous men's desire is more spontaneous than women's I mean just look at the the resources that men and women differentially use men use pornography women use romance novels right right if there's any story to pornography it's like the first 30 seconds and it's absolutely ludicrous you know it's like oh my my sink is clogged again and then seconder they at it right versus you know it could take eight chapters to get to the point of the

actual seduction in a romance novel and it's that slow build of tension and emotion and fantasy that often works for women not always but generally yeah so what makes a man fall in love then and I know love is already like a loaded word because yeah you might not like to answer this question okay this is why I wanted to talk to you because I I I I think that you come at it from a cynical but also sort of rational and honest and you know interesting perspective I hope more realistic and rational than cynical

though I might have some CIS feel a little cynical somewhat I got you okay so to answer this question I'll go back to one of my ideas called the balance of Attraction which you probably heard about if you follow my stuff this is the one of the laws of attraction which is that it's not possible for two people to like each other exactly the same amount it's just not which means that in any relationship one person must like the other person more and the other person must like the other person less I call this the

adorer and this the adored and they're places they don't actually inhere in individuals like men can be the adored of the adore women could be the Ador to the adore sometimes they switch in a relationship but generally they kind of hold true because emotional Dynamics get established over time and what you have to understand is that there are pros and cons and benefits and liabilities associated with each place okay the adorer gets to be with the one they love the adored gets to be with the one gets to be loved by the one they're with

and those are two very very different experiences the person down here the Ador is the one who generally falls in love because the Ador is the one who has more emotional experience that is the most glaring characteristic of the Ador role is that you feel more when you're the adorer you get to anxiously await the next text and when it comes you get that little titilation and when the plans are canceled you're heartbroken but when they come through it's joyous and you get to be with that person and you're thinking about them when they're not

around and etc etc so this person can feel let's say the dizzying highs of love but they're also subject to some of the devastating heartbreaks associated with separation or even perceived abandonment so it's kind of a roller coaster so whether you like this role kind of depends on your preference for emotional experience versus if you're up here if you're loved by the one you're with that's a much more muted emotional experience it comes with its own and whether that's a pro or con depends on your preference for emotional experience but it also comes with other

Pros like the adored is more likely to have more power and control of the relationship and that's inevitable because on some level the cost of being in love is control you can't both be in control and be in love the cost of being in love is surrendering control think about love is kind of like a roller coaster and roller coasters are fun because you surrender control and you're taken for a ride you can't have the thrill of being taken for a ride while still driving the car it doesn't work yeah and people though try to

have it both ways so when does a man fall in love generally when he's here not here and to be honest the older a man gets and the more successful he becomes not always because I've had some very romantic successful men uh in my practice but the more likely he's going to be up here than down here so then what makes a man want to get married as the next step well that's a complicated question so I made an episode about this in leaving aside whether a man should get married in today's day and age

which is an open question I know men get married when everything is working men get married when everything is working in their lives and in their relationships it's when they see that okay I've kind of established my place in the world I'm getting consistent stable income that could support a family I see a pathway to continued prosperity in the future everything with this particular woman is going smooth I feel like I can trust her I feel like we're not having conflict or problem men get married especially to specific women not because they do lots of

good things though that can help they get married when there's an absence of bad things one of the best things a woman can be to a man is inoffensive in like the widest sense of the word it's like you don't have to be the most beautiful woman in the world you don't have to be the most sexually adventurous or accomplished you don't have to be the kindest you don't have to be there cleaning and cooking and slaving away and traditional you just have to not create additional problems that's that's enough for the vast majority of

men is this supporting sort of like a man's attraction to some someone more docile like is this where strong women struggle more because strong well I had a consultation with a woman the other day she was uh in her 50s a partner in a high-powered law firm in the Northeast got there from a very untraditional pathway like most of the partners went to Ivy League school she did not she kind of had to fight her way up a very Mas in a very masculine Arena and she did have a she was telling me that she

thinks that she intimidates men because of her intelligence because of her success because of her accomplishment and I don't and I I pushed back on that gently I don't think that necessarily she's intimidating BEC by virtue of her success or intelligence I I think successful intelligent women are great I did give her the feedback that some of her presentation might have been intimidating in that she interrupted me several times she was very forceful with her communication I'm sure that you have to have learned to communicate that way to hold your own with these high-priced male

corporate lawyers like they're not going to wait for you to give you a turn to speak you're going to have to Elbow your way in there right the mode but what I said is that that would be intimidating even if you were dumb and unsuccessful right like that presentation is intimidating right independent of your intelligence or success and you should and can be able to turn that on and off as appropriate it's called code switching you have to be able to use different words language tone with different people depending on who you're talking to right

well I've I've entered that Arena many times and I'm sure hindsight of coming away from my career I realize that you know when I get working I can get very like short direct it's it's harsh it's it's quick it's like whoa geez calm down I get [ __ ] done and like that's the world that I was in the way that I get out of it is to make less decisions when I don't have to do things when I'm just like oh great you made a dinner reservation oh yeah let's go play golf or oh

okay thanks for making me breakfast or when I don't have to do things then I can like soften and so it's a mode for women I would imagine that's at least my experience is that so it's only now cuz I'm not always in that mode that I can get out of it but it is definitely like a switch of mode yeah and I think that can affect both men and women my father was a manager for a financial institution for many years and sometimes he would come home and he would still be the manager and

