Dating Doctor: 98.7% of All Men Never Understand This About Women

The main problem that men have is they think that women mean what women say. Men don't necessarily need money to attract women. If you give women more money, they don't want men as much. Relationships are transactive. And if that doesn't happen, we don't have a relationship.

Anaban is a psychologist challenging everything men believe about women. With over a million followers and multiple books, he's one of the most recognized relationship psychologists on the internet.

Does monogamy still make sense? People are on a spectrum with respect to this. It's probably more important to be that woman's first love than to be her first sexual experience. Everyone, whether they're single or married, within 5 years, their strongest intraexual competition will be an AI.

What does it mean to be a man in 2026? Like, what role does the man play today in society or in relationships?

Uh, well, it's very confusing, right? Because the old standards for traditional gender roles have been completely demolished. And there are still some subgroups of folks who want to go back to the way things were. And that can work if both people are on board. But pretty much men and women are in a process of kind of figuring it out with each individual person that they happen to get into relationships with, which is basically like reinventing the wheel every time you start dating somebody. This is why it can be very frustrating. It can be very confusing. There are a lot of assumptions that are still being made. And when people come up against something in reality and their assumptions happen to be different, that thing in reality reveals those assumptions and then that has to be navigated and worked through. I mean, say what you want about traditional gender roles, but at least they kind of clarified what people were supposed to do and so the assumptions were more or less on the same page. So there were fewer points of conflict with reality.

What's your belief on toxic masculinity? I think the only real toxic masculinity is the absence of masculinity. When you talk about when when a lot of commentators and and most of them are women talk about toxic masculinity, they talk about stoicism. They talk about emotional suppression. They talk about kind of a machismo that won't allow men to feel or at least to express that emotion. And what they seem to prefer is a man who's softer, who's kinder, who's gentler, who's more in touch with his emotions. And whether they're aware of it or not, they're describing traditional femininity. They're basically saying that the best part of masculinity are the parts that they recognize as feminine.

I think that the only real toxic masculinity is the absence of masculinity. And we see that when very clearly in the statistics around let's say the outcomes associated with being raised by single mothers when there is no strong male role model present in children's lives the outcomes are much poorer. They're much more likely to not graduate high school or college or to have mental illness or to fall into crime. So I do think that masculinity is something that kind of grounds and provides and is firm and strong. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I do think that in general there is a trend especially in modern like therapeutic culture to mystify female preferences for relationships as the healthy or right way to have relationships. And I I don't think that that's true.

What is the healthy and right way to have a relationship then? I don't think there's one right way. But if you examine what the therapeutic institution says is this is what you're supposed to do, it definitely genders in a female direction. I mean, what's the advice you hear all the time? Well, you should be more emotionally available. You should talk things out. It's we should all do therapy. We should figure out our attachment styles and our MyersBriggs. All of that stuff is important, but it seems to be something that is a more as a language that more women understand and men are increasingly being left out of that dialogue. We know that 85% of clinicians are women. Just like women will likely feel more comfortable talking to other women about some of their issues, men are absolutely more comfortable talking to other men about their issues, but they're finding fewer and fewer men to talk to. There also seems to be differences in coping strategies. Talking isn't always the solution for men. And yet the therapeutic institution basically says it's the panacea that will cure all your ills. The talking cure as we know it was actually named that by Freud in working with female patients. It's something that he saw when working with female patients, not when working with men.

Do you think that that is maybe part of the reason we're at historic lows for romantic relationships? There's a lot of reasons for that. What's actually happening? What What are the reasons for that?

