Dating Doctor On What Women Really Want & The NEW Dating Rules To Attract Women | Dr. Orion Taraban

What's the one thing most men misunderstand about what women actually want when it comes to dating? In other words, what do women want? Wow. I I just came out with an episode on this like three days ago. So, that's somewhat serendipitous.

So, this is a question that has flamed thinkers for generations. Freud famously said that there was no answer to this question or at least not one that he could figure out. My unsatisfying answer to that question is that women want what other women want. It's it's less to do with men than it has to do with other mimemetic desire that women are presenting around them. And I think that's part of why even female attraction is subject to some fattishness. It certainly seems that certain types of men become more popular among women uh from one season to the next, almost like they're changing fashion.

We have to also balance that against maybe the evolutionary psychology arguments that men uh women want men with good genes. So you know bigger stronger good facial symmetry. There's some suggestion that facial symmetry in particular is a indirect indicator of like fetal health in the sense that the baby was less insulted by outside pathogens which may have corrupted the facial development in the small person. So there's these indirect me metrics of physiological health that I think women also want. But when it comes to like the day-to-day, women tend to want what other women want. And so female interest to sort of like an emerging phenomenon that arises out of like a bunch of individual decisions at the population level.

Women are constantly looking at other women very closely to kind of know what is safe. When there's a critical mass of women doing a certain thing, that's like the fattest part of the behavioral curve. They know that they're kind of in the middle of the herd, the middle of the shaw, and that's the safest place to be. When women start to deviate in significant ways in their presentation and their preferences and their behavior from that behavioral center, they get more and more exposed, which can lead to women feeling vulnerable and anxious. In fact, I make the argument that's part of the reason why there's such a spike in depression and anxiety in women today. Because when women look out and see what other women are doing through social media, it looks like women are doing all of the things. Um, that's certainly a highlight reel as we know, but what are they seeing? They're seeing women have babies, but also go to the seells and also get master's degree and also give TED talks and also sit down and have brunch with the girls, but have time to take a Pilates class. And so women are looking at other women and they're getting this constant signal that they're not doing all of the things, which is what all the other women seem to be doing, which gives them this unconscious signal that they're kind of drifting out of the center, which is where the greatest safety lies. And I think that might be an unconscious reason why we see significant upticks in depression and anxiety in women of late. They've always been higher than men, but there's several issues uh around why why that that might be the case. So that's kind of like my my shorthand answer to that question.

Yeah, it's it's so interesting, right? Like I wonder if there is is there some sort of an evolutionary explanation for why women in particular, I don't know if this applies to men, I'm sure it does in some way as well. Is is it just a shortcut way of just showing that without doing all the investigation, as long as women have selected a certain type of man, it gives them the security to know that at least there's been a filtering process from another person or multiple people and it's just a way to shortcut what is in high demand.

Absolutely. So, if we're talking specifically about sexual relationships, I in my book use this extended metaphor of the dock. I call the sexual marketplace like this big dock where captains are mooring up their ships and passengers are walking up and down the pier looking for passage on the right boat and there's just way too many ships for any given passenger to examine personally and certainly not at any length. So one of the fastest huristics like rules of thumb that passengers use is to make decisions based on the size of the crowd that's already standing in front of a given boat. This is dangerous because every other passenger who's standing in front of that boat might also have chosen to stand in front of that boat because other people were already standing in front of it. But you might make a reasonable case that at least someone in that crowd has done some due diligence, has done some research, has actually seen the ship and the captain and has made a decision that this is actually a good place to stand. But this is a way to cut to the chase because you can assume that other people whose time and opportunity is in limited quantities aren't going to want to waste them. And so people are going to go where people already are.

It's like the Matthew principle with respect to sexual relationships. The the me are you familiar with the Matthew principle? I'm not. Um it's from a a verse of the Bible. I think it's attributed to Jesus. I'll paraphrase it. It's basically like to those who have even more will be given and to those who have not even the little that they have will be taken from them. So it's almost like the rich get richer the poor get poorer kind of a thing. And that seems to be in many cases a fundamental um law of reality in ways that are still surprising and uncomfortable to encounter. So basically the the men who don't need any more sexual interest from women are the ones getting the vast amount of sexual interest. Most guys when they're growing up they know this. It's like in high school there's like two or three guys who were very very popular and all the girls were gunning for them. Um this is also why when I talk to men they tell me that they get a huge uptick in female interest after they get married which they always find very frustrating and confusing. But they say that the ring really draws women to them. And there could be a number of reasons for that. But visav what we're talking about, one of them could be at least one woman in the world said, "This was the very best man that I could possibly get and I thought I was safe and excited enough to move forward with a lifelong commitment to him." So at least one person did significant vetting with respect to this one man. And if you can scope that woman, even better. Because if she's a very attractive woman, that's going to suggest that she has lots of different men that she could have chosen from and this was the very best one that she could get, which is going to make that man look really good. There's going to be a huge target pointed on. So, it's always easier to kind of like it's like recruiting. Sometimes it's easier to poach someone from a competition than to train them yourself from scratch, which can take a lot of time. And time is something that is generally more limited quantity with respect to women and uh reproduction and mating and dating.

Yeah. Because I wonder how much of that desire from women is from the filtering process that women have already done. So it's more of a shortcut to understand what is potentially a high quality mate. or it's this idea like I have a niece and anytime I can't give her something, she wants it more. And it's this idea of not wanting not being able to have something places a higher value in her mind. And a lot of the ways we're showing uh you know that we are attracted to someone or attracted to something is from this childhood need from the way in terms of our how our parents treated us. And I wonder if it's something around that. You talked about marriage. Obviously, the fact that a man is married means that he technically can't be with another person. And I wonder if it's the scarcity factor as much as the filtering process that we initially discussed that's creating the desires.

Well, that's certainly true. Um, we talk about how there's actually two definitions to the word want. Want means both to desire and to lack. And I think that those two concepts are very deeply interwoven in the human heart is that we want what we can't have. We want or we want what we don't have at the very least and potentially even what we can't have. That's part of the game because sometimes people are happier living in hope of one day getting what they want than the satisfaction of actually having it. Almost everybody today has things in his or her life that they once hoped and dreamed would make them happy. And in the vast majority of cases, people aren't much more contented than they were when they first wanted those things. So, it's kind of a quirk of human nature that sometimes people are happiest when they're striving towards something in hopeful expectation. And if that's true, what better thing to strive for than something that's impossible to have? because then you can keep the game going for as long as possible. Um, there was something else you said about wanting she couldn't have it if it's middle back increase the desire. Oh yeah. So, another reason why uh this phenomenon, the ring phenomenon that men seem to get hit on more by women after they market that they're off the market could be that women see these men as safe. So, they're more likely to approach them because they think that nothing is going to happen because this guy is married, he's off the market, he's not going to cheat. So I can be safe coming closer to him. If without the ring, this guy could be single and my engaging in conversation with him might be taken the wrong way. But it turns out that even married men take things the wrong way. According to the research, men are much more likely than women to interpret friendliness, say, as sexual interest and intent. This is why every man has fallen in love with a barista at some point in his life. you know, it's hard to know whether she actually likes you or she's just doing her job. So, this could also be part of why men experience more female tension after they get married is that the women see them as safer and so they can actually treat them like a human being, whereas men often misinterpret that kind of friendliness or interest when it comes from women.

Based on all this knowledge, what how should men be approaching dating and the modern dating marketplace to maximize their success?

Well, I made an episode recently called how to meet women and I talk about how in 2025 there are four ways to meet women. There are dating apps, cold approach or pickup, social circle, which is like where you work, where you pray, where you live, where you play, and social media. And it's not an mutually exclusive thing. Like on some level, if a man is really serious about finding someone, he's spinning up all four of these wheels at the same time. And each one has their pros and cons. Each one requires a different approach if you're really going to master it. It's like what works on LinkedIn doesn't always work on Instagram and vice versa. Um, but the fact is that it's like there's good women everywhere because there's so many people everywhere. But you might have to be very specific about what you're looking for. You might have to be more strategic in your approaches and you might have to go on a lot of dates, a lot of dates before you find really uh what you might be seeking. like it there there are plenty of good women out there, but they're the minority. Just like there's plenty of good men out there, but they're also the minority. But fortunately, there's billions of people. So, even if they're the minority, there's still millions of options.

Yeah. And I think the it's different with women, right? Women have to be the choosers, uh, which I think you talk about a lot, and men have to kind of play this numbers game ultimately. It's got kind of a game of understanding that you're going to be rejected 900 times and perhaps you're going to find that one person, but you only need to find that one person to live happily ever after if that's what you're going for.

Yeah. When it comes to this type of stuff, I think that women's default response is no and men's default response might be yes. At least while they're young and under normal circumstances. that can shift as women age and say men become famous or successful. So really I make the argument in the book that it's not inherent to the gender. It's not always that women are saying no no no and men are always yes yes yes yes. It has to do with who has um more options and who has a greater value within the sexual marketplace. And just like when in a game of soccer, when one team is up many points, they switch to defense and the other team that's down switches to a more aggressive offense. If for whatever reason in the next half that gets switched around, you see the same strategy being adopted by the different team. So it's not really inherent to the team, it's inherent to the the balance of power that's revealed by the scorecard, as it were. So you can certainly see that if you know anything about celebrities and athletes who are getting propositioned by women all the time uh a lot of them are running defense. A a lot of them are not actually taking advantage of a lot of their optionality. It's also very risky for those guys because who knows who they're dealing with. So um I do think though especially in the 20s the average woman has a higher sexual marketplace value than the average man. So she has more points on the scoreboard as it were. So she tends to prioritize defense. No. Um the guy might need to make something happen. Like uh it's actually very difficult to be a young man. You don't generally have the things that women want. You don't generally have the things that make you a good partner for other men. So you might not have any skills or experience. You might not have any money or status. It's very difficult to start from the bottom and it can take years to make something of yourself. I'm sure that you understand this, Sean. Um, but what's the alternative? It's like just roll over and get high. I mean, I guess that's option for some guys, but um, you you know, if it's going to take a while, you might as well get started, as it were.

