Transcription
Today, we're going to take a journey to the unknown land inside a woman's mind. Even with artificial intelligence and all the technology that we have to bring to bear, we have yet to provide a reasonable explanation for the behaviors of the average American woman. Today, we're going to take a stab at it. We're going to do some amateur science here, and hopefully, we can give men some insights into what exactly is going on in there and why is it they act so irrationally, and their behaviors are so inexplicable. So let's give it a whir.
So this morning, I was thinking of all the women that I have known through my life and spent some period of time with, and going all the way back to when I was like 12, 12 years old, all the way until the present. I have had 10 significant relationships in my life that lasted at least 3 months, and half of those lasted two years or longer. So that's five relationships that lasted two years or longer, and another five that lasted between 3 months and about a year, a year, a little over a year. So I have spent a great deal of time with some kind of a female presence in my life. If you include the 21 years I spent with my ex-wife, more than 21 years, um, and then, um, you know, all the time leading up to that and in the time since then, there's been, been quite a lot of time that I've spent with women. So I was trying to pull together the commonalities that would give me some insights that would perhaps be valuable to any of you young guys or even older guys that are, you know, considering either trying to figure out what happened in your own life or considering trying to, um, get involved with a woman.
Just to give you some sense for how little we know about the human mind, it wasn't that long ago, I think it was the 1950s and early 60s, when if someone were diagnosed with, um, depression or anxiety or really almost any mental illness, that was—they couldn't figure out the prescription was a lobotomy; they would just sever the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, and that was The Cure. So we're not that far removed from that. Okay, I mean, that's pretty primitive stuff, just to give you an idea. You know, not that I'm suggesting we give women lobotomies, but, um, there's definitely a—I don't know if it's a mental illness, but certainly a phenomenon that occurs with women, especially now, that has not occurred in the past.
So I recently, like a couple of years ago, I talked to my first girlfriend, real girlfriend, you know, we were together off and on for about four years from middle school through early High School, like sophomore year in high school, and, um, she was an Australian girl. For all you guys in Australia, she was a great girl, very good, you know, um, no nothing really too physical, you know what I mean? Like we never had sex or anything like that, but she, um, she was a great girlfriend. And anyway, we were chatting on Facebook or messenger or something like that, and and she told me that I was her first love, and I thought, wow, I didn't know that, you know, that was, that was kind of a revelation to me. I mean, it wasn't a shock, but I don't think she ever said, "I love you" to me in the four years that we were together. It was probably more than four years, maybe on the last day when she had to go back to Australia, maybe she said that to me, I don't know, but I remember like it wasn't a big, a significant part of our, our relationship, that word wasn't. So I was kind of shocked. And then I fast forward to, um, you know, I think it was about seven or eight years into my marriage, and my ex-wife tells me she doesn't want to be married anymore, you know, and I'm thinking, I had no idea that was coming, like that, that didn't, H, I did not have any understanding or perception that that was on the table, just like I didn't have any understanding or perception that my first girlfriend thought of me as her first love and that she loved me. And so somehow I'm not getting the signals, do you know what I mean? Like somehow the information that they're giving out is not getting in, and, um, I'm trying to figure out if it's a me thing, like am I just not smart enough to pick up on these cues, and I'm open to that; it's very possible, or are they just too cryptic in the way they deliver this, this information? Am I supposed to be picking up on some kind of, uh, I don't know, body language, like pheromones? I don't know what, am I supposed to, how am I supposed to interpret this stuff? How do you figure it out?
So walking in the woods, you know, I see lots and lots and lots of animals, and I see them in their natural habitat, and I see them in their natur with their natural behaviors, and it's very, very interesting because, um, animals, um, have a similar Behavior because it's the amygdala, which is a very primitive part of our brains, and it's the same kind of, um, mechanism in their brains; they have an amygdala too, and it's a, it's that whole fight or flight thing that I've been talking about with you in other videos, but that amygdala identifies dangers, and it causes us to react to either run and and flee from the problem or to, um, to attack it. And I, I want to start there with women because I think that maybe the amygdala is where that, that primitive center of their brain is, is where a lot of these behaviors are coming from. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples of things that I've noticed in the forest with animals, and some of them may seem OBVI to you, but I think if you give it some thought and you apply it to women, you may start to find that there is a pattern developing.