I think the main reasons are economic. They're like macroeconomic. There was this really fascinating study that just came out of Denmark. Did you read this one? It came out a couple weeks ago. And it's such a great study methodologically because they took publicly available data on the entire population of Denmark, like every single person for 14 years, it's one of the most robust samples you could possibly consider. And what these researchers discovered is that for every five for just a 5% permanent salary increase, men were more likely to have children and women were significantly less likely to have children. If you give women more money, they don't want men as much. Now, you might think, well, why would that be the case? Don't they need love and companionship, etc., etc.? As you know from my book, one of my arguments is that relationships are transactive and we enter into a transaction when we exchange unequal goods of comparable value. And if that doesn't happen, we don't have a relationship. It's a non-starter. And in the sexual marketplace, in the game of mating and dating, those unequal goods tend to be men's resources and women's sexual opportunity. Women tend to get involved with men who can significantly improve their lives. On some level, that's entirely rational. So when women's lives get better, they have a smaller subset of men that they will consider as dating and mating partners. And we see this happening. We see all of the sexual opportunity being increasingly concentrated in the top 10 15% of men as women define that. It's not the men who are thumping their chest and saying, "Well, I'm a 1% guy and I'm a high value guy." It's the women who are deciding that. The cat decides what milk is good. Right? And so we see in the disregulated sexual marketplace, the sexual marketplace tends towards polygamy. of their own valition. More and more women are only attending to a fewer and a smaller and smaller subset of men. And so we see that as women get better in the sense that they make more money and they have higher degrees and they're they are extrapolating their lifestyles, their need for any one particular man goes down and they only will entertain the possibility of a relationship generally when it will significantly improve their lives. I looked up this statistic just a little bit ago. The vast majority of female medical doctors in this country, we could say that is one of the highest earning, highest status professions, marry male medical doctors who make more than them. However, the majority of male medical doctors do not marry other female medical doctors. Does that make sense? Like the average annual salary of a female medical doctor's husband is $97,000 a year. The average annual salary of a male medical doctor's wife is $23,000 a year. No woman, especially after she works 15 years, makes a lot of money, earns the highest possible degree that our society awards, says, "Finally, I can take care of a man." You give a man just a little bit more money, and he'll start thinking about, "Wow, finally, now I can afford to have a family." But if you give women more money, they don't think that. They think, "Great, I can take care of myself. That's part of and that's just the small tip of the iceberg, but it's an it's an economic thing on a on a social level and it's it's probably wrong to just say that we need to go back to the way things used to be. The genie doesn't go back into the bottle like we're not going to prohibit women from working or owning private property or voting or anything like that. So, we have to kind of make peace with the fact that this is how the world is. Um, and there are still ways to have satisfying relationships even under current conditions.

And do you think that's a permanent shift or do you think this is just a correction period or this is a permanent shift? Nothing is ever permanent. I mean, I've studied history enough to know that like the pendulum always swings. The eternal civilizations all crumble. Ozamandius has clay feet. And there are trends. You know, 70 years ago, we had the House on Americans committee where there was a basically witch hunts on the right. We've seen in recent years with peak wokeness, there's witch hunts on the left. So things change. The issue is that it might be too late for millions of people because they just missed the pendulum swing.

One of your former clients told you, and this is funny, that when his wife filed for divorce, she said she could get everything she needed from a man via Task Rabbit and Tinder. And you said she kind of has a point. Women don't necessarily need men anymore or as much as they did before. They don't need a man. They definitely need men. They need men around cuz men still predominantly build and maintain civilization like with women aren't fighting for gender parody at hydroelectric dams and coal mines. Like we they need men. Men provide the convenience of the lifestyle that they enjoy in which they think they don't need a man, but that's provided to them by men, not women. By the same token, men are increasingly thinking, well, maybe I don't need a woman, like a permanent woman. Maybe I just date around. Maybe I get lost in pornography. Maybe I do something. But it's like the idea that I'm going to put all of my uh eggs in this one relationship basket when it seems to be so socially unstable might not be a great long-term investment.

So does monogamy still make sense then? Uh to some people for sure some people can only do it that way. You know, I I think that people are on a spectrum with respect to this. Like evolutionarily, our closest ancestors, I think, are chimps and bonobos. And those two primates can't be any different with respect to their sexual practices. Um, one is very promiscuous, the bonobo. The other is uh very hierarchical. Um, there are it's very aggressive. There's a lot of competition. And I think people kind of exists between those two extremes. You're going to have people who monogamy comes very naturally and you're going to have folks who they're just I think programmed to be promiscuous. I think in general most people, the vast majority of people are monogamousish to steal.