Yeah. Can we just define that? You mentioned sexual market value. for people that don't know exactly what that means and also the different types. I think there's three different types that you talk about, can you just define those and explain kind of how that's sexual marketplace value can be an icky uh term for some people because people don't like the idea that they have a value a number assigned to them as it were.

Um, but I do make the argument that everyone kind of uses this implicitly at least on the terms of quantity as opposed to uh like an actual amount. When people say that you could do better, you know, on some level they're making a value judgment as to one particular person versus other hypothetical or actual people that person could relate to. So I think everyone kind of uses that uh to some degree conscious or not and more or less everyone is trying to secure a relationship with their perceived best option which has to do with some kind of ranking metric that is going on inside of their minds and a lot of this is is very deeply unconscious which is part of what makes this difficult. So um I did not invent the term sexual marketplace value. not precisely sure where it comes from, but in my book, I try to tease out some of the difficulties associated with that concept by suggesting that there might be three different kinds of sexual marketplace value because there can be very a lot of confusion about this topic.

One of them I would call normative sexual marketplace value. I know great branding I have with my terms. So normative is like the bell curve, right? And so normative is sort of like the closest we can get to socially objective value, which is basically like for women, the more you look like um uh a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model um or a guy, the more you look like Ronaldo, you know, and you're fit and you're handsome and you're you're rich and like the more attractive you're going to be. Like we have these social archetypes for what female and male beauty look like and people consciously and unconsciously are kind of seeking to approximate those ideals all the time. Um women put in a lot of money and effort into doing so. Men increasingly as well. Um and so the more that any given individual kind of matches with that archetype which is constantly changing and dependent on time and place the more their let's say normative sexual marketplace value is which basically means the more people will generally find that person attractive. The issue is that people are very different from one another and not everybody wants to date a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model as crazy as that sounds, right?

So then I talk about perceived sexual marketplace value, which has to do with the person who's actually making a decision. What does he or uh what does he or she feel when they look at this particular individual? Because people have types. Sometimes they're conscious of those types. sometimes they're not conscious of those types. Um, I personally like cute nerds. That's sort of my type as I say in the book. So, uh, would a cute nerd be like a a nine or a 10? Are cute nerds gracing the cover of magazines? And I No, not really. Right. So, their NSMV might not be as high. But for me, for whatever reason, they light me up. So, that's another thing I argue is that people have their preferences and tastes when it comes to sexuality in particular. And I don't always think that it's useful to dig too deeply into why people like the things that they like. Um it might be very difficult to figure out anyway and it's probably not going to change anytime soon. We know that, for example, conversion therapies have a very low success rate. Um, so sometimes just important to like accept that you like the things that you like and kind of, you know, deal with whatever internal resistance comes up with you about that and just kind of like be proud about it on some level.

Um, and then there's finally what I call transactive sexual marketplace value, which has to do with the fact that no one really knows how much anything is worth until the money hits the table. So, it's all hypothetical until uh the transaction actually occurs and that's when the price point is actually established. Until then, it's all just hypothetical. It's all just negotiation. When someone pays $500 million for a piece of art, that's how we know it's worth $500 million. Until someone actually puts the money on the table and it changes hands, it's all just speculation on some level. So when it comes to the sexual marketplace, transactive sexual marketplace value has to do with examining the kinds of partners any given person has access to. And I make the argument that this value is sort of calculated differently for men and for women because it's easier for women to get sex than commitment and it's easier for men to get commitment than sex. So you want to kind of measure each sex's ability to get the harder commodity as it were. And this is important because in today's day and age, especially with social media and dating apps, many women can have sexual access to a lot of very high status men. But these men might not ever in a million years consider actually forming a committed relationship with these women. And that's kind of confusing because the like in the male mind, a sexual partner and a committed relationship partner have some overlap, but they they're fairly distinct. Whereas for a lot of women, those two circles are almost isomorphic. They're almost overlapping. So, sorry if this is getting too technical, but um No, no, this is great. Almost at the end. So, we can kind of measure a woman's transactive sexual marketplace value by examining, let's say, the normative sexual marketplace value of the men who have actually made the decision to commit to her because those are like the guys that she could get. And their value is on some level reflected in hers because we know through something called assortative dating that people more or less tend to pair up with people of comparable attractiveness. And I mean attractiveness both physically, but also in terms of their lifestyle and status and so on. and so on. By the same token, we can kind of figure out a man's sexual marketplace value by sort of examining how conventionally attractive the women that he can get to have sex with them are, for lack of a better word. So, long story short, that's sexual marketplace value in a nutshell.

Yeah, it's it's it's fascinating like the three different types that are available. And it makes sense like I think it's often talked about how women are the gatekeepers to sex and men are the gatekeepers to relationships. And it kind of aligns with from an evolutionary perspective of what men are looking for which ultimately is uh someone that can be a healthy reproduction to uh to having kids and then women obviously are looking for more of the resources and the security aspect of things. In terms of the sexual market value, what would you say is the again some people may not like this, but what do you think is the prime sexual market value for men versus women? And explain how that changes with age for men and women.

Oh, sure. So, we know that uh sexual marketplace value is not static over a lifetime. It changes um it changes for lots of different reasons. It's it seems to be more volatile actually for men because men's perceived value in the eyes of women is often based on non physical attributes. Like the physical is definitely important. If you're a hot guy, you get a lot more action and interest from women than someone who's not. But you could also be rich. You could also be funny. You could also be charming. You can also be powerful. You can also be a number of other things that sometimes aren't always visible to the eyes. So, it actually kind of takes longer to get to know a man's value accurately, which is part of the reason why women go on what other women want because they don't have the time to really do the accounting, as it were. Um, for lack of, you know, for better or for worse, those things don't matter as much in women to men. Like, it doesn't matter as much if she's funny or not, or rich or not, or powerful or not. What matters is if she's hot. Like so much of men's interest, for better or for worse, has to do with reproductive cues, physical attractiveness, youth, and fertility, and that's probably not ever going to change. Um, it seems to be pretty deeply coded. It doesn't seem to be a culturally learned phenomenon. We see that in even very primitive cultures.

Um, so in general, when men and women enter the sexual marketplace in our culture at 18, a a woman is probably never going to be higher in terms of her sexual marketplace value based on some of the things I just said, youth and fertility. Well, she's never going to be younger. You generally, not always, but generally physical attractiveness in women declines with age. Uh though I do know that all women are on different tracks and some actually definitely are late bloomers and they look better in their 30s and then their 20s. Um but those sorts of cues tend to decrease as a function of time. Men, on the other hand, they're probably never going to be lower than when they are when they first enter that market. Unless they're really cute, like they're the foot uh the football quarterback or they're the popular kid, then they can do really well in in high school and college. But generally, to become an attractive man, you have to work really [ __ ] hard. You have to make something of yourself. You have to get a lifestyle and make some money and learn some skills and become emotionally mature and learn to communicate and all this kind of stuff. Um, so men's sexual marketplace tends to increase as a function of time as long as they don't screw anything up. So the real interesting time is when does that switch? So if women start high and end up coming down and women and men start low and end up going high, when does that crossover occur? And according to some of the research that I've read, it suggests that it occurs around the age of 30. And 30 is a bellweather time in the sexual marketplace for both men and women because up until that point, the average woman was more attracted than the average man. And after that point, the average man is more attractive than the average woman. And it never changes again. So women kind of get this huge head start or advantage in the sexual marketplace. uh it's a really big but men tend to win the long game if they can draw out the um the play for as long as possible as it were. And this I think is part of the reason why in America the average age at first marriage is 29. It like happens at the last moment where the woman is on some level the more powerful player than the man. And that's of course from pure game theory when she should settle and make a lifetime commitment to the to the best available option especially that option is going to keep rising past that point of contract. So that is definitely a very smart female mating strategy. It's like kind of wait until then. You now have some time. You've maybe examined what kind of men are out there. You've developed some interest and now you can kind of focus on the best option that you can get and try to lock him down for a long-term commitment right before he starts to become more attractive than you are and can potentially enter into greater optionality with more and more attracted women. It's like, yeah, that was that would be smart. So, uh, to answer your question about peak sexual marketplace values, it's very contentious. Um, there's a number of different studies I've read. For women, it's always young. I think the most recent study I read, according to men, women peak at like 23, but I've read even younger than that. Um, in the eyes of women, I've read that men peak around 40, but I've also seen that go as high up as 50. And 50 was the statistic I use in the book, and I got that from a revealed preference study using dating apps. So, not entirely generalizable, but uh since most people now enter into relationships using dating apps, it might be relevant.

Yeah, I've I've was it a video or an article I read somewhere where it talks about the ideal age to get married for women and it says what biology tells you which is like 18 years old, what society tells you which is like 25 and then what it's actually happening modern society which is like over 30. Do you agree that like most women should be getting married earlier if that's their goal?