I'd have to be like d you're just like bossing me around I get it but I'm I'm your son this is your home environment that it kind of rubs me the wrong way I had to give him that feedback and he had to learn how to switch between being the boss in a high pressure environment to talking to a child you know my very deep question is whether or not there are in fact functional roles in relationship for men and women and we're obviously in this day and age of being uh over the patriarchy if

that existed depending on what you believe if men and women should be 50/50 in the household kind of thing and all kinds of different gender equality beliefs that are being questioned and yet you know maybe relationships are more unhappy than ever maybe there's you know it seems as there's maybe more confusion than ever I'm sure confused I'm like and I've found myself kind of leaning back into what would be more of a traditional role and not because I feel like yeah it doesn't it doesn't feel like it takes my power away in any way and

it's not like I want to be powerful I just want to be happy I just want to be happy good the most powerful people in the world are generally not the happiest like most people would rather laugh at the punchline than have to write the jokes and you can't have it both ways what roles need to exist in a male and female or masculine and feminine relationship to make it work and and you qualified this conversation because it is kind of a potential landmine uh to say that women have to be this way or or

men have to be this way and so I'll begin by saying that I don't think that men or women have a moral or ethical responsibility to be certain ways in their relationship and there are these traditional let's say Feminine roles and traditional masculine roles and I think they've persevered through time through seever hundreds of generations because they they worked not for all people but clearly for a substantial proportion of the population in their respective cultures and we throw that out often to our detriment especially when we don't necessarily have anything better to replace that with

so I don't think that the best way or certainly not the only way for heterosexual relationships to thrive is when the man is the Burly provider protector and the woman is the sweet docel Homemaker like that will work for some people but not all guys are big Burly protectors and not all women are sweet Homemakers you know what I'm saying my point is that no matter what you decide relationships are roles there's no way around that one of the most toxic relationship beliefs in my opinion is the belief that in my relationship I finally get

to be myself and this belief that like when I'm loved or in this intimate relationship no matter what I say no matter what I do no matter what I don't say or don't do I should just be loved and respected and supported no matter what and I think that's ridiculous like unfortunately For Better or For Worse the only time you ever get to be yourself is when you're alone and maybe that's just a version of yourself think about it we play roles all the time there's there's the role of daughter or sister or wife or

mother and you switch between them sometimes several times a day sometimes several times an hour yeah and a lot of these roles are developed unconsciously and unintentionally because they're like co-created in our emotional psychodynamics between people when we understand that a relationship is a privilege just sort of like a job and there's some baseline let's say professionalism that's required to maintain your job you can't just like show up and expect to get paid no matter how you perform or how you interact with your customers like we expect some baseline professionalism that even if I'm being

a difficult customer you're still more or less going to treat me with respect and courtesy no one thinks that in about their intimate relations anymore the idea that oh if if I feel disrespected I need to stand up for myself I need to be assertive I need to have boundaries I need to it's it's creating a really difficult landscape to navigate for the vast majority of people one I I made an episode about this it hasn't I think it just recently came out uh it's called the problem of self-respect and this is interesting because I

don't think that in our culture we believe that self self-respect has any downside but it does to kind of put this into context Marshall linahan who was the creator of dialectical behavior therapy believed that there were three goals of any human interaction ideally you achieve all three but in reality that's extremely rare and we have to make choices about which of these three goals we might want to prioritize the three goals are objective like prioritizing your objective getting what you want the second is prioritizing the relationship which is like I want you to feel good

about me at the end of this interaction and the third is prioritizing self-respect which is I want to feel good about myself at the end of this interaction and the issue with prioritizing self-respect inordinately is it often comes at the cost of getting what you want and having other people want to continue to interact with you sure like people who just insist on being respected all time no matter what are actually extremely difficult to deal with and they die on many Hills so they often don't get what they want but that's like the thing that

we prioritize in our culture as opposed to let's say more traditionally in the East where they tend to prioritize interpersonal Harmony now that can come with its own problem sometimes when that's inordinately prioritized people just like suffocate their own true desires and personality just so that they can like go along to get along that does create problems in some of those cultures but on the surface there's no crime everything is polite everything is respectful the the interpersonal space between folks is clean and everyone kind of more or less knows that they can be uh you

know what role they play and I think Harmony is important uh it's a useful metaphor because a Harmony is always composed of unequal notes or chords like different notes and chords you can't have a harmony with one yeah the same chord so Harmony requires inequality it requires difference and that doesn't necessarily mean that the minor tone is being oppressed or drowned out by the major note but when they're combined they create this sort of more beautiful uh experience that elevates both of the individual components they have to match I mean it's like the Big Five

personality personality traits and being on being on each side of them you don't want you don't want two people to have the exact same personal because if you're both disagreeable let's say like that's difficult right or even if one person is disagreeable it's difficult right um your opposites tend to attract but similarities tend to stay together that's what I found one of the keys to successful relationships is selection you have to pick the right person for the job and that really does depend first and foremost on accurate self- knowledge which a lot of people don't

have you have to be willing to know who you are not who you want to be not who you think you are not who you think you should be but who you actually are to know what your real preferences are what works for you what doesn't work for you what you want what you don't want and those things might deviate significantly from what your culture your family tells you what you should be wanting or doing Etc so that requires some degree of insight encourage to be able to say no this doesn't work for me so

how do you how do you figure out who you are um wisdom is pain plus experience so generally people figure out what really matters to them in relationships by entering into relationships with those people who do not have those things like in the beginning most people just tend to prioritize what I would call normalized sexual attractive uh sexual Marketplace value men want the hottest woman they can get women want the most popular tallest successful dude that they can get if you actually do succeed as a man in getting with a very beautiful woman you might

find out that actually emotional stability and kindness and a sense of humor might actually be more important than being a knockout Beauty and if a woman actually does succeed in getting with the high school quarterback she might think that actual uh commitment um honesty uh Integrity those things might be more important to her sometimes people have to learn their lessons the hard way I certainly have is there any studies on like having had a certain amount of relationships to actually be able to know what kind of person you really want to be with I wonder

if that exists I'm sure it does there's lots of studies I'm only familiar with you know the tip of the iceberg um more research is published every day than anybody could ever hope to read in their lifetime yeah but It's Tricky especially for women because women for better for worse tend to be punished for having lots of different relationships or sexual experiences so it's actually harder for women in that regard because they kind of have to figure it out sooner than men well speaking of all the relationships and women getting a bad name you have

to talk about something that you've spoken about that gets a lot of attention which is for a woman to keep a man that she wants she has to be the nastiest version of herself possible it's a good idea too anyway it's a good idea explain that explain this Theory well there's a there's a couple ways that we can approach this first of all is that this is particularly um relevant for women who are targeting high value men which I assume are the ones that they most want to be in relationships with and it's for them