What's monogamousish? That's a term I think Esther Prell came up with, who's a a wonderful uh intelligent grounded commentator on relationships in the sexual marketplace. I really liked her book, The State of Affairs, which is about cheating and infidelity because I think it's one of the most reasonable uh exposees on that phenomenon. So, she says monogamish. So, what's really interesting is that most people, most straight people, they'll date for a while and then after a few weeks, a few months, they'll say, "Okay, what are we?" And they have the define the relationship talk, right? And they say, "Well, I want to be committed." Well, I want to be committed, too. So, you're my girlfriend? Yeah. So, I'm your boyfriend. Great. And they think that like communication occurred. You know what I'm saying? Like, they both know what committed means. like they both have the same assumptions about what being a boyfriend or a girlfriend means. They don't actually have to get into the nitty-gritty and define the field of play. And so what happens is two months later, the girl sees the guy smile a little too long with the receptionist at the restaurant. She accuses him of flirting. He says, "Well, but I didn't do anything." She thinks it's out of bounds. She he thinks that it's inbounds because they actually never defined what commitment means with respect to their actual relationship. Right? So monogamish is sort of like giving some leeway for the fact that we are sexual creatures and that it can be nice and fun and productive to get attention and to share attention with members of the opposite sex. And that can span the spectrum from harmless flirting with the person at the front desk to ethical non- monogamy. So which I think is a is a really they need better branding I think for that. But uh it's for the two people to decide what works for them.

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What's ethical non- monogamy? I'm not an expert in it, but it basically is a way to enjoy multiple sexual relationships simultaneously in a way that is supposed to take care of each other's commitments and emotions.

Okay. Is that just being honest with your partner, but you guys are going to do separate things here and there, but I'm just I'm going to tell we're going to talk about it. We're sometimes, but like what does honest mean? For some folks in that field, honest means they sit their partner down and say, "Okay, this Saturday I'm going to go out with soand so and this is what we'll likely end up doing. This is what's off the table. This is when I'll be back." And then they give postmortem. Some people are like, "Don't ask, don't tell." A lot of people actually are, "Don't ask, don't tell." And that policy has kept a lot of marriages alive for thousands of years.

Why do women like bad boys? Why why do they reject a kind, stable, reliable man in many cases in favor of the bad boy? Uh, they don't always. They often choose that man later in life. Maybe after they've dated around and explored relationships with potentially more exciting men. They realize that they're getting a little older. Maybe the competition is getting a little younger. They don't feel like spending every Saturday night out at the club. And they start looking around for one of those reliable, kind, sweet men. And a lot of those guys are increasingly thinking, well, that's kind of a bad bargain. You know, it's sort of the male equivalent of if you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best kind of a thing. It's like, where were you at 22? Like, why do I have to get the why is my soulmate used? you know, so that's part of it. Um, but bad boys are perennially attractive to women first and foremost because they're exciting. Danger is stimulating. It makes you feel alive. The closer you are to death on some level, the more you do feel alive, right? And any seduction strategy that works on women always works to the extent that it succeeds in stimulating their emotions. There's more than one way to do it, but you have to stimulate a woman's emotions in order to get her to be interested and invested in a sexual relationship with you. Okay? And danger does that like directly, right? So, first and foremost, it's emotionally stimulating. Secondly, they're safe for women. And this is something that is often counterintuitive to a lot of guys because a lot of guys will see the biker with the face scars and the criminal record as like you probably really shouldn't be spending I mean that guy seems a little risky. You know what I'm saying? But here's the thing, how do I put this? Women are more concerned about their physical safety than men are for a number of reasons. Uh, one of them is that they're just physically smaller and weaker than than men are. And so if push comes to shove, they're could potentially find themselves in a sticky situation as it were. And that's just the average man. The average man is more powerful than the average woman, right? But men also have this sort of hierarchy. They're not going to mess with the guy who is really strong physically and potentially a little unhinged and has already has a demonstrated track record of let's say putting his money where his mouth is when it comes to uh standing up for his reputation or protecting his uh his name or his posi or his woman etc. So if a woman can succeed in securing that man's affections and no other man is going to mess with that guy, then she actually doesn't have to worry about all other men. Like if she can cidle up to the most dangerous biker at the bar, then she only needs to worry about that one guy because no other guy is going to start something with that biker. You know what I'm saying? Otherwise, if she's with a different guy, she might have to still worry about him because the average man is more powerful than the average woman. But what if the biker starts something with this average dude? Well, is this guy going to be able to protect her? So, even though most men will look at that guy and think, "Wow, he seems I wouldn't trust that person." There is kind of an an instinct here that makes those men feel safe to many women.