Um, I don't I mean, if women don't want to get married and start having kids, I'm totally okay with that. Like, I'm not one of these guys or trying to save women from their decisions and thinking that they would all be happier nursing and in the kitchen. So, if women don't want to get married and have kids, that's totally fine. I'm not a big fan of marriage myself. I certainly can't impose it on other women. Um, if women do in the scheme of things want to get married and have children though, then it makes sense that they try to prioritize that in their 20s because that's when their sexual marketplace value is probably going to be the highest it will ever be. And because people enter into relationships at like comparable power levels as it were, a very attractive young woman can get the interest and commitment of, let's say, a handsome, rich, powerful man who's already gone through the process of extrapolating a lifestyle, has made something of himself, and can potentially like move forward with starting a family. right now. It would be a tall ask, though it still happens all the time, of course, for the average 25-year-old guy to take on the responsibility of parenthood in today's day and age. Like, I know that by 25 generations ago, most guys had already had a couple of kids by then. Um, maybe different time, different men. I'm not sure. But like most guys at 25, uh, I wouldn't want them to be my dad. I'll tell you that. So, it just seems to take longer for guys to get their [ __ ] together for better or for worse. So, if women do want to prioritize um if they want to have kids, they want to h get married, then yeah, they probably should on some level seek that out when they're younger. But that's difficult, especially because we don't use fathers in particular or family to broker marriage and relationships anymore. And so the average 25year-old woman is hanging out with 25-year-old guys, which as I said is not really the the best uh pool from which to select somebody who's ready to move forward with with marriage and kids. Um, a lot of those guys are just kind of [ __ ] around, you know, and sometimes women waste waste time in their 20s with men who are never going to commit to them or be serious about a relationship long term. Or they spend that time developing their education and their career and things like that. And then, you know, once they kind of get everything established at 35, once they feel the pressure of their uh shrinking biological window, they say, "Oh, I really need to get ahead of this." And maybe they freeze some eggs and they amp up their efforts kind of, but they're still really more devoting far more time and attention to their careers and whatnot. Uh doesn't lead to a lot of good outcomes uh in that respect. I mean, I think I read that 80 to 90% of women who are childless at 40 are involuntarily childless, I think is the term. Like they didn't they didn't expect or or think that they would end up at 40 without kids. It just sort of like happened that way as they describe it. But in volunteer meaning they regret it. Um sometimes they regret it. Like there's support groups for women who have kind of passed their opportunity and they wish that they were able to have kids and they're supporting each other. Like that can happen. But at the very least, what I think the research is saying is that they didn't intend to. There are some women, some men that are just like, I don't want to have kids. I don't want to reproduce. That's not for me. I'm not a kid person. And it's not really any surprise that they end up at 40 childless. You know, but the average woman will say something like, "Oh yeah, I like kids." and you know, maybe when the time is right and if I meet the right person and you know, I got to get a few things straight. So, they they don't they they think they're going to have kids at some point with someone. Doesn't always happen, though.

Yeah. Uh, just to kind of tie the bow on the sexual market value place, how do men and women actually raise their sexual market value? And I think that comes with actually defining what are the criterias of sexual market value and how you actually determine what's a peak or not or non-prime sexual market value for men and women.

Sure. Well, uh, as I talked about, I think it's always good to be cognizant of the the templates, the archetypes for male and female beauty that exist in your culture at any given time. And the more that you can approximate those archetypes, the more attractive you will be to more people, which will mean that you will have more optionality generally in the sexual marketplace, which will, among other things, expose you to more possibilities and increase your bargaining posture, as it were. So, what does that mean? It's like men should learn a little bit about style. They should work out, make sure that they're fit. Um, they should take care of basic hygiene. I mean, that's something that I hear from women a lot. Uh, women, I mean, it's like take care of yourself. Um, if possible, you it's so hard to do this. It's like I'm loathed to like tell women how they supposed to how they should act. But within this goal of trying to become more normatively attractive, that would mean like being slim. That would mean potentially dressing a little bit more femininely. That would mean um learning how to use makeup appropriately. Um a lot of women are very good at these things already. In fact, the average woman puts way more effort into moving towards that archetype than the average man does.

But what I also argue is again people don't enter into relationship with archetypes. They don't enter into relationships with statistics. They enter into relationships another specific individual. And it's more important that that person that you're dealing with think that you're a nine or a 10 than the population in general because you can't enter into a relationship with the population in general. So, as I said before when I was talking about perceived sexual marketplace value, everyone has their types, right? And I think it's more useful to kind of figure out what type you are, like the one that's a best match for you that feels mo mostly authentic and to kind of lean into that a little bit more. It's generally a good idea for men in particular to be more attractive to fewer women than to be less attractive to more women. Like I tell guys, if you can be really really attractive to 1% of women, that's going to be more women than you're going to know how to deal with in your entire life. That's millions and millions and millions of women. That's you don't need more than that. Um but that means that 99% of women might be like, "Ew, gross." No. But if that 1% says, "Yum, that's my thing." That guy is going to be swimming in optionality. Like you want to be the first person that women think of as opposed to like that fewer women think of than the the second or third or fourth or fifth guy that more women think of. That's a better strategy.

Yeah. It's kind of like uh true fans that Kevin Kelly talks about that you're a thousand true fans? It's better to be loved and adored by a thousand people if you want to build a career in whatever you're passionate about because in the world of internet you can pretty much you know monetize and create a living based on those true fans. And I guess it's similar to relationships in some ways because it's better to be adored and really loved by a smaller percentage of the female population than just kind of liked and you know kind of attracted to because then you have competition now amongst all of the other guys that are out there that she kind of likes. I think that's especially true for men. we see that there are really um really popular women, a lot of you know singers and actresses, they tend not to to date their fans as far as we know. That's part of one of the issues of female success in the modern age is that if women still want to mate and date up the status hierarchy and they're raising up the status hierarchy, then there are fewer and fewer men that they're even going to consider as viable options. And those men are just like, "What a time to be alive." They're a wash in optionality, which makes it even less likely that they're going to commit to any one of those options. But it's sort of standard for if women mate and date up, then on some level it's standard that men mate and date down. And so it's not uncommon for men to enter into sexual relationships with their fans, like the ones who really, really, really like them. makes it's like dating on easy mode for a guy because they come to you and that generally doesn't happen unless you are very very hot or famous.

Do you think is that something you recommend for men particularly like is it better to be in a relationship with someone that uh for lack of a better words like likes you better more than you may like them?

Yeah. Yeah, I do. And why is that? um for a number of reasons. So I uh there's a whole section of the book where I talk about what I call the balance of attraction, which is this idea that it's not possible for two people to like each other exactly the same amount. So somebody in every relationship will always like the other person more and one person will always like the other person less. I call this person the adorer and this person the adored. And it could be a man down here, man up here, woman down here, woman up here. And it's actually value neutral. It's not better to be up here or worse to be down here or vice versa. There are pros and cons to all of these things. So, um, the question is, is it better for men to be liked more to like the the person that they're with less than they like to be liked more by the person they're with than to like the person that they're with? That's your question, right? So, basically, is it better for men to be adored? And I argue yes for a number of reasons. The primary one is the main thing that differentiates these two positions because again they don't inherent in men and women or even individuals. They're places that people can live in in a given relationship. What mostly defines the difference is the presence or absence of emotional content. This person, the adorer, gets to be with the one they love, which is the dream of human relationships. Is I want to get the man or the woman that I want that I love. And there's no greater romantic victory than that. Now, one of the things that comes with being the adored uh the the adorer is you get a greater share of the emotional roller coaster on some level. You are anxiously waiting by the phone. When the text finally shows up, you're you're thrilled and your heart starts racing. When they haven't called you back and it's getting late now, you start to get worried. Um, when you get to be with them and and just hold their hands, it feels like you're walking on air. Sex can be incredible. You feel like the luckiest man or the luckiest girl in the world. You know, there's that scene in 500 days of summer where after a successful date, the guy walks out and it's like the whole universe starts dancing and singing in unison with him. And and that's kind of how it feels. And both men and women, I argue, prefer to be in this position. They people want to feel [ __ ] That's one of the biggest criticisms of unsuccessful dates is that ah there was no spark or we didn't have any chemistry. I didn't really feel anything. on on paper, they could be a fantastic match, even have a lot of role complimentarity or um uh the like the skills and attitudes and willingness to do what the relationship is designed to do, but they'll say, you know, it's just not worth it. I I I can't be in a relationship where I don't feel very much. And so, I think men and women both want to be here because that's where the feeling is. But it's more important for the women because I do think that women are more likely to leave sooner in the absence of that emotional content. Sometimes if a relationship has been established, a guy will hang on longer out of duty and commitment. It's but those are tough cells for a lot of women. Um, it's like if if she's unhappy or she's fallen out of love or she doesn't feel the same way anymore for long enough, she's probably going to start looking for the door, which is um not a sustainable thing in most relationships.

Yeah. So, and and that can happen when the woman is up here and the man is down here, right? Because the adored does not get a lot of the emotional content. This person gets to be with the one they love. this person gets to be loved by the one they're with. It's very, very different. It always feels like some form of settling when you're the adored, right? Because who does the adored adore? That person is even higher than him or her. And so, it feels like you have to surrender that person, whether it's actual or hypothetical, to act to be in this living, breathing relationship with this other human being. And that can feel like a letdown to people. Now, I don't think that's in many cases reasonable. I think that's a let down of the romantic imagination which can really trip people up but that's how it works for the vast majority of people. Um so the adored doesn't get a lot of that emotional content but it does that person does have more power and control in sort of like creating the structure or the frame of the relationship. The adored basically decides when the relationship happens when, where, on what terms, and that's sort of like the terms and conditions of the relationship. And so you you often get more of what you want on a practical or material level if you're the adored, but you get less of what you might want from a an emotional or psychological level. That's part of the trade-off.