to decide what high value means but it typically means these are successful men who are established who have resources who are looking to establish a family and uh they have more of what they want and less of what they don't and these men are typically the most sought-after in the sexual Marketplace most women want those types of men and those men are decidedly in the minority among most men so these men have inordinate optionality in the sexual Marketplace so another thing to keep in mind is that the more successful a man becomes the more expensive

traditional dating is so for example if I'm just a a corporate lawyer and I charge 1,300 bucks an hour which is kind of it may sound like a lot to some of your audience but that's kind of the going rate for a partner at a law firm is 1,300 bucks and am I going to go out to a bar and try to pick girls up am I going to be swiping on an app and then having to rise them up via a text game for days or weeks to set up a date and then I

have to go to the bar and I'll pay for the drinks and dinner but that's actually the most negligible expense of this encounter spend two or three hours there an hour going there and back if I spend three hours on a date plus an hour in transit that's a 4-Hour commitment at 1,300 bucks an hour that's $5,200 a date and that's not even including the cost of the meal or whatever activity you do or the effort and energy that go into finding the woman and getting her sufficiently interested to meet him in real life so

the more you you make as a guy the more successful you become the more valuable your time is and the and they kind of actually price themselves out of the sexual Marketplace just like really beautiful women the same thing can happen to them like if you are a worldclass beauty and you're getting hit up by 10,000 dudes a day on Instagram and this Saudi Prince is saying fly out to me I will take you to Dubai and this guy's like why don't you come to toiti with me this weekend or you know this professional athlete

is saying hey why don't you come backstage I can get you 50 I mean this is the reality for these really beautiful women these women are not going to be on dating apps and they're not going to respond to your date for like a drink at the local bar because it's just too expensive for them to pass up all of these other opportunities that may be and so that's why really successful men and really beautiful women often Act have trouble in the sexual Marketplace but think about it if if I'm just a lawyer and going

out with a woman might cost me like five or $6,000 in let's say opportunity cost if not actual cost and that woman also wants to take it slow and she wants to she has maybe a rule that oh I don't put out until the third date now we're we're getting up to 20 grand for courtship and it hasn't even haven't even initiated a sexual relationship yet and I don't think that most men would see that as a attractive option for them really because the story would usually go to make him wait to make him chase

you to not give him everything he wants right away yeah and you're saying this is not true that works on less successful men think about it the men who await are the men who have time and that maybe have to wait they have no other option that's right so I made an episode a while back about how to have a satisfying sexual relationship because a lot of guys come to me because of sexual withholding in their relationships or their marriages and one of the metaphors I give is like uh a smart woman is like a

24-hour diner she is always open for business because if a man comes to your restaurant to eat because he's hungry and he walks in the door and you say oh so sorry but we our kitchen's closed no problem that guy is still hungry he and he's probably going to go find another restaurant that's open that will serve him like the only guy who's going to just say oh no problem I'll just wait outside until tomorrow and you open is a guy who thinks that that option is still better and easier and less expensive than going

to find another restaurant and these high value guys that have lots of opali are surrounded by restaurant that are actively courting him for his business and patronage so you can't play those kinds of games with the guys that don't have the time okay so that's that's intimacy to some degree or or physical it's sex I don't know if that's necessarily intimacy it can be but you could also say that's different so to me the nastiest version is an is like a more you're being a little bit more specific yeah so do you truly mean that

like doing the first thing that you doing something you've never done before with this person telling them or just being far more uh exploratory and you know whether it's using toys or doing it in Crazy places like are these the thing is this what you mean when you say nasty yeah just mean have sex right away uh it can mean have sex right away but if it's also just unfortunately I mean this is this is the market that we're in it's like sex is actually very cheap especially for high value guys with lots of options

it's it's it used to be the cost of sex was a lifetime of protection and provision in marriage when sex was on the other side of commitment now sex is like the cost of two drinks the local bar and that's just for average guys for above average and women are more um promiscuous than they used to be and and the thing about that is and I I have some sympathy for women in this regard is that that's a difficult double standard to navigate because like Purity and Chastity still matter to men they just matter very

uh ambivalently like Purity is a frustrating obstacle to a sexual Conquest but it could be a very important factor in deciding who to marry so you need to be like have a low amount of uh count of how many people that you've slept with but be very adventurous this would be sort of like the perfect intersection of a woman for a man that would be ideal yeah and that's why I say in the book that women should hunt men generally have to fish but men uh women can hunt especially because the vast majority of men

will have sex with most women most women could just approach a man for a sexual encounter and be rewarded well there's that crazy study of someone walking around and saying like would you had asking every guy would you have sex with this woman like 70% say yes no 75% say yes no questions asked and on the other side I think it might be zero it was Zero yeah single woman women would randomly have sex with someone they're like no I would not do that so I say you should hunt because um and that offering a

attractive sexual experience for a man can be the Trojan Horse for him to open the gates and let you into the city now a lot of women complain that Orion well you know I've tried this or if I do this uh I'm just going to be used and spit out it's like okay that is a risk but you have to understand that to get spit out you have to first be let in so those are those are actually two different there's the problem of being let in and there's the problem of staying in and those

are not the same problem they require different solutions if you try to just use the solution to get in to stay in it won't work if you try to use the solution to stay in in before you get in it won't work you need to use some solutions to get in and different solutions to stay in that's what I say to that so what you're saying is that sex on a first date is no big deal and in fact is a good idea uh I've certainly had sex with women on the first date that I

went on to have long-term satisfying relationships with the idea that I hear sometimes that men don't respect women who put out too quickly I think is incorrect what do men respect this is this is going to kind of sound weird because respect between let's say men is different than respect between a man might feel for a woman respect in its more and and this can be tricky and I've made some episodes about this because respect can mean it's one word that means many different things so when I talk about respect here I'm not talking about