So, um, we see deer all the time, and the deer here are pretty domesticated. I mean, there's people walking and jogging and dogs coming and going, um, so they don't get really freaked out by people being nearby or even the dogs for that matter, which is crazy, but they will get out of our way, you know. So like if they're standing in the path, um, and there's a, you know, a female deer with some, you know, baby deer, they'll all, they just kind of Shuffle away; they, they, they make way for us, no problem at all. Every once in a while, I'll come across a buck on the path, and you got to be really, really careful with these guys because they, they take their masculinity pretty seriously. So first time I came across one, he was standing right on the edge of the trail, and he was just eating leaves or whatever, but he saw us coming, and he turned and made eye contact with me, at least that's the way it seemed; he was staring at me, and, "Hey doggies, Shelby Jax, come, don't go away," and so we approached, and as we got closer, I didn't change my Pace or anything, as we approached this Buck, he just lowered his head. Now he had a full rack; I, I didn't take the time to count how many points there were cuz they were all point pointing at me, but I realized in that moment that he wasn't around, like he wasn't going to move; we were going to have to be very careful and give him a wide birth. And I thought that that's very interesting because I always thought that deer were just basically kind of submissive, but that's not the case; male deer are not submissive; they, they will stand their ground, and they will, uh, they will fight you, while the female deer, pretty, pretty submissive, they will, they'll get out of the way. It's a fear-based reaction; obviously, they've got little ones there, and they're wanting to protect them, and if the dogs get a little animated, then they'll scatter, you know, like the dogs start to bark or they start to, um, express any kind of aggression toward the deer, the, the deer will all take off very, very quickly.
Another thing we see in the woods a lot are bunny rabbits, lots and lots of bunny rabbits, and of course the dogs just love the bunny rabbits, um, their little hearts are beating as fast as they can, you know, and, um, if they see us coming, their first reaction is to stop and be still and try not to be seen, but of course that's not going to work; the dogs have already picked up on their scent, and, uh, they're honing in on them, um, and the dogs will try to attack them from two sides so they can kind of hem them in, but, uh, as soon as the bunny rabbit realizes he's in Jeopardy or she's in Jeopardy, they, they'll just run, you know, and they just disappear into the, into the brush very, very quickly, and of course the dogs are way too slow to catch him anyway.
So what I recognize in women, women that, um, is similar to this is a lot of their actions are fear-based, and I think as men we don't think about fear as often as women do. I mean, certainly everyone has fear as a motivator in their lives, but I don't think that's the first place men go psychologically and emotionally, and I think that women go there much, much faster, and I think they're just programmed to do that. And so when you understand a woman from a fear-based reaction, a lot of their behaviors start to make a little more sense, and it's just self-preservation. So their actions are not logical, and that's the thing that we have to get rid of; we have to get rid of logic because there's no logic whatsoever in their behaviors; they literally are just reacting from Fear.
Um, one of the things that, uh, is most frustrating to men is this whole monkey branching thing where women will hold on to one relationship, um, that they're done with, that they don't want to have anything more to do with, um, until they have another relationship in hand, and then they will, um, get rid of the, the first relationship and move on to the second one. And from a man's perspective, that's immoral, like, like that's, that's just wrong, like you just don't do that to a guy; that's just completely out of the question; men would not do that to women; it's a question of honor and ethics and that kind of stuff, and women just don't see it that way at all; they're thinking that they need to go from one protector to another protector, like they don't feel confident and complete; they don't feel like they're safe unless they've got a man in their life, so they don't want to have that gap of going from one man to being completely single and then having to get another man. Um, you could probably think of it in the same way as you would if you were in a bad job and you wanted to find another job, well, you wouldn't quit the bad job until you got the good job, and that's the way women look at it, you know, it's not necessarily a personal thing. So if a woman has done that to you, it's not really about you; it, it's obviously 100% about her, um, but even beyond that, it's just about her programming; she's just that, um, that amygdala in her brain is driving her behaviors in a fearful way that cause her to act in these ways. So I think that if you're a man who's been cheated on or has been, um, abandoned by a woman and she has moved on to her next guy, like within a week or two or a month after she left you, well, she always had him in the orbit; she was always planning this Escape; she just needed to secure her Landing place before she could leave you cuz she didn't want that feeling of being alone and being unsafe, and that's the thing that men don't understand.