And why is it why is that? Why is it important for women in particular to be the adorer? Why why can't men do that? Is that more the hypergamous nature of that women generally have when it comes to relationships?

They can. And it's like um and they do like men and women often are jockeying to be in the adorer role and but what happens is that two people can't occupy that place at the same time. So if the man insists I want to be the adorer, I want to love you. Then that on some level that pushes the woman up here. It's like putting the woman on a pedestal and that deprivives her of some of the emotional content of being in the adorer position like I was describing. And it might be novel or interesting for a woman to be placed on a pedestal for a while, especially if she's just getting out of a relationship where she was the adorer. She might think, "Oh, this is a nice change of pace. You know, finally a a guy who knows how to treat a lady." But generally, they tend to not stay with those men or or date them at all. They get bored. Um, and they're basically sending a signal that they're beneath the woman, which consciously or not, I think it's interpreted by women that their hypo hypergamous instincts aren't being satisfied because they want to mate and date up. But if the man insists that he's down here and the woman's on a pedestal, he's basically insisting that the woman mate and date down and be okay with that. And most women aren't. A lot of this stuff is unconscious, though, Sean. That's the one little asterisk here.

Yeah, because you described the whole idea of looking good on paper. I mean, I think it's important to dig deeper into what it means to be the ordorer, and it doesn't necessarily mean feeling the good feelings of what it means to feel in love, right? It's also the potentially the the the suffering and the negative emotions that come with that.

One of the people love that, I'm sorry, unpopular take, but people love that. people would rather feel in pain than nothing at all. And if you if you believe if you accept that that's true, it explains so much of human behavior that otherwise just seems so irrational and stupid. There's a great quote by uh do you know school of life? Yes. Uh I've watched a number of their episodes over the years. Yeah. He has a great definition of love in one of these videos and he says very similar to what you said which is when we enter the marketplace of dating we think we're out to find partners that will make us happy but we're not. We're out to find partners who will make us feel familiar. And these are two very different things because familiarity may be bound up with particular kinds of torture. This is why when friends introduce us to potential partners who look great on paper like you mentioned, yet we don't feel that chemistry, but we can't quite explain why. But really what we mean is that we've detected a person who will not be able to make us suffer in

The way we need to suffer in order to feel that love is real. And he says we're not on a quest to be happy. We're on a quest to suffer in a way that feels familiar. That is love.

Yeah, I mean, there's a number of different takes to this one. I talk about this a little bit in the first chapter of the book that people kind of have these love algorithms that are based on observing the relationships of their primary caregivers. So let's just say they're parents. And it's like imagine training an AI model on just one example. Like we call them large language models. We have to pour a bunch of data and information into these um systems in order for it to be adaptive and creative and intelligent. But imagine you were just trained on one relationship and that's what you thought relationships are for better or for worse. Like you're not going to judge it. It's like a machine. The AI can't judge whether it's getting good data or bad data or right or wrong. It's just like this is reality. And if it does, it's not present in the data set, it almost doesn't even exist to that model.

And when we're growing up, we have there's like a sensitive time where we're taking in a lot of information about how men behave, how women behave, how mommies and daddies work, how husbands and wives work, etc. And this all gets encoded deeply inside of us before we're even aware that it's happening, which is like really a mean trick in many cases. Like if you grow up in a loving, stable, secure family, it's like [ __ ] great. It's like everything just sort of gets taken care of for you and you don't have to worry about it. And then you grow up and you basically enact those templates and you get into relationships with other securely attached individuals and they still compose about half of the population. So secure people end up with secure people. If a secure person tries to date an insecure person, for instance, it just doesn't it doesn't make sense. Like I don't understand why this is so difficult. I don't understand why they're so needy. I don't understand why they're so aloof. Um, but this isn't what this doesn't feel familiar to me. This isn't what I think love is supposed to look like. Uh, I'm out. So, that's part of it.

The other thing about Elaine's quote that might be interesting comes from Freud. And Freud talks about the need for reenactment. So let's say that we had uh a disappointing model uh presented to us when we were children. And so that's what we think love is. That's how we think relationships should proceed. What we're going to do according to Freud is not only find people who feel familiar with that. And so there's a sense of like comfort to that recognition even if the relationship is painful or destructive or unstable. There's like this comfort of familiarity. But we we're going to on some level enter into a psycho drama where I'm going to find somebody who reminds me of the opposite sex parent because my goal is to work out a different outcome than the one that I experienced in the past. The same thing happens in the transference relationship between therapist and patient. He says, and the idea here is is that consciously or usually unconsciously, people become their mother or their father and they find somebody who reminds them of their opposite sex parent because they want to like resolve the issues that they had from the past by like creating the same problems in their current life, but like solving them because they can't go back and solve the problems that they experienced when they were kids. It's in the past. It's completely untouchable. But if I can kind of like recreate the problem here and then solve it, it's almost get some sort of emotional closure about this and move on.

The which it makes a kind of sense when you think about it. But the the the real tragedy of this is that people don't have practice solving the problem. They've never seen the problem solved. They only have practice experiencing and creating the problem. They don't like let's say mommy and daddy were in kind of an approach avoid relationship where mommy was a little clingy at least according to dad and you know dad would like leave for periods of time and so that person might enter into a relationship with a person who could reenact that same dynamic but like how do you get out of that? They don't know. They've never even seen a successful resolution of that problem most likely. So they're very good at recreating the problem, but they're generally not very great at solving that problem. So that's kind of the the tragedy. And ideally, according to Freud, that reenactment would occur in a therapeutic relationship. The therapist would help the patient become more consciously aware of that dynamic and they would work towards a different behavioral response. And so it's almost like the therapeutic relationship becomes like a training ground for the successful resolution of that problem in their lives. Does that always happen? No. But that's the uh that's the goal of analysis from Freud's perspective.

And does this also happen when the in this case let's say a female has a great relationship with their father? Because you mentioned resolve, which is generally a conflict of issues or per perhaps a negative relationship with the opposite sex parent. Does the same apply when the relationship is pretty good and then not not there's no trauma that's happened throughout the relationship? It does. It happens no matter what. And I mention I I make that argument in the book is that even if your parents are intact and loving and you think number one dad and world's greatest mom, it it will still create some issues because it's still that data set trained on one example. And at the very least, this will tend to make signal detection more difficult as an adult because they might be very rigid with respect to what works. Now, they grew up in a context that worked, but that's not the only way that relationships can work. And so these people might miss out on other types of partners or or ways of relating that would still meet the same goal, will still be supportive and contented and secure, um but won't look like or feel like their parents dynamic. And that's going to lower their chances of finding it because it's hard enough to find a decent partner anyway. You kind of want to be able to to make make do as many different ways as possible.

Another possibility is if like I'm a woman and I had a great relationship with my dad and I think he was just like the world's greatest man. Uh and I think that that woman might find whatever man that she dates or marries to be disappointing potentially. I mean, we see that in edible type relationships with uh in Freud's perspective when the when the man is too bonded to the mother like a mama's boy or the the woman is too bonded to the father. He doesn't talk about that as much but it can happen like it's difficult to put the partner ahead of the parent and that can create issues in the marital unit. One of the main reasons why people do have marital conflict has to do with in-laws and how they uh treat each other. So, on some level, I do think it's kind of like they say in the Bible, it's like the woman leaves her house, her parents house to go live with the man. On some level, it's like you if you're going to get married and start a family, you you have to on some level make a conscious decision to put the new family ahead of the family that you left. But that's difficult for people to do sometimes. But like when a husband feels like he's less important than his father-in-law or his mother-in-law, that's going to be a very it's going to be difficult for that relationship.

Yeah. I think uh I I saw an episode with Saudia where she talks about how when a son has a really tight relationship with their mother but not with their father. What happens is as they go into the dating marketplace because they only receive the side of the relationship from their mom, which is usually going to be favoring the mother, they often tend to put women on a pedestal. And when things go wrong, it's generally they don't actually question that it could be the fault of the woman or the fault flaws of the woman, but they end up actually putting them on a pedestal because of that reason. And I don't know if the same applies for the opposite sex. Um, it probably does. Um, and this can be an issue when there is no father at all, when people are just raised by single mothers. But what we can in the situation that you just described, let's say that there's a mother, a father, and a a son. And let's say the marital relationship isn't so great. Maybe the guy is uh aloof, spends too much time out of the house, maybe drinks too much, uh doesn't remember her birthday, I don't know, whatever. What can sometimes happen is what's called triangulation where the mother ends up getting into a more intimate emotional relationship with the son than with the husband. And on some level these create a diad the mother and son over here and the father is increasingly kind of checked out which sort of pushes him even further outside of the family because he's like I'm not even liked here so why should I continue to invest effort here when it's not working. So that can be kind of a a positive feedback that drives a wedge between the husband and wife even further. But what's interesting is that the mother will kind of like tend to raise the son in a way that she wished her husband would behave. I wish that you you know you got to buy a girl flowers and you should always like be sweet to them and and you're such a a nice boy. The issue is that she didn't marry that man. She didn't [ __ ] that man. She didn't reproduce with that man. She for whatever reason married and re and chose to reproduce with a guy who was kind of aloof and kind of distant and she couldn't truly possess emotionally. That's what she was attracted to. So, but she doesn't like that. So, she's trying she's consciously training the son to be how she would prefer the man that she's attracted to to behave. But if that man potentially were to start acting that way, who knows what would happen to her attraction? We know that it's not important for him to act that way because she chose to sleep with him and marry him and reproduce with him without that kind of behavior. And so when boys in particular are raised by single mothers or in these types of contexts, they they generally grow up to be nice guys because that's how the mothers would prefer the husbands or the fathers to have behaved, but it's clearly not what they as women were attracted to. And so these nice guys often find it difficult um to to get what they need and want in the sexual marketplace. It's like they're all very sweet, you know. It's kind of the thing like, "Oh, you're such so so nice. I I know that any girl would be happy to have you." Well, you're any girl. Yeah, but yeah, but I think of you like a you know, like a brother. You know, we that would be weird. You know, we can't do that. So, it it women like it, but they don't [ __ ] it. they don't marry it. They don't they don't enter into relationship with it. Um, because those things uh don't really have to do with attractiveness. And the more attractive you are, whether you're a man or the woman or a woman, the more uh optionality you're going to get, the more successful you're going to get. Just how it is.