let's say the basic dignity that we afford just any member of the human race in a masculine aspect respect to men typically means acknowledgement of superior ability or competence you have to do something amazing for me to respect that it's like in the military people get respected with metals and ribbons for doing something exemplary or extraordinary not just because they participated in the military you know what I'm saying they have to go above and beyond and they generally have to do something better than the person doing they respecting and they say I see you that

was really cool what you did in fact one of the best forms of respect like the best Arenas of respect on the planet is ESPN like women will learn a lot about how men understand Respect by watching like sports center because what look at even the word respect it's like re again spect look at and Sports Center is nothing but replays we're going to do an in slow motion from this angle from this angle we're going to see like do you see how he turned his ankle at this exact moment to torque it through his

body so that he could come down on the ball at just that right moment it's like respect is accurate recognition of the really interesting or amazing thing that you just did that's what respect means and so sometimes this can create some problems you hear you know respect all women respect women that's like just saying respect all men men don't respect all men we respect again there's that basic human dignity of the human race but we respect when they do something incredible and noteworthy and so there's this failure of interex understanding I think where men are

women are just like demanding something without doing something that's really impressive to them sometimes women insist that they are doing something impressive but the it's for the cat decide what milk is good the audience decides what play was you know mindblowing not the athlete on the field so the things I think about as far as like something that would generate a man's respect because it was Superior skill set that's high is sort of this intersection of like them having confidence and that that those things affecting his ego right so are there you know if you're

if you Excel and you're you're very talented at at I would imagine if you're talented at one thing you're probably talented at quite a few things like I feel like tend to be just High Achievers so so at what point in time does it reach a threshold that is competing with the man's ego oh yeah competition in a relationship is no I'm not talking about being competitive in the relationship I'm saying like wow you've done so many things I now don't feel confident in myself like like as if it it competes for his own sort

of masculinity sometimes that can happen sometimes that can happen there's a lot of ego that goes into men's mating and dating selection for for better for worse generally for worse but we have to acknowledge that that's true that's a reality there's another danger to that which is however respect tends to diminish male sexual interest a man's respect for a woman diminishes his sexual interest yes because this is how respect Works in all the context of respect where it's like an award ceremony a graduation a funeral where respect is expected sexualizing is inappropriate or even disgusting

a guy doesn't see someone do something incredible and be like that was amazing turn around watching that play on ESPN going I'm turned on I mean somebody might that's totally fine but it's that's not necessarily sort of the emotional role these things are playing no exactly it's respect does not lead someone to want to Ravish the person that they're respecting in fact that's kind of disrespectful we might say okay and so sometimes guys get mixed up in this message where they're they actually are respecting women like the person inside the body and her mind and

her personality her accomplishments and there's very little Sexual Energy these guys are nice guys and they often don't seal the deal and the women generally aren't that interested in them because they don't succeed in kind of arousing her uh attraction women generally don't get hot and bothered through being respected yeah you mean we're not affect like a woman's not affected negatively if she if it worked I guarantee pickup artists would be telling guys to go out and just respect women if if that's what led women to go home with guys and sleep with them like

pickup artists are all about what works leaving aside any kind of moral ethical considerations like this these things generally work to arouse a woman's interest and attraction and respecting her is absolutely not one of them all right well what works then I mean male and female sexuality is very very different and one of the things that I think is bothersome to a lot of women is that at the core of male sexuality is objectification this you also see this come up in like long-term relationships or marriages there's something called the Madonna [ __ ] complex

have you heard about that heard sometimes it's very difficult once a woman a child for the man to feel a great deal of sexual attraction for that woman because now it's not his wife it's the mother of his child it's and we're not trained to have sex with our mothers you know it's like we we're not we're not supposed to have the idea of motherhood projected onto the woman we want to have sex with that's a turnoff you know that's a very deep evolutionary and cultural taboo sexual intimacy can even go down when a when

a man falls in love because it's very hard to say I see you I love you I accept you all parts of you as a whole person yeah and want to just throw her on the bed and have your way right it doesn't work and so on some level men have to compartmentalize they still need to be able to say wow that's a nice ass even if it's his soulmate and the mother of his children and his wife she he still needs to be like I'd like a slice of that kind of a thing otherwise

it doesn't work it doesn't happen and that's tough because so many women I think I can understand are uncomfortable with the idea of just being objectified for their bodies or their physical appearance but it's like men are not aroused by your soul it doesn't turn us on we can't even see it like show me your soul Dana we can't see it and women aren't turned on by respect so it's like I understand that women might want respect from men they don't want to be sexualized by because being sexualized against your will is an uncomfortable experience

I felt that before but sometimes guys hear that and they think oh I have to respect all women no matter what and it's like no if women were actually being honest the rest of that statement is well I I do kind of want to be a little bit disrespected by the men that I'm sexually attracted to so what kind of arrangement in your per in your experience and your work do men hope to have as a sexual relationship like how how do men wish their sexual Dynamic at home went or with their partner and and

over time too meaning how how does that sort of like give me as quick you know sort of as quick as you can like how it starts we've kind of talked about that and then how that evolves and like a man's a man's hope for an ideal situation I think most men that I talk to are fairly decent and traditional in the sense that they're looking for one woman to have a satisfying relationship with if not to settle down and start a family with some men want to just have lots of sexual options and I

think that there's some men who can get both but that generally requires a great deal of tact and competence and status to be able to get both of those things at the same time but in terms of their sexual relationships it's very simple they just want to have be able to have it when they want it oh that's it and how often do men want to have it usually is there a norm I know it's not exact but is there kind of a norm I think it changes as you age when I was younger it

was definitely every day you know nowadays it's like maybe every other day It's Tricky though because there is a sense of um again there's differences between male and female sexuality and men and women tend to want what they can't have and the sure thing is generally less interesting and exciting than the thing that might be risky or uncertain so even if and and this can lead to a a problem it's not true that it's always that the man wants sex and the woman is withholding in relationship sometimes the women want sex and the man's just