Um, now this is just one of the things; there's lots more; there's lots more, but that's one of the big things that we just don't get. Something that Modern Life has really exasperated with the internet and social media is fear of missing out, and this is a new kind of fear, and it's something that we don't have a lot of experience with. I mean, I think everybody is trying to achieve the best they can in their own lives, and that goes back as long as, you know, time Memorial, but now this fear of missing out is front and center, and for a man to look at, you know, um, say pictures of a beautiful beach or, you know, climbing a mountain or something like that, you know, we just stash that away in the back of our mind and think, yeah, well, one day I'll do that, or one day I'd like to go there; yeah, I, I, that's, that'd be a fun vacation. For a woman, it again triggers that amygdala, like she's not living the life that she was meant to live; she's afraid that she is going to, um, not live, live the life that she wants, that, um, she's going to miss out on, on something that, uh, she could have otherwise had, and that fear of missing out drives her back into her hypergamy, into her hypergamous nature, to try to find some path where she can achieve this, this mystical, mythical, you know, Vision that she has for her, her life, and, you know, obviously it's delusional, you know, but it drives a lot of their behaviors; they think that, um, what they see on the Internet is real.
When it comes to divorce, here's the big one: when a woman is wanting to divorce you, and I think back to when my ex-wife told me that she wanted to divorce for the first time, I remember we were lying in bed, and it was in the evening, and I think we were only like seven or eight years in, and she didn't actually say she wanted a divorce; she just started talking about how she really didn't like being married, you know, and she made it very impersonal, like it wasn't me; she, like, you know, it's not, it's not you; it's, it's me, you know what I mean? It's one of those kinds of conversations, like something straight out of Seinfeld. And, um, I remember my first reaction was I was pissed; it's like, you have got to be kidding me; I have put all this time, energy, and money, and I have granted all of your wishes; I have been your genie in the goddamn bottle, and I have granted all your wishes, and now you're saying you don't want to be married? What, what, h, h, h, how can you lay there and, and say that to me? I was so angry; I, I was probably one of the angriest moments I, I've had, and of course I had to contain that anger because if I expressed it, you know, I would have been spending the night in jail because I was that M mad; I was really, really angry; I could have punched holes and walls and made all kinds of terrible threats and statements, but I didn't; I kept it together, but I did express some anger enough that she got Shook Up, um, um, and in that moment I had no idea how she could come to that conclusion; we had done everything that she had asked for, you know; we had gone on all the vacations; we had had children; we had bought the big house; we had painted it; we had decorated; we had done everything, everything, and most of it was driven by her desires; most of these things were things that she really wanted to do. I didn't want to have any more children, sorry, kids, but I didn't, I, I already had one; granted it was a mistake, but I had one; I knew what that game was about; I knew how much work it was and how much it cost; doing that again, I checked that box; I did not need any more children; she wanted more children; she got more children; didn't want more children after she had more children; she figured out what that game was about; it's a hard job, but yeah, and she just wanted to bail on it. So I go back in time and try to understand what was she thinking in that moment, you know, and, and I think that, you know, someone said, "Never let a woman get bored," and I think in that moment, like all of the big events had occurred in our lives, like we'd gone to the marriage and the honeymoon and the, you know, having babies and buying houses and decorating houses and spending all this money and going on vacations; we had done all this stuff; we had taken our little children to Disney and Disney Cruises; I mean, we had just, we had just done it up for about seven or eight years, and I think in that moment she's like, okay, I think I've done all the things I need to do as a married person; I'm done; I think that's really what it came down to more than anything; she was bored; that was pretty much it. And, um, yeah, so I think that there's, there's something to that, that women need this constant level of stimulation. Now, not all women; I don't want to be too General; I think that there's probably some women who can buy into a common plot, you know, when you get into a story, and you think about your marriage as a story, you got to start thinking about it as, um, a story that you're writing together, and you want to both have an interest in how this story unfolds, and I think that unless you have that from the very beginning and you have conversations about how you see your lives unfolding together, it can feel sometimes like there's no point to what you're doing, and I think at some, sometime in that, obviously in that, at that point in time, she felt like she didn't know where this was going next; okay, all the big things had been done, and she had always been a very restless person; she had traveled the world, you know, um, she had never had a boyfriend for more than like a year or two, so she, I think she was just bored more than anything, um, but, but I don't think I'll fully ever un, completely understand it.