How do you think the people that we're attracted to, even the way we show up in the world changes as we begin to heal? Particularly the relationships that we have with ourselves and even our parents. For example, I would say I'm particularly around that topic of having a very close relationship with my mom and my dad not really being in, you know, a core part of our family, right? I I don't think I particularly a nice guy by any means, but you know, I've had friends, let's say, that went through therapy and they've healed the parent relationship with their parents, uh, and then they got divorced because they realized they're not no longer attracted to that person after healing part of themselves, including the relationships with their parents. Do you think that can change, you know, as we become even adults, as we start to heal certain parts of ourselves and relationships with our parents? And it may change who we're attracted to even.

Oh, certainly. Yeah, that's happened to me personally. Uh it's kind of been long known that the fastest way to accelerate a divorce is for one partner to start therapy. And that kind of fits with what you just described because if one person starts to heal or one person enters into a a phase of personal development more generally saying the other person doesn't it's going to widen the gap between like felt compatibility. I'm on one track you're on another and it feels like the distance between us is just getting greater and greater. Maybe we work out some sort of like roommate or co-parent agreement, but maybe also there's still a lot of life left and there's better, more satisfying relationships that each one of us could enter into. So maybe we get divorced. So yes, when somebody starts to heal or grow, they often grow out of the relationship that they're currently in. Absolutely.

Now um I do think that our attraction is often based like I well it's always based on some level with this templating this algorithm that gets developed during the sensitive period of our childhood. If you're one of the secure individuals out there like the 50% of the population comes from loving intact healthy families great just move on. But for the other half like me, it wasn't just that there was this training. There was a lot of wounding that happened. And the wound is often not even acknowledged. It's like children tend to accept the reality with which they're given. Sometimes they don't even know that they've been hurt. That they just think that that's like normal. That's just what life is supposed to feel like or that how adults are supposed to behave. And it's only like when they start to make friends in high school and college where they're maybe sharing some stories that they realize, "Wow, your your dad didn't come home drunk and beat you. Oh, I thought that's just what dads do." And people are going to be like, "No, bro. That's that's not what dads do." Not saying my dad did that, but like um you start to learn that maybe there was something [ __ ] up about my family. And that's actually a good thing. You shouldn't just stop there where you're just blaming mommy and daddy for the rest of your life for the problems that you've kind of inherited psychologically. It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility at this point to do something about it. Um, but it's important to become aware of some of that so that you can begin to to change things.

Now, uh, like I said that people want to create these reenactments. So they're they're on some level their wounding, their emotional wounding kind of has this uh I don't know else to describe it's like a radar. It's like this sensitivity to seek out people with whom they can successfully have that kind of reenacted relationship with. Like when I was in my 20s, I had a tendency to date women who were very uh they were like roller coasters, man. I mean I was an actor, so I date a lot of actresses. Actresses aren't really known for their emotional stability, but uh there was just like all over the place. And of course, my my mother was one of the most chaotic women that I've ever met. So, there was part of it that felt familiar. Um and I could walk into a room of a hundred strangers and I could just look at a woman across the room and say, "Oh, she's the one. She's the one I can have this dynamic with." I don't know why I knew that or how, but it tended to be correct. So, um, I went through this process where I would date these women, but it would get too crazy and I couldn't take it anymore and we'd break up in some spectacular way. And I'd say, "I'm going to just date a nice girl, a healthy girl, a stable girl." And I did that for a few months. And then I would be bored to tears. And I would say, "Sweetheart, you're great. It's not you, it's me." Which is true. Uh, but I can't do this. And I'd go back to a new dumpster fire or roller coaster. And this would happen for years. And it felt like this terrible trap because either I got what I was authentically attracted to but was terrible for me or I got something that was good for me but I felt nothing for. And I don't know if I either one of those is a a palatable option long term.

Well, fortunately I I was also in the process of um doing some of my own inner work and healing. And I I think that as I worked out this with my therapist and it took some years uh that some of that emotional wounding from that chaotic upbringing we were able to bring into the light and understand and to heal. And over time my attraction began to authentically change. like I didn't have to try to force myself to like the stable girls, which is like thank god because it's you can't you can't stay in that kind of dynamic for very long. And now when one of those uh roller coasters walks into the room, you know, maybe I hear this like dark echo, it's like but it's like no, no, thank you. It's almost like being in recovery for a drug. There might always be this kind of like pull, but you know, it gets easier to say no thanks. Um, and so that's great. So my attraction has authentically changed over time, but I don't know if it would have changed just as a function of time, like if I had just done nothing and the years went by. I think I really had to take the time to examine this and understand it and and heal it as best I could. And it it did impact what I was attracted to, which is great. It might have saved my life, man.

No, I can definitely echo that as well. Going I haven't done therapy or anything, but just through my own work of understanding why we're attracted to certain people and healing certain parts of experiences that I've had. You know, I used to be particularly attracted to girls that were very avoidant. And I think that's just kind of the nature of a lot of Asian kids because a lot of parents just worked, came back home, they didn't really spend time with their kids. You know, a a a minus isn't good enough. It has to be a plus. this tiger parent nature of disciplining our kids and nowadays when I have expressions of love overtly stuff like that too right exactly exactly and and I was it felt familiar you know dating girls that were also very avoidant and then at a certain point I just now my initial trigger which is I guess healthier is like ah this is too much work for me maybe I've gotten older I'm just lazier it's not even healing I'm just lazy now but my first thought is like, you know what? This is going to be too much work. This is not going to work for me. I'm like, I think that's kind of how I feel when I see the roller coaster now. It's just like, h, it's just not worth it. You know, it'll be fun. I'm sure the sex will be great. You know, it'll be like firecrackers, but uh, you know, it's just not it's just not worth the headache, the heartache, the drama. you know, I it's like I could technically afford a Lamborghini, but I just don't think it's worth the money that I would pay for it to to get it and to maintain it. So, you know, people make value decisions not technically based on what they can afford. Sometimes that's the case, but it's often just like what is the best use of that limited value that they have. And I've gotten to the point where it's like a relationship needs to not only create no new problems in my life, but it actually needs to make my life better. Which was kind of a revelation. You know, I certainly didn't think that that was what relationships were designed to do when I was in my 20s. None of them did. None of them did make my life better. But now it's like, wow, you know, there are women out there who who love you and will support you and will help you. And it's like, wow, that feels that feels that feels nice. Now the expense and the the trouble of of the relationship is sort of justified by some of the benefit that I get from it. It's like, oh, okay, let's move in this direction. Yeah.

And I feel the same. I mean, people talk about driving the Lamborghini or one of these supercars, but they don't talk about the maintenance cost that comes with driving a fun vehicle in a temporary moment, but the constant maintenance that comes with that. And I know I'd [ __ ] it up, man. I'd [ __ ] it up, you know. I' I'd I'd bang a curb or something like that and then it's like, oh, that's $10,000 right there, you know. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Um, this kind of ties into my point around going deeper into evolutionary psychology and how we can change the way and who we're attracted to depending on the modern circumstances or healing in general. One of the things that I've heard is I think there was a study done on this where how women that get off of oral contraceptive pills over time may feel less attracted to traditionally less masculine partners. And it was fascinating for me how just getting off the pill alone can actually make you feel less attracted to the person. But the reality is most women are taking modern contraceptives. So go to go deeper into that. I won't even ask a question around that, but just what are your thoughts around that and how I guess ultimately how you know people talk about we have nutritionists and doctors they talk about on the show how based on the evolutionary um history that we have of of growing up like our ancestors did not eat the way we eat today. They did not have the modern nutrition and diet. This is not the way we're supposed to be eating. Do you think the same thing could be said about relationships and dating today? How modern technology or modern ways we're dating is not necessarily the way evolution would have wanted us to find love or date.