What if there's a guy out there who's he's not the bad boy, right? He's your average guy, okay? Okay, and he wants to stimulate emotion, right, in a woman, but he's not going to go get tattoos and he's not going to go ride a Harley. What are maybe a couple things he can do to stand out from the crowd from the that a from from the other average men, but not go to the extreme of I'm going to get tattoos and I'm going to get a criminal record, right? What are some things he can do to emotionally stimulate that will put him ahead of the ahead of the pack? Well, the main thing that bad boys do is they violate social norms. Some of them even violate laws, right? But you you have you can't violate a a law without violating a social norm. So, one of the things that a guy who doesn't want to get a bunch of tattoos can do is at least have the spine and the sack to say what he really means despite the potential social consequences. despite the fact that this person might judge him or this person is going to unfriend him or this person is gonna disinvite him to Thanksgiving etc etc. It's like that kind of firmness says that I'm self-possessed and self-sufficient enough that I don't depend on the approval of other folks and I I'm willing to stand on my values and my perspectives on some level irrespective of the consequences and that's a strength that is actually fairly rare and it's not something that muscles by definition confer to a person. Right.

Yes. So that's just saying what's on your mind. Saying saying saying not necessarily saying what's on your mind, dude. Uh just being real like Yes. Knowing what you truly believe, what your values are and to not hide them when you come into contact with somebody that you feel might be radically different in the sense that I want to be liked. I want to keep my job. I want to not ruffle any feathers. I mean there's there is a something to be said for for civility and and decency and respect for sure, but we don't necessarily hide what we believe because another person might become upset with us.

So you can stimulate that emotion not from working out and being buff, not from the car you drive. Well, I mean outside of those things. Yeah. Outside of those things with what you say. Well, yeah. Most of what you do to seduce a woman is is use your words. Unless you're in a bea and you know you're in a foam party and it's just pure physicality and the beat, you're going to have to use your words. And a woman's biggest erogynous zone is her mind. The most successful seducers throughout history, the Don Juans, the Casanovas, they weren't jacked. They weren't the richest guys. They weren't the smartest guys, but they used their language in a way to evoke a certain emotional response in the women. And they were also very bold. Like there are some fantastic stories in Kasanova's journals. I think he was arrested in Venice one time and he actually broke himself out of jail just so that he could seduce like the judge's wife and then snuck back into jail by the end of the evening. Like that's just the kind of guy he was.

Let's move on to sexual marketplace value. Okay. SMV. Sure. You said a woman's peak value in the sexual marketplace is between 18 and 25 and a man's starts at 30 and then starts climbing. What does that mean for men and women? Well, I do say that, but it's not just the idea that came into my mind. I say that because that's what the research says. So like according to men, women are most attractive. I think the most recent study is 23, which is the oldest it's ever been. Like that same study that was done 30 years ago, it was 21. So 23 is is pretty tough. And when you see the behavior of men's selection on say like uh dating apps, men of all ages are still swiping most consistently on women who are around 22 23 years old. Now that those women might not ever even see those men's profile given their age filters, but it's one of the great things about dating apps is it it provides us an absolute treasure trove of revealed preference and behavioral data. It's not surveys. It's not talking to people on the street. What do you want in a man? What do you look for in a woman? Where there's all this social desiraability bias, you see what people actually are doing behind closed doors when they think nobody is looking. And men are voting and saying that we think that 23-year-old women are peak. And by the same token, women are showing with their behavior that they believe older men to be more attractive. According to one study, it was 50. According to the revealed behavior of women on dating apps, they the peak male age was 50, which seems a little old to me, but I think that probably late 30s to early 40s seems to be where men peak. And that's not me saying it. That's what women on mass seem to be saying with their revealed preference. So people peak at different times. Why is that the case? Because men and women are filtering for different things. Men, for better or for worse, they primarily use physical attractiveness as a standard for who they decide to approach and enter into relationships with. And that's kind of brutal because not every woman is going to be beautiful. Not every woman is going to be attractive. We can all be more attractive than we currently are, but not every woman is going to be that way. And that's why cosmetics is a multi-billion dollar industry, right? It's like women are actually spending an inordinate amount of money on their hair, on their nails, on their skin, on on surgeries, on injections in order to incrementally increase their SMV in the eyes of men. They often say that they do it for themselves or for other women. There's some truth to that, but these are all cues that men respond to, and I don't think that we can ignore that fact. It's not like they're making their elbows trimmer. Like men don't care about elbows, you know, they're making their their face look a certain way, their breasts look a certain way. Those are cues that men recognize and pick up on.