So if you remember about a month ago, I put up a video about how women can flip the switch when it comes to sex, well, they flip the switch when it comes to love too, and if you're ever having a conversation like the one I just described where, you know, it's, it's not you, it's me, divorce conversation, that's an indication that that, that switch has been flipped, and it is extremely unlikely that you're going to be able to flip it back, no matter what you say or do, what wishes you grant, now, how, matter how many bags of trash you carry out or how many rooms you paint or anything like that, at that point the, the switch has been flipped, and the likelihood that you're ever going to get her to change her mind on that is almost zero. Now, there have been instances where it has happened, um, I have heard men talk about going through very rough times in their marriages, and I've seen it happen; one of my best friends, his family, his, uh, parents split up for like a year, and then they somehow reconciled and got back together, so I mean it's not impossible, but, um, you should just sort of brace yourself because it's very likely that you're going to get it back. And the only thing I can suggest is, you know, when you think about how do you go from a woman who says she can't live without you to some point in the future to a woman who, uh, says she can't live with you anymore, the way you reconcile that in your mind is you have to see this person as a continuously changing and evolving entity. So the person that you fell in love with, the person that, um, said you were the one and that you were the best thing that ever happened to her, and, and she saw all of your, you know, all of the things that made you, uh, all the characteristics that made you perfect, and now all she sees are your flaws; she's not the same woman, and I think that because she looks the same and she sounds the same and she might even wear the same clothes, she's not the same, and I think you need to get that through your head. Um, it's a very difficult lesson for men to learn because we're very visual, you know, um, and to have someone that you've seen and been with who has told you all these wonderful things about you and has said that they love you and has become your best friend and shared your most Intimate Secrets and you have trusted with everything in your life, now say she no longer wants to be with you, well, that's a very, very difficult thing to, to accept, you know. I think that accepting it becomes easier when you cross the
The boundary of the woman I fell in love with is technically dead. That makes it so much easier if you just take that frame of mind and say, okay, she—the girl that I loved, you know, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years ago—she's dead and gone. And this person who's here in her place may look like her and sound like her, but it ain't her. This is someone completely different, and quite frankly, you're a bit different yourself. So if you can accept that premise, getting through a divorce gets a million times easier because you're no longer divorcing the girl you fell in love with; you're divorcing this cranky—do you know what I mean? It's like you're just getting rid of this heavy weight you're dragging around, you know. Um, yeah, so just let it go, man.
That amygdala response, that fear-based response, can also drive a woman into your arms. And you've got to be really, really cautious about that because you might be the one she's monkey branching to, you know what I mean? And, um, yeah, she's not coming to you because she thinks you're a great guy or she loves you; she's coming to you because she's looking for a safe place to land.