Maybe evolution is pretty sneaky and creative. So like when we look at our nearest primate ancestors like chimps or bonobos uh we see all kinds of deceptive tactics that are used by let's say lower status men to secure sexual opportunities uh lower status males to secure sexual opportunities with uh with females. Some of them might mean impersonating other females. So, it's like in some uh primate species that have like a really hierarchical structures where there's like one or two alphas that control the vast majority of the females. Okay. One of the strategies is for one a lower status male to imitate being a female so they can kind of get indoctrinated into the herum and then like [ __ ] the other females when the alpha is asleep. So it's like this is something that evolved as a strategy over millions and millions of years. So there's all kinds of deceptiveness and uh trickery and minesis and cops and robbers when it comes to sex. It's like all is fair and love and war on some level because they're both related to the same outcome which is survival. War is related to the survival of the individual. I'm kind of justified to do whatever I need to do in order to keep living. and love or sex is related to the survival of the genes. And it's like on some level I got to do what I got to do in order to secure the best possible option for me. So I'm I'm sorry if that hurts you, but like I got to do what's right for me. It's it hurts, but so does war. And they're kind of related to the same ultimate goal. Uh your question was about modern dating and how can you can you ask it again because there was something else I wanted to say about this.

Yeah. Just around uh I gave the analogy of how modern nutrition isn't the way we're supposed to be. We were designed to eat. I remember now. Okay. So you were mentioning about the the fascinating discovery that women's sexual preferences change when they go off of contraception, hormonal contraception. I don't know if it's always oral, but it's definitely hormonal. And I know it's kind of a controversial um concept. Some people think that it exists, some people think that it's been disproven, but it's called um the dual mating strategy in women, which basically suggests that possibly it would be it would be great if women could get really good genes and good security, resources, protection, and provision from their mate. But the likelihood that all of those things are going to be in one male is very low. So the dual mating strategy basically says that it might be in women's best interest or females best interest more generally to kind of like enter into a committed relationship with uh a male with status and and resources who's willing to kind of commit to her but maybe surreptitiously reproduce with a different male that has better genes. You know, on the internet they call it alpha [ __ ] and betabucks as it were. So it's like, and this is corroborated in some studies that suggest that when a woman is in the ovulatory phase of her cycle, she is more likely to cheat or at least consider cheating, I think, is what the research finding um showed technically. Um, there's also studies that asked women to like smell shirts worn by different types of men. And they found the scent on shirts worn by more masculine men to be more yummy smelling when they were ovulating. So, there does seem to be this like hormonally based or driven tendency to seek out riskier, more masculine sexual opportunities. Um, but then that changes once they enter into the you know they start to menstruate or then the lutininal phase. So like women's preferences do change as a as a consequence of the chemicals that are flooding through their body. It kind of makes sense. Um, so when they go off birth control, that's when they want to reproduce. And the biological like imperative at that point is I need to reproduce with the best genes, not necessarily the best man, but the best genes. And then maybe I can get a decent man to help me raise those genes on some level. Um, so that's the idea there is that once we take away the birth control and the woman's hormones start to kind of regulate in a in a more natural cycle, they're going to be more attracted to men who are more traditionally masculine because they represent more of what evolution has told us is a high quality mate. They're generally bigger. they're generally stronger, more attractive, etc.

So, for women that are about to enter into a long-term relationship or even a marriage that's supposed to last for life, should they get off of birth control and see how they still feel about their partners? I know some content creators who suggest that sounds like a decent idea. Of course, you know, that leads to risks of pregnancy, I suppose, that before either person might be ready. There are ways around that, but um yeah, on some level seems like a decent idea. And what are your thoughts on monogamy? This conversation around how men were men and women weren't necessarily monogamous when before the idea of marriage and all these things were created. What What are your thoughts on monogamy as a concept?

Yeah, it doesn't seem like very many people, men or women, are really programmed to be strictly monogamous. Monogamy does seem to be more of a cultural invention. We don't see it practiced among more primitive tribes that still exist in like Papa New Guinea or the Amazon rain basin. There's a really great book that explores a lot of this further called Sex at Dawn that I would highly recommend if people are interested in this. Our, if I remember correctly, according to the anthropologists, our two closest primate ancestors are chimpanzees and bonobos. And we're kind of like more or less halfway in between these two species. And these two species can't be more different with respect to their sexual practices. Chimps are very hierarchical. They're super aggressive. They often are territorial, do a lot of mateguarding, and because they're very hierarchical, few high status ma males control the vast majority of the females. And so only a few different males get to reproduce on some level. Bonobos are totally opposite. They they have like they don't have a hierarchal society. They have a horizontal society and they [ __ ] all the time. It's like they have sex to say hi. They have sex to say bye. They have sex to say I'm sorry. It's like it's a form of communication that exists in this species. And it serves a lot of different functions besides reproduction. In particular, it serves the function of like cementing bonds in the relationship network of that uh community. And humans are kind of halfway between these two. So, we're kind of halfway between um uh uh kind of like free love and very uh organized limited sexual practices. Let's put it that way. I think I got this right. And so I think that human beings today all over the world exist on that continuum as well. You, some people don't know this, but like there's people today that still have a significant proportion of Neandertol DNA even though there are no Neanderthalss anymore. And that proportion of DNA can actually have important health outcomes. I remember reading a paper a few years ago that said that the higher concentration of Neanderl DNA, the more the less likely that person is going to contract and spread COVID, for instance. So, it's like these sort of genetic heritages affect us in ways that we are not conscious of and don't fully understand. But I think that there's a there's a spectrum just like some people might have more Neatl DNA than others. Some people might be more on let's say the bonobo side than on the chimpanzeee side. And I think that's okay. I don't think that we should have a one-sizefits-all system when it comes to our relationships and our sexual practices. So, I do think that in general, people seem to be monogamousish, which is a great word that I think needs to circulate more. As far as I know, that came from Esther Prell, who's also um a great researcher on this. You can check out her book uh meeting in captivity in particular if you're interested. And uh it's like people can be more or less monogous, but that strict hard line of permanent indefinite sexual exclusivity can be a very difficult thing for a lot of people, especially men to do. Like since the time I was a boy, I've watched on the news stories of politicians and athletes and celebrities all fall because of what they got to [ __ ] the intern on the desk. It's like that they were willing to risk it all for not even a fantastic sexual opportunity, but like that seems to be kind of what's baked into a lot of guys. It could also be why those men became so successful and powerful to begin with, whether they were conscious of it or not. It's like a high status men get more and more attractive sexual opportunities, which could be why they work so [ __ ] hard to become so successful and powerful to begin with. So when women or some men shake their head and say why would the president why would the the governor why would uh this athlete throw it all away? It's like why do you think he became the governor or the president or the athlete to begin with? It's like that's like saying I worked 10 20 years on something but then once I achieve it I can't enjoy the the perks of that status or that achievement which is a tough cell which is why it seems like power and and wealth and status and fame it's kind of like the one ring man you know it seems that very few men can resist its corrupting influences entirely. But that's that's kind of what I got for you. I can't speak for women particularly, but I know a lot of men particularly after 30 once they've hit some sort of success and they've been in a long-term relationship that struggle with monogamy in in many ways. And I remember having this conversation with a very big podcaster actually and he talked about how he struggled to get women in high school. He wasn't the popular kid. He wasn't really the guy that was good with women in particular. And the popular guys don't study pickup. Sean, sorry to interrupt. The popular guys don't need to. It's it's the guys who can't get the women who who study this and and make it a lifestyle. Exactly. Exactly. And he's not in the pickup game at all. He's just, you know, very well known now in the world of uh in podcasting in general and obviously successful. has gotten better looking, attractive, and he's got a lot of demand now that he doesn't really know what to do with. He doesn't know he hasn't he's not familiar with this uh this reality of being surrounded and in high demand of of women and and being in a relationship at the same time. And it was very difficult and I wonder if part of the I don't want to say that necessarily that men struggle with monogamy more than women. That's something that you would know better than I do. But do you think because of the idea of how men peak in their sexual market value later on versus women, we struggled so long, so much from 18 to, you know, up to 30 even to have a higher sexual market value with women. And as we get older, once we're actually in a relationship for most guys after 30, that's really when the peak of sexual market value comes into play. And because of that, the unfamiliar unfamiliarity of not having access before, this is why it's perhaps harder later on for men. Whereas for women, perhaps because they were from 18 to 25, that's when their highest sexual market value was. So by the time they're 30, they're ready to have a baby. They've already gone through that stage with their lives.

I think there's some truth to that. Um, you know, traditionally, we would call that sewing your wild oats before you settle down, right? And I do think that's maybe one of the drivers of the traditional midlife crisis, which seems to affect men disproportionately than it does women. Right? So imagine a guy gets married young, maybe to his high school sweetheart, does right by her, buys the house, works really hard, is the good husband and father and provider, but you know, as the years go on, 20 years later, the woman's had a few children. She's starting to show signs of age. Maybe they haven't had sex in a while. The guy might be have made something of himself by by now and is becoming successful or rich or high status. She's on the decline. He's on the up and up. He's never exercised the privilege of being in a more advantageous position in the sexual marketplace. That could be a temptation that he can't resist. It's like I don't want to die without knowing what this is like. This could be my one and only life. I need to be kind of live it for myself. It's like all spare and love and war. It's like I'm sorry, but I have to do right by me on some level. I have to survive. So, I think that that's possible. It's one of the reasons why I suggest in the book that men don't seriously consider marriage or long-term relationship until they're at least 35 because it takes until 30 for the average guy to be more attractive than the average woman. And so you need to kind of like understand what that feels like potentially. What if you start to be the prize on some level? What if you start to be the one in high demand? Like most men never feel that way in their entire lives. And the ones who start to feel that way, it feels really, really good. Like I can understand why it's hard for women to give that up. It's like getting a taste of flying first class than having to go back to economy. It's like maybe it's better if you just stay in the back of the plane your whole life and you don't really know what you're missing. So, um I I I do think that it's generally harder for men to be monogous than women, but I know that's an understatement. Some men are very seem to be monogous by nature. Not all women just want commitment. There's plenty of women who are interested in just attractive sexual opportunities. They must be otherwise how do players get their significant notch counts and whatnot? Um, but I I do think it's generally harder for men to be monogous just because of the way that the biology is programmed. I mean, there's also a greater opportunity cost for men than for women, especially if they've actually made something of themselves.