You said that women's default move is to act as if they will never be more valuable than today. And men's default move is to commit before they've experience the advantage that's coming. Uh, sure. In terms of like game theory, most women are already past 23 years old. So if we're going to put that as a woman's the average woman's peak SMV, then every year after that, it becomes harder and harder to transact as good of a deal as it did last year. The competition keeps getting younger. And I think that there's often in today's sexual marketplace, let's say a failure of perspective taking. Like I I I didn't get through with this, but we were talking about how men and women value different things in the game of mating and dating. What do women value? Women value resources, status. They do physical attractiveness. That's actually becoming more and more important for guys these days, like especially height, abs, things like that. But having an extrapolated lifestyle is much more important for long-term mating uh in women's selection. So generally with each passing year, a woman gets older and a man gets richer unless they screw something up there, right? So most men are are kind of long-term prospects, like they reach peak status, usually around 50. And that could be part of why that study said that's where men peak. If they make good money and invest it well, they typically have higher net worths. They have a more extrapolated lifestyle. They're also more mature, which means that they're probably not going to chase every after everything that moves. They have emotional regulation. They have experience dealing with all kinds of different issues in life which makes them a reliable partner. In general, it's a good idea for women on the population level to play to their advantages. Like strike when the iron is hot. If this is when you are going to be most attractive to your potential customers, then like lean in hard and heavy to make sure that you can get the best possible deal while you can still get it. And the best possible deal is generally a lifetime of protection and provision from a a high value man in the sense of how women define that high net worth, high resources, emotional regulation, etc., etc.

And is the man just looking for looks only is that I mean maybe that's the first thing, but is he eventually looking for other things or mainly it's about looks or looks and sex and if I can if I can get those two and and she's hot and she's young, I'm happy. Or is there or are there other things eventually that matter? Well, I think so, but like most men overwhelmingly choose based on physical attractiveness.

And there are some good reason for that. It's not just that men are shallower than women. It's that youth and fertility and physical attractiveness cues suggest that this woman is healthy and is more likely to produce viable, healthy offspring. But yes, I do think that for for me personally, I mean, I've made that mistake. I've dated women in the past just because they were incredibly attractive. And I've learned through my experiences that that is insufficient for a long-term relationship. Absolutely. It's sufficient for the here and now, but if it's long long term, but I will say that, and I I say that in the book, is that men will try harder longer when they're dealing with a woman that they find very attractive. Like in my own personal case, the things I put up with and the things that I tried to do to save that relationship were beyond the pale, right? Because she was hot. Yeah.

Let's talk about young men, right? Because you said at 18, a young man is useless to women, right? He has no money, no status, no maturity, and he's useless to other men because he has no experience and no skills. And so you he's kind of at the bottom of every hierarchy simultaneously. And it can stay that way for who knows a decade longer, right? How does a young man out there listening kind of survive that reality? Just that it gets better. Like it's very difficult to be a young man. And I think that that is not appreciated sufficiently. And it's a big part I think why men in that age group have been considered kind of surplus and they get shipped off to wars in cultures all over the world for hundreds or thousands of years. They are the disposable people. 18 to 25 year old men are disposable people. They're probably not husbands and fathers yet. We're not sending our our engineers and our inventors and our um financiers and our doctors to war. They don't have those skill sets yet. So, if someone's got to go and they're also the the strongest and most energetic that they're likely going to be. So they it's it's difficult to actually survive, like literally survive as a young man, especially in certain parts of the world. And that's the good news.

Like I was saying before, for better or for worse, men really really really care about a woman's physical attractiveness. And some women are just not going to get there, right? Women really care about a bunch of stuff. Actually, it's it's kind of easier to get in with women because they don't just care about one thing. So there's a few different pathways. Like you can be very very attractive and you can get women for sure, but you could also be very very rich. You could be very very funny. You could be very very famous. You could be which is not the same thing as being rich. You could be very very high status, which is not the same thing as being famous. Um, there's a few different pathways.