Oh, I remember one time I was in this bar in Columbus, Ohio, with my friends, and I was probably like, I don't know, 22, 23, and, um, we were at a business conference; it was a training session, that's what it was. And, uh, this was a college town with lots of hot girls, you know, and we were dressed in business attire—like a sports jacket, tie—and, for whatever reason, I had a tie clip. And I had this friend from South Carolina with this deep Southern accent; he was just—he was a big guy, and he had a great sense of humor. And he, uh, he said, "Oh, John, you're wearing the tie clip; that's going to get you some tonight, man." I was like, "What are you talking about?" "Oh, man, these college girls, they go for the tie clips." I know he's just giving me a hard time about the tie clip, you know; it looked kind of silly. I kind of got it anyway.
So we're standing there next to the bar for like maybe 10 or 15 minutes, just, you know, watching all these beautiful young girls running around dancing and stuff. And I swear to God, she was one of the hottest girls in that bar; I mean, she was extraordinarily beautiful. She came right up to me and asked me if I would dance with her. I'm like—and my friend is just losing it; I mean, he just thinks, "What the hell?" This girl was smoking hot. She was taller than me; she was so freaking hot; it was unreal. And I was like, "Okay, let's dance." So I danced with this girl for a long time, and I finally asked her, "Says, why—why me? Why did you pick me out?" Says, "Well, I could see you with a big bunch of guys; you look like a really nice guy, and you were dressed nicely." And I thought, "Oh, it's that tie clip, you know; it's that goddamn tie clip." He was right the whole time. And she just wanted to hang out with us because there was some stalker guy that was kind of creeping her out, and she—and he was like following her around. And when she became part of our group of friends, you know, for the rest of the night, he ran off, and, you know, I guess he just assumed that she was with us. So she was doing it out of fear, number one, you know; she was running away from some creepy guy at the bar, and, uh, because I looked like a nice guy with my tie clip and my sports jacket and my tie and all that stuff, she came to me not because she was attracted to me, but because she thought I was not a threat and I, um, would provide her with some level of security against this, this—and I was with probably, I don't know, maybe like a half dozen other guys, so she saw in this an opportunity to seek refuge. And I think that is what a lot of women do.
So when you're, you know, you're wondering why the hell is this woman with me, you know, why is she coming after me, what's going on here, you've got to really, really be careful because there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, you know. There's an old saying I've been repeating to my daughters here a lot recently, and I said, you know, "You've got to read the book before you decide whether you like the story." And I think too often times we see the cover and we think this is going to be a great story, and it may just be a dud, you know; it may just be a dud. You may think you're getting into a fantasy, and it's really a horror story.
So when we think of fear, I think we need to think about it as more than an emotion, you know; it's a primal reaction; it's not something that you have a thought and then you feel; it's something that just happens, you know. Um, fear is the strongest motivator, I believe, to humans that we have in our lives. And unless you have the ability to identify fear when it's happening—thinking about like a soldier on the battlefield—I think I've mentioned in one or two of my other videos, I have a client who's a Vietnam veteran, two silver stars, two bronze stars, and he's described to me a bunch of the firefights and stuff that he was in. And I asked him if he was ever afraid, and says, "You know, I was too pumped on adrenaline to feel the fear, but I'm sure there was fear, but it wasn't like I was thinking about it; it was something I was just reacting to; I was just moving; it was a fight-or-flight thing, and my body just took over; my training took over, and I just reacted to what was happening in that moment." And, um, with fear, you have the ability to either take action, you know, like the bunny who runs away, or stand your ground, like the buck who lowered his head, basically telling us, "Yeah, go ahead and bring it; you know, we'll—I'll deal with you."
Women, I think, are a lot more like the bunny; they don't lower their head; they run. And, um, you combine that with the mix of emotions that they have, you can see how their reactions and their behaviors are so inexplicable to us. I remember, as a being a young guy and first becoming attracted to girls and talking to my friends about it and thinking what a raw deal we got—like they get to be the choosers, and we're the beggars, you know what I mean? Like that seems like a raw deal. I mean, yes, we can pee standing up; it doesn't seem like a fair trade, you know what I mean? It felt like they had definitely gotten the sweet deal. But now that I look back on it, you know, from 40, 50 years later, it's like, you know, I don't think they got the sweet deal at all, you know. Yeah, they get to be the choosers, but, man, it comes with a lot of baggage; it comes with an awful lot of baggage. They are dealing with some serious emotional reactivity that I could not have in my life.