not interested that's a problem that isn't talked about very often in our culture I was G to ask about that I was going to ask about when what happens to a man's ego or to his emotional state when he's turned down but what happens when the woman wants it more than him yeah I mean again in any relationship no two people can want sex exactly the same amount so one person's going to want it more one person's going to want it less the bigger the Gap the harder it is to navigate that relationship like big

libido gaps are very very very difficult and generally require unconventional Arrangements if they are to survive yeah so you generally do want to find somebody who more or less has the same appetite for sex as you do otherwise it's just going to create problems but part of men's sexuality besides objectification is based on no have you heard about the coolage effect no the coolage effect is a fun little story it comes from an anecdote that was attributed to former President Calvin kulage according to the story the president and his wife were taking a tour on

a farm and the farmer was showing them around the property individually first the farmer showed the first lady around and they stopped in front of a chicken Coupe and at that moment a rooster was vigorously copulating with one of the hens and that caught the first lady's attention and she asked the farmer does the rooster do that often and the farmer is like oh my yes sometimes seven eight times a day and the first lady says oh be sure to pass that along to Mr President when you stop by this uh chicken cou and he's

like okay yeah sure ma'am and uh so he shows her around hooks up with the president it's taking them around the property they end up back at the chicken coup and there's the rooster again and the farmer says Mr President your wife wanted to let you know that that rooster can populate seven or eight times a day and the president thought for a second and he said well is it with the same hen and the farmer says oh my no absolutely not he can he has the run of the hen house and the President says

make sure that Mrs coolage understands that fact so that's the coolage effect which has been observed in all male mammals including humans like you can't really do this ethically as a study but for example um it's very easy to do with like mice or rats male mouse and a female mouse in a pen and the the male will have sex with the female until it's basically disinterested and exhausted but if you put a new female in that pen he will immediately perk up and go to work terrible novelty of the situation stimulates news Well it

it is for long-term monogamous relationships and so you have to work with it I'll explain how to work with it potentially in a second but it does fit you could make the argument that it fits with Mal's evolutionary prerogative which is that like sperm is cheap most males make billions of it every month I was joking around at the about this very thing about sperm is cheap but ovaries are probably really expensive if you're going to be if you're two gay men and you want a child like it's probably I got I got to imagine

that o that that egg is more not the over but the egg is more expensive than sperm well if you want a if you want an egg donor or a sperm donor I mean we all know the price differentials between those two things if you're a female and you produce one egg every month and there's a huge opportunity cost in that if you're impregnated by this man For Better or For Worse you're you can't be pregnant by any other man for at least another year which is not an insignificant amount of time in your reproductive

window you kind of want to choose all things being equal your single option do you understand so that influences how men and women tend to approach the game of mating and dating so just like objectification is important for male sexuality so is novelty but and you said bad news for long-term monogamous relationships but so what what do these couples tend to do I mean they end up getting outfits they experiment with different sexual behaviors they they go to different places like just sometimes changing the environment is enough to stimulate that novelty which is why like

Chris Rock talked about like the secret to keeping a marriage together was having sex and traveling coming and going and on some level it was traveling going to a new environment the hotel room that generally encourages sexual activity the same woman but it's a different circumstance so that's one way that you can navigate novelty some love of novelty yeah if you can't change the person you at least have to change the appearance or the circumstances around the person yeah it's a game how do you bridge the gap in with men and women where it seems

like seems like it's known that men want space and Independence and women want closeness intimacy like why does that not seem to go together but yet we're meant to try and figure it out well again men and women can really run the gamut with respect to those things um some men are very for Life a better word clingy and want to be around their women all the time and some women are very independent in need their space but in general it tends to play out the way that you described part of the reason why a

lot of modern relationships are struggling is because men and women spend too much time together and they want each other to be too many things in the for the vast majority of time that humans have lived on this planet men have spent most of their day with other men and women have spent most of their days with other women and they sometimes come together at the end of the day or once the men come back from the hunting party so there's actually a great deal of Separation that has historically and traditionally been in male and

female relationships they also lived in tribes or small villages where they had lots of they had intergenerational contacts they had friends and teachers and mentors and neighbors and people were involved in their communities nowadays we have like this nuclear family and we don't have the extended kin Network and we need our partners not only to be our sexual Playmates but our best friends and our soulmates and our therapists and our chefs and our coaches and our cheerleaders etc etc etc and it's very difficult if not impossible for one person to perform all of those roles

relationships are roles I call this the hyper conflation of marriage the more things you want from one person the harder it will be to have a satisfying relationship with that person in general you kind of want to satisfying relationships sometimes are about getting one or two things or needs met and that's it and get other needs met in other relationships right right to crystallize what those couple of things are that you really really need out of the relationship yes and so in my thought process the things that I prioritize in my relationships are the things

that I can't get or don't want to get anywhere else like some guy they come to me and they say well the issue is I'm just sort of bored with these women that I'm going out with I can't really engage with them on my intellectual level I want to talk about physics I want to talk about my theories of economics and I was just like my brother why why like go find another guy to talk to those things about those things with I I I see that you want to be able to have a conversational

partner but like why do you need that from your woman like you can get get what you can elsewhere and get from a woman the only things that the things that you're not willing to get elsewhere and prioritize those in your relationship so I think that that men and women would improve their relationships if they spent less time together James ston the New York City divorce lawyer had this great line on his soft white underbelly interview which is he was responding to the big divorce uptick during the first year of covid and he said yeah

people signed up for Better or For Worse but not for lunch and they were all these men and women who were just spending all of their time together day after day after day after day and it was driving them nuts and I don't think we're supposed to spend that much time with each other men and women are different do you think that men should be able to have as you're talking about go get it from somewhere else do you think men can have friends that are girls platonically it's hard if not impossible I think that

if you have platonic female friend as a man they generally have to be old old friends like from childhood or from high school like before you become sexually active to make friends with a female as an adult male is always problematic because you both are sexual beings at this point and you know that at least as a potentiality this relationship could blossom into a sexual relationship I was say in a male and female friendship that there's always one gatekeeper and it's generally the woman exact exactly even though you can be friends there's usually one person