Yeah, it's it's a fascinating way to think about and uh it's become more of a conversation that's more common especially within my circle of friends as my a lot of my friends are 30 and 40. Um and you brought up the idea of marriage as well. I know how you feel about marriage personally, but do you think marriage in the modern day is still worth it? And for who does it make more sense for and who does it make not so much sense for?

Uh well it makes in many cases a lot of sense for women. I I mean marrying could be the best thing that can happen to a woman. This is going to be a hot take because as far as I know it's the only way a woman can get divorced. And divorce could absolutely be a fantastic thing for a woman. It's like it doesn't mean that she stays off the market. You can get into a relationship right away, get married the very next day. Um, and you might get cash and prizes for many, many years as a consequence of that relationship ending. It's like why why not on some level get divorced? You know, it might be a temptation that would be hard for me to resist if I were in that situation. Like if I and you know, I I would potentially advocate marriage for men for the same reason that women tend to get married. and that it significantly improves the quality of their life. Like if some beautiful billionaire error started recording me, I might be willing to sign the nuptuuals. You know what I'm saying? I would feel I would feel good about that. Like it's entering into that relationship would would really open up my my life and I would definitely feel safe because if it didn't work out, I'm going to be taken care of. It's like I it's a win-win. It's a no- lose situation for me. But, you know, because women tend to mate and date up and not mate and date down, the man often assumes disproportionate amount of risk when they enter into the marriage contract. And I just I don't think that that's uh in a lot of men's best interest to do. So, does it make sense? Yeah, of course it makes sense when on on some level the incentives and the stars align. Yeah.

And why do you think so many marriages fail? I mean, are we in some essence not talking about monogamy? Is that the root is that the root cause of you of a lot of these marriages failing? Or do you think we're just bad choosers? meaning we haven't gone through the filtering process and we perhaps led with intuition rather than logic to be in a relationship or marriage with partners that we probably should not have been in the first place.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think that being married is almost an impossible thing to do. And the fact that it seemed like our grandparents and our great great grandparents were able to stay together, I think largely has to do with a severe lack of optionality, enormous social pressure to conform, a lot of shame related to uh separation and divorce and or the impossibility legally of getting a divorce. So I think that when you take away those things which are not very comfortable to live under that certainly will feel oppressive to a lot of people men and women uh you take away the protective factors that keep people in a relationship long term because it it's very it's very tough to stay together every every seven to 10 years you're going to become a different person. You're going to become a a different version of yourself and your partner is going to become a different version of herself. And even if you were perfectly matched 10 years ago, what who's to say that you're now going to be perfectly matched? Like sometimes relationships just have they run their course? They have they exist for a season or to accomplish a specific goal. Should we really try to fit the square peg in the round hole if it seems like we've accomplished what we set out to do and we're no longer that compatible? like maybe that's the mature thing to do and we need to collectively reexamine our attitude that if a relationship doesn't last until death that it's somehow a failure. I think that's a big part of it.

There's also it's very very tricky to do because people become less attractive as a consequence of them giving us what we want. Remember this goes back to our initial conversation about people wanting what they don't or can't have. Okay. So, if you see that I have something that you want, you might want to pursue some sort of relationship with me up until the point that I actually give you what you want. Now, why would you continue to stay in a relationship with me? You'd actually have to be like my true friend for that to happen, you know? But you might it might be difficult. you might tend to prioritize hanging out with other people or pursuing other types of opportunities or relationships because we might be friends, but like there's nothing I Sean really needs from Orion right now. You know what I'm saying? So, it's it's needing and wanting things that directly contribute to desire. And people enter into relationships with other people to get those things that they want and need. And when we get them, we need the relationship or we want the relationship even less than we did before. Well, this is this is just like this really mean paradox of life. So, it's like by giving you what you want, I'm making myself obsolete. I'm making myself redundant. And people love to moralize about this. It's like, well, that just means that it's just people need to love and they need to be friends. It's like, yeah, okay, but like most people aren't going to do those things. Most people aren't going to love very deeply or be true friends. Like these are rare things. The vast majority of people don't have these virtues in such high demand that they're going to prioritize a relationship where they don't get very much anymore over other relationships where they could because I got to do what's right by me. All's fair and love and war kind of a thing. That is also a higher directive than potential morality. Like morality on some level doesn't enter into the picture when it comes to survival. It's beyond good and evil in many cases, which is what makes it scary, which makes the natural world a little incomprehensible to us, a little alien, because it doesn't it doesn't accord to morality. It's like the the the lion doesn't think that it's bad for tearing into the gazelle. The gazelle probably doesn't think it's a victim. like these are human concepts. So I think that marriage is is very very difficult. So the way to stay together on some level is on one hand you have to have this dance that as both of you become different versions of yourself you maintain enough connection and communication and togetherness to kind of like grow together. But too much of that and it's going to feel restrictive and the other person is being held back, but too little of it and people drift apart. So, it's this like little balance in the middle. And even more important, people stay together when they continue to control things that the other person wants and needs. So that okay, I gave you the first thing that you wanted, Sean, but I didn't give you the second thing yet. So now you have

A reason to continue to be in a relationship with me. And sometimes that means creating needs and desires in another person that didn't exist there to begin with. This is what advertisers have figured out a long time ago.

Are there studies around how when married couples have children, how that affects the divorce rates and how it also changes perhaps once children actually grow old enough to leave the household and what the divorce rates are there? Because I think you talked about how ultimately there are parents, and many parents want, they will sacrifice their own desires to figure out what's best for their kids. And if you can have a kid with a husband or or wife, ultimately that might become the thing. And you, what you want for a happy child to have a great childhood is to have two parents that are together, and they'll be able to sacrifice their own needs in order to make that happen. Perhaps in my case, my parents actually divorced once I left the house. And I wonder if because of that, they may have sacrificed their own needs so that we can have this great childhood. But then once we were old enough and we left the household, uh, that's actually when my parents decided to divorce. Talk a little bit about that. I don't know if there's any studies around divorce rates and having children.

Um, it does seem like, yeah, when a relationship isn't working, many times if there's children involved, the parents will try to stay together for the kids. I made an episode on staying for the kids where I fundamentally argue that's not generally a very good idea for a number of reasons, but from what I was just saying, it kind of makes sense. It's like, let's say we come together to have a to to start a family. Like that's the purpose of this relationship. And I do think relationships should have purpose. Like, why are you here? What are you here to do? Like it shouldn't just be, I I think you're hot, or uh, I don't want to lose you to somebody else. Like there has to be a reason that you're collaboratively working towards some overarching goal. And for a lot of people, especially with marriage, it's starting a family and having kids. Okay, great. So we come together to do that. And but now it's like 20 years later. We probably are attracted to each other a lot less, at the very least, because of what I was just saying. It's like, you wanted kids, I gave you kids. So like, why else do you need me at this point? You're only going to stay if there's a deep abiding love or a very powerful attraction that you still possess. Otherwise, you're going to spend your time and attention getting other needs and desires met in other relationships, whether you officially divorce or not. Because a lot of people stay married, but they basically become roommates and they spend all of their time on their career or playing pickleball with their friends or whatever the case may be. And that's the best that they can uh kind of negotiate at that stage of their life. So, they've diminished the attraction because like, mission accomplished. They gave the other person what they wanted. And maybe there's not enough uh attraction and love there to stay together. And there could also be problems as well, like there could be conflict, there could be withdrawal, there could be emotional neglect. And I do think that sometimes people will tough it out until the kids go off to college, thinking that they're doing the kids some enormous service. And I don't know if that's entirely true because I do think that children tend to pick up on some of this stuff. So even if they don't know what exactly is going on, which they probably don't, like, there's a weird vibe in the house. It's like mommy and daddy don't talk to each other at the dinner table. Like there's this icy coldness, or maybe they hear them fighting when they're supposed to be asleep. You know, it's they can't really put their finger on what's going on because no one's really telling them directly, but it doesn't feel right. And oftentimes that gets encoded into their, you know, algorithm and they end up entering into relationships that mimic their parents' problems and they're just kicking the can down the road, which is I'm entering into an unsatisfying relationship and then sacrificing my own needs and desires for someone else who will then grow up to do the same thing.