And when I've talked to my ex-wife a number of times about just what was going through her head, you know, at these different times in our history, and, you know, she can never provide me with what any man would consider to be an acceptable answer, you know; it always comes from these emotional places—like, well, I was—one day she tells me, and this is like after I've left my job, my new career hasn't really taken off yet; we're in this rental house, and she says, "I felt like the house was burning down, and I just needed to get out." So anxiety and stress and fear were what was driving her behaviors. And sure enough, she did monkey branch to her ex-boyfriend—not right away, but within a month she was off to him. So she obviously still had him in her orbit, you know, and she sort of had an awareness of his whereabouts because he was supposed to be in New York City, and somehow he ended up down here in the D.C. area, so there was something going on there, you know; she was definitely monkey branching, and fear was definitely a motivating factor. And I can get it, you know; in that moment, she had this opportunity to show character and to buckle down and help us get through this difficult financial time that we were going through in our lives, or run, and she chose to run, you know.
And I think—think about my friend who's the Vietnam vet—some guys would have run away during those firefights, you know; they would have dropped their rifles and run, and he didn't. And he's got two silver stars and two bronze stars; that says that, you know, he acted with courage under those circumstances. And courage is such a rare commodity in that pure, raw form. And if you can find a woman who's got some courage, you might have someone that you can settle down with. I'm not trying to provide women with an excuse here, but to give you some insights into how their brains work. And I am no expert, but I have been with a lot of women over the years; I spent a lot of time with women, I should say, um, and I'm pretty sure that that fear hypothesis is probably as good as anything that you're going to find. They don't—use fear—or fear does not impact them the same way it impacts you; they are much more reactive, much more like the bunny, much less like the buck. And that fear is more than just an emotion; it's a primal instinct; it's a survival instinct; it's something that they do as a reaction without thought, and that amygdala kicks in, and your sympathetic nervous system starts to take over, and you're—say—going into a fight, or you're arguing, or whatever, you're running. What happens physiologically is all the blood—blood runs away from your brain; you literally are not feeding oxygen to your brain at the normal rate, and so your ability to make decisions and to think is diminished.
When you think about people who are suffering from chronic stress—say, from a bad job, a bad marriage, whatever, you know, there's so many things in our lives that can provide us with chronic stress—traffic—it's the same thing, but just at a lesser degree; your fight-or-flight system is turned on; your sympathetic nervous system is turned on, and it is dictating a lot of your behaviors, and your ability to have rational thought and to find answers that make sense is diminished. But with women, just take that times 10. If you're in an acute situation—if they are in an acute situation—because what you and I would consider acute is not the same as what they would consider acute; they get into these situations, and they react, and they don't think, and they inevitably are going to regret it. So if a woman comes to you with, "I want a divorce," or, "I don't know if I want to be married anymore," or starting to give you some negative feedback, the last thing you want to do is argue with them because they have no ability to think rationally, and you're not going to be able to make any headway on that path at all. The best thing you can do is just say, "Well, I'm sorry to hear that; why don't you give it some thought; let me know what you decide," and then just walk away, you know; don't pursue in that situation. And if she says, "You know, I really want to help; I really want to work this out with you," whatever, then go ahead and take the steps to work it out with her, but don't try to convince her to change her mind or to pursue her under those circumstances because that inevitably will cause you a lot of emotional energy and a lot of stress and a lot of hardship that will probably not end well anyway. Like I said, when she flips that divorce switch on, getting it flipped off, only she can do it, and there's nothing that you can do that'll make her do it. Um, anyway, that's what I got for you today; hope you've enjoyed the video; please like and subscribe; um, stay healthy, and if you can, stay single.