that wants to be that would be willing to at least have sex with you yeah and I think I saw something on YouTube a while ago where a woman was saying oh no no these men in my life they're they don't want me at all they're they're just my platonic friends they care about me as a person and the response was like okay well then as a test text each of know text these guys been like hey I really like you do you want to have sex and see how they respond exactly and you'll see

kind of what's behind a lot of that niceness and that friendship and that emotional support why do men cheat typically they cheat when they can H that's not comforting either it's cans cans exist everywhere not no not for most men this is really yeah yeah because there is a very there's like a low there's there is a bracket of men that are having no sex right like is bigger than you think or even the men who are having occasional sex in their monogamous relationship it's not like women are chomping at the bit to try to

take that man away from that woman you know what I'm saying most men have little to no sexual optionality so a lot of the morality that I sometimes hear about men about all of these like famous celebrities or the powerful politicians who cheat it's like these are coming from men who have never been tempted by attractive available generous beautiful women so they're they've made a virtue out of their necessity it's like no women are tempting them for Affairs in the vast majority of cases so it's actually very easy for them to be self-righteous in their

loyalty loyalty that isn't tested isn't loyalty and so what do you mean by tested then well the the real test of loyalty is for a man is to have a sexual opportunity and to not take it because you're otherwise committed to another woman and until you're you're actually tempted we can't really say that that man is loyal it's true so is that why too is that why too it feels good for a man to get freedom because there might be a chance like he still has a little bit of sort of the chase like mode

going on and she's like no go do it and go hang out and hang out with your friends and like oh it's totally fine and she's very easy breezy and easygoing and he's like [ __ ] she's cool like I no I I'm into like I'm into that she's confident and she trusts me and I like the way that feels well not just that it makes it less exciting oh cuz she might not give a [ __ ] she might not know she might not even ask there's nothing hotter than forbidden fruit right and I

I did some episodes about sexual jealousy from the man's perspective but it works from the woman's perspective as well is that people can only be jealous in response to a perceived threat as I say it's like if your girl got a DM from some dude on Instagram and he's 300 lb and he's living in his parents basement and he doesn't have anything going on with his life you're not going to feel jealous that this guy is sliding into your girls DMS you're gonna be like are you sure I mean could be a good option go

for it babe go for it exactly but here's the thing is if your girl might not see a specific man as a superior option until you become jealous because people only become jealous in response to perceived threats and they're only threatened by people that they perceive themselves to be better potential relationship or reproductive opportunities so sometimes when you become jealous you teach your partner that this man or woman is a better option for you and that and they will start to believe you so one of the best ways to deal with jealousy is to put

on your your poker face as best you can and be like yeah if that's something that you want go for it you kind of call the bluff and that is like oh wow this person doesn't is is almost like is almost daring me to go and he doesn't or she doesn't seem bothered by this they're they're not threatened therefore I must be with the more attractive and Powerful option because no one with more power is actually threatened by someone with less so right right so sometimes people can actually inadvertently Drive their Partners into the arms

of another by their behavior their jealousy so um why do men cheat um there's there's also something that's very interesting according to the research about uh differences between male and female infidelity apparently there is no statistical difference in relationship satisfaction between men who cheat and men who don't cheat that is according to these men The Men Who cheat are just as satisfied with their relationships as the men who don't this is terrible news as well because we compartmentalize it's not usually with these men it's not about um it's not about I want to form a

deep abiding connection with a new woman especially if he has a a why for a stable long-term relationship it's about sexual novelty and experience and opportunity it's just sex and some women can be like yeah boys will be boys in fact what we see is Big gender differences in what really matters in infidelity to a man what really matters to is a woman's sexual Fidelity like wh I I know that women don't like men the idea of men sleeping with other women but to men it's absolutely disgusting and sometimes if a woman does it once

it's it's like they can't ever go back yeah yeah because the old question is uh in a cheating scenario is for a man is like did you [ __ ] him to the to the woman and the woman says to the man do you love her exactly and that's why when a man gets caught cheated cheating the first thing he says is it didn't mean anything yeah we is just sex it was just sex but let me tell you if a woman were to say the same thing to a man when she was caught cheating

babe it didn't mean anything that will make it so much worse because what that man is thinking is like you gave away something that wasn't even meaningful that's very meaningful to me to to a man just because he wanted it right it's like it might be hard to hear but if that woman came to the guy and said honey sit down I have something really hard to say to you but I have to be honest I've met somebody I tried to resist it for a long time we've fallen in love I think we're we're like

soulmates and I want to start a relationship with them that's going to be hard to hear but it might be easier to hear than I just [ __ ] that guy because if a girl heard that if a girl heard like I've met this woman we've been talking and we're fallen in love we're emotionally involved we haven't had sex but I feel and you'd be like [ __ ] off exactly what really matters to women more than the literal physical sexual Fidelity is emotional Fidelity because where the emotions lead the resources and the attention generally

follow it's a bit of an overstatement but I sometimes say that women would be more upset if you took a woman to like the little Italian restaurant that's like your place that you went to for your first date yeah then if you [ __ ] her exactly like that I can't believe you you you took her there took that was our place that what a violation of our memory now I don't even know if what was real did you take me there because I was special to you I guess I'm not special to you anymore

and the whole relationship is a lie so how would it feel if a woman allowed their man let's say you know they needed some novelty and you said okay you can you know you can do your own thing like just don't tell me about it or or tell about but allow them some latitude in that department like is that something that would make a man like a woman more care more be more absolutely absolutely so I talk about this in the book one of like probably the single biggest source of commitment hesitancy in men is

the idea of same woman rest of my life that's probably the single factor that stands in the way of most men from committing to any one woman so I say that potentially a smart woman in the sense of like a strategic woman doesn't Force the man that she loves to choose between her and every other woman on the planet because that is a very tough sale so there's a I think Esther Perell coined the term of being monogamish monogamish like it's possible for someone to be 90 95% monogamous but sometimes that 5% is the release