And so often what I recommend to people who are in usually very unsatisfying marriages that have children, especially if they're abusive or neglectful, is I say, "Well, imagine it's 20 years from now and your little girl or little boy is all grown up and they come to you and say, 'Daddy, my my husband beats me,' or 'my husb or my wife hasn't slept with me in five years,' or etc., etc. What are you going to tell that kid? Are you gonna say, 'Well, that sucks, but you know, might want to take one for the team here because it's not just all about you and get back in there.' You know, that's what I did. And so, because I had to get hazed and suffer in this way, then on some level, I think that's just how the world is that you should you should suffer as well." I but I don't think many people will do that, especially if they're thinking about a little girl in an abusive relationship. It's like, if there are sometimes where relationships need to end. Like I don't think that relationships are unconditional. And as soon as the other person believes that they're entitled to that um that relationship no matter what they do or do not do, that's when things start to become monstrous. I mean, just look at human history. All of the greatest abuses have come from individuals who for whatever reason could not be removed from their position. They were emperors or popes or you know [ __ ] like that. They were infallible and they could only be deposed by violence and it took a lot, a lot of death and a lot of misery to get them out there. So it's like people need to feel that there are consequences to their actions. Just like a job, you have to keep showing up and doing your job well while creating a minimum amount of problems in order to continue to have your job. That's a a decent relationship model. Doesn't necessarily mean that love is conditional, but you don't you don't have to be in a relationship with people that you love. Most people aren't most people aren't married to the people that loved them the most or that they love the most. They they're they're married to the people that they could get or that would have them. And even the idea of staying together, it's not necessarily that if you fall out of love that people can get divorce or can end the relationship because I I know there are people like my mom, for example, who when we immigrated to Canada, she wasn't in a financial position to be independent enough and she ended up not, you know, being able to not really being able to get a divorce because of that. And I think a lot of people might be also in that position. I think that's also changing in the age of uh female independence and having financial independence as well.

That's that's exactly right. Sorry to interrupt, Sean, but like that really throws the traditional model on its head where it's like we're looking at previous generations and saying, "Oh, the divorce rate was so low and people went the distance." It's like, maybe your grandma just didn't have enough money to leave your grandpa. Exactly. Do you really want to go back to that time? But the the thing is is that, okay, well, women now have a lot of their own money. So, that's one less reason they need any given man. There's one less reason. There's one less thing they need and want. And remember, relationships are formed to get what you need and want. And so, they become less stable when you take away need. And we need each other much less these days than we ever have. When you're when you have more, you don't need people as much. That's why when you enter into like really poor communities, they generally have very tight-knit social structures because if you don't have a lot materially, you [ __ ] need other people to survive. But if you have a lot materially, you don't. Or you can you can enter into short-term contractual relationships to get your needs met. And that and that's the way that without anyone saying it, civilization tends to trend. That as GDP goes up, birth rates go down. The average age of marriage increases. It's like people go to these relationships to get certain things, but they're less needful today than they were in the past. So, it's like, why is anybody really surprised or up in arms about this in a morally indignant way? It makes total sense. But what's the solution? To like impose need and want and deprivation on people to like take away women's financial independence. It's like, good luck with that, man. That's never going to happen. And I'm not arguing for that either. So, it's like I don't think we can go back. The genie is not going to get put back into the bottle. We can only go forward. And I do think that we're at this um really interesting moment in history as I talk about I think in chapter 12 of the book, which is the old ways are falling apart. And maybe part of the reason they're falling apart is the is is based on some inherent flaws to that institution or that system. It's not a perfect system if it can't withstand current conditions in my opinion. So, we don't have to go back to the way things were, which is great because we can't. But we also don't have to let everything fall apart and go to [ __ ] either. It doesn't have to be this just de disregulated wild west where there's a bunch of incels and gigachads over here and everyone belongs to everybody else. Like it doesn't that that's another fatalistic view of reality that I think is designed to push people back towards the traditional view, which again, we can't return to. So I think the opportunity that we have here is to kind of like consciously choose what parts of this we want to keep and which parts of this we can dispense with and to have enough tolerance and respect for other people that what you decide for your relationship, Sean, might be different from what I decide for my own relationship, and that's [ __ ] okay because like viva differance, you know, that's real diversity. We have to have diversity of the way people actually think and live their lives. It's not just about identity. So, it's like there's all of these hyperconflated things that have gone into traditional marriage, which are like the legal contract of marriage, which is sexual exclusivity, which is cohabitation, which is reproduction, which is um love and these more noble emotions I'm supposed to feel for you and with you, etc., etc. And I think that's part of the reason why a lot of marriages fail is that that is too much. Like it it's very difficult to get all of those things met simultaneously with a single person. We now increasingly live in single family households. We don't have communities anymore. Really, we don't have intergenerational houses. We don't have tribes. And we want our partner to be in a whole village. And that's not possible. And so people either are living lives of, let's say, quiet desperation where they're just trying their best to deal with the frustration of not getting certain needs or desires met, or they eventually say, "Fuck it. Life is too short and I want these things," and it destabilizes the the marriage. But it's like, maybe that's just because of the way that we've set things up and uh I don't think we need to go back to the way things were and I don't think we have to let things fall apart entirely.

Where do you see the future of dating going with the trends that are happening? There was a study done where I think there was this crossline of women getting more undergraduate degrees than men, or at least entering them. And we know that there's a correlation between income and getting an undergraduate degree as well. And I think even Ilamas talks about recently in in in his talk in Saudi Arabia, he talks about this idea of universal high income where AI is abundant and it's not going to be this universal basic income, but there might be a world where everything is automated and people are able to make sufficient income. There's not going to be poverty in the world. And assuming the hypergamous nature still is intact when it comes to what women select for in terms of men, how do you think that changes the dating marketplace and what we're attracted to in this world of abundance?

Yeah, it's a great question. I should probably make an episode about this. So, let's take education for example. So according to some statistics, within 10 years in the UK, I think it was, for every two women who graduate with a college degree, one man will. They'll outnumber the females will outnumber the males two to one in that capacity, which is an enormous sex difference. When we initiated um, let's say incentives to get more women into higher education in the 60s here in America, there was a smaller sex difference then than there is today. It's just that the sex difference today doesn't privilege men, whereas the sex difference in the past did. Um, so that's that's interesting. What I actually think is going to happen and is currently happening is that education will become less important. So this is kind of interesting. I'm I I haven't really said this out loud, but it it makes sense in my head. So let's try to try to make sense of it here. There's, as far as I know, there's never been something that women started to do that then became very high status to the point that men began to flock into that institution. But it happens all the time in the reverse that men establish institution, it becomes high status, suddenly women want in. And then what can sometimes happen is women will flood and take over that profession or that institution, and then it becomes less prestigious. Like you see this in institutions that women dominate, like nursing or teaching, like those used to be higher status jobs than they are today. Interesting. So it's like what becomes stat what becomes high status continues to shift and change. And if we get to a point where the vast majority of um college graduates or college students are women, I think that that's going to further degrade the status of education for better or for worse. We also know that it's it's um they're getting low status because of mistakes and missteps that universities have been making for the last 10 or 20 years, where they've gone increasingly woke and it seems like they're not really preparing students with real-world skills to enter into the workplace or driving real innovation in STEM fields, for instance. It it just seems to become like a a cultural experience that's increasingly in a bubble, divorced from the rest of reality. And employers are not putting as much value into a college degree that it once did. It's also hyperinflated in terms of the cost. Like they just keep raising the tuition without increasing the quality of the courses or the the services on the campus. I because they get free money from the government. I mean, it's a really crazy situation. But um, I think that as more women begin to graduate college and some of these other things that I described, the value of a college degree will continue to decrease. And I think that's what we see is that when I mean, don't shoot the messenger, but when women flood into high status institutions or um sectors, that they become less prestigious as a consequence. I don't know why 100% have to think about it, but it seems to be the case. Yeah. Interesting.

My final question for you, uh, because I know I want to respect for your time, is what do you wish more men and women understood about each other?

I think they're very different. I think we need to bring back the idea that men and women are very different from each other and that what's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander. And to move away, especially in our sexual relationships, from a strict idea of balance and symmetry with respect to reciprocity. So it, in my experience, asymmetry is the rule, not the exception in most relationships. Trying to get everything to be equal and the same is often not useful and constructive for long-term success because what is fair isn't always equal, and what is equal isn't always fair. So to really begin to dial in that like, I don't have to do exactly for you what you do for me. In fact, that might not be the basis of a satisfying relationship because people tend to exchange unequal goods. So not the same things of comparable value. Like, I need to give you something that you don't have, and you need to give me something that I don't have. I'm not going to give you something that you already have in exchange for something I already have. That makes it less likely that we're going to enter into a relationship and stay together. So they'll lean into the idea that men and women have different needs and desires that they don't have to be symmetrically um uh fulfilled and to like have a bit more uh tolerance for those differences. And finally, to like want fewer things from each other. I talk I've talked about that in a number of episodes. It's like, maybe don't look for your best friend, lover, therapist, mommy, mother of your children, personal chef, and cheerleader when you're looking for a girlfriend or a wife. Like the likelihood that you're going to be disappointed is very, very high. So only go to your partner for a few things and go to that person for things that you can't get anywhere else because it's generally going to be easier, cheaper, and many times more satisfying to get those needs met in other types of relationships than sexual relationships with the opposite gender. And that's generally what we did for, you know, thousands and thousands of years. We got those needs met in our tribes and our communities. Men got them with other men. Women got them with other women. And they put less pressure on the little dyad to be everything to everyone. So I think those are things that men and women can keep in mind to have more satisfying relationships.

Beautiful. Dr. Taban, appreciate you. Where can people find you online? We'll definitely link the book, The Value of Others, of course. Oh, sweet. Where else can people find you?

Yeah, my biggest presence online is through my YouTube channel. It's called Psychax, so you can find me there. There's links to all of my various things in the descriptions of all of my episodes. So, I have my book, The Value of Others. I have my private community, the Captain's Quarters, where I host bimonthly group consultations and Q&A with invited guests. I also do one-on-one consultations with folks all over the world, men and women. And you can find out more on my website.

Beautiful. Appreciate you and appreciate everyone for tuning in. Sean, this was great. You asked great questions and I had a wonderful time. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, takes two to tango. Appreciate you.