valve that actually enables that person to stay in the monogamous relationship longer than he otherwise would why the hell do you all need novelty so much I why do we need objectification so much like why can't we be turned on by your soul and your personality yeah why I don't make the rules I think it's probably biologically determined largely why do why why can't I just go up to a woman and say hey you're hot let's go I mean to be honest that's that's actually what happens in gay cultures I read a study they have

a lot more sex in gay cultures right yeah I read one study about the culture of a gay bath house in San Francisco the median number of sexual partners of the participants in that study was 500 the the median so there were men who had significantly more than that 500 because do you know what happens you know how to negotiate a sexual encounter in a gay bath house you go up to a guy and you say hey you want to have sex sounds good and then they go and have sex it's like women make everything

more challenging they're they slow everything down it's not something that can just be rationally and directly and explicitly negotiated everything with respect to seduction with women generally is indirect it's emotional it's through suggestion if you just come out and say what you want in exchange for what you're willing to give even if it's something that the woman might want she's going to be turned off it doesn't work I guarantee if worked men would do it men do all kinds of things to get laid gay men have an inordinate a number of sexual partners uh straight

men and women are here and and gay women lesbians have even less they have even fewer sexual partners than straighten because there's no men involved yes everything is even slower like things would take forever if men weren't there at least to put their foot on the gas a little bit right in a relationship so man sort of I I don't believe in this Dynamic of like you can't change anyone right Lord knows I tried um you can't change anyone but what makes a man want to be better without being told I need you to do

this for me or I want you to do this step up in this way what makes a man want to be a better man it can happen there's there's probably two ways that this happens in general one is that he's dealing with a very attractive woman it's not fair but beautiful women make men want to to try harder there's something about them that's like there's some women there's some men out there who will Who are just offering marriage and provision to women they've never met because they're that beautiful it it is it's such a powerful

influence over men's mating selection process so men will give more and they'll try harder for more attractive women and that's tough because not all women by definition can be very very attractive all women can be more attractive than they are all men can be more attractive than they are but not all men or women can be very very attractive by definition so that's one way that men try harder the other way is when they experience significant pain or Consequences unfortunately when they have to what are the reasons for marriage now what's the point I don't

know um I think that we are clearly I know you're a little skeptic in this category a little bit right I've seen so many marriages fail up close and not only that I've been personally involved in in hundreds of marriages like my friends and colleagues and acquaintances I've been invited to their house I've met their wives I've seen how they live and I've never thought to myself wow I wish I had what this guy had really you never come across a couple that you're like I want what they've got holy [ __ ] no that's

not yet it could happen but like if it did we're talking about you know less than 1% of relationships would be in this case something that I think is enviable or better than the situation that I have so uh we're in a a crisis right now not only is the marriage rate the lowest has ever been in the history of the United States but there are fewer children being born like the United States is actually below replacement rate for its population it doesn't I don't yeah I agree I don't I don't see how this whole

like overpopulation we're having too many kids like obviously America is its own thing but I don't see how it's growing because well I'm 42 it's growing it's massed by the fact of our immigration so our population is continuing to go up but it's not because people are having more babies it's because more people are being let in or more people are immigrating here okay uh in general the more industrialized a country becomes and the higher their GDP the lower their birth rate the lowest birth rate in the world is South Korea which is a highly

industrialized culture they're averaging about 0.92 births per woman and you need 2.1 births per woman to replace the population right because it's two two people make a baby and so you need to have at least two kids so uh marriage is going down kids are having people are having fewer kids uh but not only that people are having fewer relationships like just pure hooking up or having sex a casual sexual relationships that's going down too which is very interesting because on some level it's never been easier to enter into a sexual relationship in the history

of the planet which might be part of the reason why the rates are going down sometimes when things are too easy we don't think that it's worth it we it's it's is helpful to make things a little bit difficult for people because in the effort to overcome that obstacle we generate the perception of value that what we're getting is something that's useful I've learned this as a therapist it's like never have I experienced so much flakiness and lack of compliance than when I offered free therapy which I did when I worked at a Community Mental

Health Center oh yeah L people don't pay for things they don't value it as much it's just the way it is even more expensive placebos are more effective than less expensive placebos it's like the expenditure of resources whether it's time energy money opportunity Etc is directly related to the perception of value make it a $500 Placebo pill or make it a $50 place pill and they'll have a different effect you if you're paying you know $1,000 an hour to talk to somebody you're going to listen very carefully and at least consider very strongly following their

advice right or else you're gonna feel like a fool for having spent a thousand dollars right okay well what's the best reason to get married to my mind the best reason to get married is what is the same reason for what I believe was the fundamental reason to get married back in the day which is to provide a safe consistent environment in which to raise children I don't think you need to get married to have that safe and consistent environment but if you're not interested in having kids there's no reason to get married whatsoever just

be two consenting adults who want to spend time with each other there's no need for the legal the government to get into your relationship especially with the risks that are not always but disproportionately born by men in the marriage agreement this is what I talk about in in my book where I'm kind of projecting into the future of relationships because we are experiencing a relationship crisis across all degrees of relationships from casual hooking up to marriage and children so the old ways are falling apart and they're falling apart in like real time like we're watching

them fail institutions that have existed for centuries it's incredible and you have a lot of people online who are basically arguing to go back to the way things were we need a return of Traditional Values men need to be men women need to be women we need to get rid of feminism we need to do it's like it's not going to happen like the genie is not going back into the bottle there are so many things that have conspired to create us here we can't go back we can only go forward those Solutions might work

for a minority of the population generally these pundits are preaching to the converted but it's not going to be a solution for the vast majority of people so I think we're suffering a crisis but that crisis is simultaneously an opportunity things are falling apart that doesn't mean that we have to put we it doesn't mean we have to let them fall apart entirely and it also doesn't mean that we have to build them back up exactly as they used to be because maybe that's part of the reason why they're falling apart right now right reorganization

so what I see is there's an opportunity here for men and women to really on some level this is going to sound potentially strange but to evaluate their relationships as consciously and intentionally as a lot of gay folks have to evaluate their Rel relationships For Better or For Worse there haven't been any historical models for what a gay relationship for example should look like like no one could like look to what their gay parents did when they raised them or what their culture holds out for what a gay relationship is supposed to look like and

so gay folks who got into relationships had to navigate and intentionally negotiate like okay who knows about the fact that we're gay do we go here are we going to get married are we going to be in this cohabitating Arrangement do we adopt children is it open is it closed like there's like no assumptions in gay relationships because there's no assumptive models right contrast that with most heterosexual relationships where maybe there's a Define the relationship conversation and they say Okay so we're committed we're exclusive we're exclusive great and both married men and the women actually

believe that they understand what the other person means committed or engaged or what have you right and chances are they don't and they run a foul that at some point in the future where it's like you stepped out of Alliance like I don't think that's out of bounds because they never defined the field of play in the same way that gay folks might have had to there's this opportunity to get more of potentially what you want and less of what you don't by almost like compartmentalization or fragmentation maybe they get together to decide to co-parent

so one of the things I've talked about and someone reached out to me a while back about um it was a law firm that's specializing in alt marriages so rather than like till death us part it's a negotiated contract to co-parent for like 20 years the mission is to raise children together and then rather than a painful or costly divorce if you don't want to continue on at the end of the contract it just expires and you go your separate way potentially I mean think that's a possibility you might not you might not live together

or you might live together you might be sexually exclusive or you might not be sexually exclusive right you might combine your assets and buy property and create legal entanglements or you might not do those things so there's actually an opportunity to approach the fragmentation of modern relationships as a possibility to get more of what you want and less of what you don't like custom tailored relationships to the individuals in question so I'm not so Doom and Gloom a lot of the folks out there are just seeing that the decline of relationships is just the collapse

of civilization and I don't think that that's true at least not necessarily women are uh like they're a mystery to most most men they are and that's part of what fuels their Obsession H the thing about Mysteries it's like a mystery is a riddle people can spend years trying to puzzle out a riddle and as soon as they realize the solution they never think about it again okay so we just got to make sure that you all can't figure us out don't worry that's not a man don't worry we never how many women understand themselves

I mean there there might even be a a mechanism inside of women that makes it difficult for them to understand themselves well I mean I think this boils down to something a little bit more like um spiritual but the fact that I would say that you know one of the things about life is our inability to see oursel that we only see oursel in relationship to someone else as a miror that's right that's right and I actually Wonder from a philosophical perspective whether or not we actually ever even see the other person we might not

and the more romantic a person is the less likely they're going to see the other person romance has been I think correctly accused of being narcissistic huh what was the myth of narcissism he sits down at the edge of the water and he falls in love with his own reflection and then when he tries to embrace it he drowns so it's a tragic misunderstanding most romantic relationships are I'm falling in love with a disavowed projected part of myself that I want to hope to find in you yes so that I have the triumphant experience of

self-completion in Union with the other yeah so a lot of that is actually supported and inflamed by narcissistic projection which is why I talk about one of the primary crises of all relationships that Go the Distance is the crisis of disillusionment where the weight of reality sufficiently impinges on those projected fantasies to shatter them which significantly reduces rtion right that's actually opportunity to see the other person maybe for the very first time and that's when the relationship actually begins because you weren't in a relationship with another person yet you were just in a relationship with

your own projected fantasies that stimulated your own attraction which is why you were there okay so you need your fantasies to be exposed you need them to be go a little de need fantasies and you need them to be exposed gently and gradually Fantasy Women what was that meaning your fantasies met like have your fantasy fulfilled or have your fantasy sort of annihilated in some way I think you need both it's like the whole there's a problems of getting in and there's problems of staying in right without some form of projected fantasy the vast majority

of men and women would not be starting relationships they would not be getting together most attraction is not based on knowledge of the other person especially in today's day and age where people generally date strangers so if you're there it's not because you know anything about that person you're attracted to your idea of who you think they might be or who you want them to be yeah if you disabuse somebody of that fantasy too quickly good luck that's the equivalent of a woman showing up at the first date without makeup like what woman is going

to do that but you said that's when the relationship starts is when the fantasy goes away so there has to be some sort of period and then if you take the fantasy away aka the makeup as an arbitrary example then you really see if that person wants to be there and essenti wants to see you well certainly wants to be there but what I also say is they have the skills and attributes and traits necessary to do the relationship that you hope to have with them you can you can't have any relationship with anyone you

can only have certain relationships with certain people I.E the people who have the trait skills and attributes to do the job and you might not be able to objectively assess whether another person has those things until your attraction is within negligible limits which isn't going to happen right away but if you disabuse them of the fantasy too quickly they're going to get scared and run off oh for sure so you have to do it slowly but the other side of is some people never disabuse their partners of that I know women maybe you I've heard

of them too you know they go to bed with their makeup on and they wake up an hour before their man gets up to rearrange their face it's like they never let the man see their true face and that becomes increasingly expensive and difficult to sustain as time goes on right so you don't if you actually want a long-term relationship you need to you need to be willing to show yourself because you can only love to the depth of your knowledge and understanding and so to love you have to allow yourself to be known but

here's the thing most people aren't that great they're not they're not just like you show up to a job interview you put on your best suit you know you get a haircut you're not going to tell the whole truth you're trying to get the job yeah it's the best that you're gonna see yeah prob you don't want to just be performing and um hiding in a long-term relationship that's it's too expensive and it's unsustainable so it's a it's it's an art of slowly disappointing your partner that's a wrap that's so good this was so much

fun Danica if you're ever in Napa hit me up because you know I'm right here I'd love to meet you and drink some wine for sure that would be great I would love to share some somnium with you and uh get get all get all philosophical thanks everybody for listening to the pretty intense podcast today I hope you enjoyed it if you like what you heard today and you want to hear more please click on the Subscribe button