What about game? Is game on there? Meaning he's a five out of 10, but he just has game, right? Game is is extremely important. Like women often like to think that game just doesn't work on them, but the best game is invisible. It's like they don't even think that their game is being run on them and they believe it's their own uh decision to feel the way that they're feeling and to move forward with this man and not some other man. If a man didn't have any of those things, but he had game, it helps for sure. Yeah. Like but the the less of those other things you have, the more unremitting the game has to be. It's like marketing on some level. Like if your product isn't great, you have to resort to kind of just saturation campaigns. And so that it's drilled into people's minds on some level. But if the product is really good, you might not even have to advertise at all. Like, you know, Lamborghini doesn't advertise on TV.

I think you made the argument once that and you talked about this. There's a number of different things. Men don't necessarily because I think this is something that most men think about is that men necess don't necessarily need money to attract women. Oh no, they don't. They don't. Yeah. I think I made an episode a while back called what works on women or the three things that work on women. See if I can remember. The first which you've already discussed is being able to stimulate a woman's emotions which is primarily linguistic. You have to be able to evoke an emotional response. It doesn't have to even be a positive response. In fact, what people have learned is what can be even more stimulating is a combination of let's say positive and negative emotional experiences. Too many positive experiences get boring, unfortunately. And boring is is the absence of emotional stimulation. It's like the one emotion that doesn't work with women. The first is confidence. Like if you're a young guy and you don't have money, you don't have status, you don't have a lifestyle, you don't have fame, you don't have skills, you don't have abs, but you might have abs if you're young. You could have abs. I mean, at the very least, that's something that you could do through your own discipline. And it actually doesn't cost you anything because abs are generally subtraction. It's not addition. It's like eating less and being they're they're made in the kitchen, not in the gym. But the one thing you absolutely must have if you want a chance with women as a young man is is confidence. And confidence doesn't cost anything, right? And it's something that it it might take a little practice to build a kind of an emotional callous because you're going to get shot down a lot. I think of kind of approaching women to be something like baseball. Like the best Hall of Fame hitters still struck out more than they got a hit. And confidence is easier to have when you have an established track record of success. And so that's generally the push back I get from guys like, "Yeah, dude. I' I'd be confident if I had a million bucks and I had uh, you know, a beautiful wife." And, you know, it's like, yeah, it's kind of easy to to be confident then. So you kind of have to fake it till you make it. Like you can have what I call psychotic confidence, which is belief in yourself before there's any evidence to support that belief. That's what kind of makes it a belief. And you have to believe in yourself before anybody else does because nobody else will for a very long time. And then suddenly everyone is going to think, "Oh yeah, that guy. I love that guy." Like nothing happens for a very long time until everyone kind of more or less decides that, ah, yeah, that's cool. You've made it on some level.

Was confidence your secret? Because you said as a broke theater actor in New York, you got laid more than a successful doctor. I'm doing pretty well for myself these days. But um, yeah, it I was I was broke as a joke, man. And I was living in public housing in Brooklyn. It was monthtomonth. Uh, there were women who wouldn't tell their friends that they were coming home with me, you know, and back then I really wanted to have a wife and to have a girlfriend. People generally want what they don't or can't have at any given time, right? My secret was I was pretty psychotically confident. Like I was very sure of myself and God knows where that came from. But the other thing, the third thing um is that I was also a contextual alpha. A contextual alpha means that you are on top of a status hierarchy. And as an actor, that's what was going on. So, I was often the leading man in these shows. Now, sometimes there was 10 people in the audience, but I was the lead actor for those 10 people. You know what I'm saying? You could be the lead guitarist for two guys at the local bar on a Tuesday. You know what I'm saying? So, if you're on stage and everyone's looking at you and focusing on you and clapping for you, etc., etc., like there's something of a like something gets transferred onto you. It's almost like a totem. It's almost like a It's like magic, right? That really does help. So, the great thing about being a te contextual alpha is you don't have to be like there's so there's so many different scenes that you can be a part of. And if you can't find a scene where you can be near the top, you can create your own. I mean, that's also hard work, but it's hard work to ascend a status hierarchy that pre-exists. So, it's like pick your hard guy. The good news about building your own is that you build it around you with your own strengths and preferences and interests. So, you're much more likely to have people who are into what you're doing because they come to you and to remain in that position for an extended period of time.

You said what works to attract someone and what works to keep them are two entirely different things. I think most people maybe would assume hey if I can get someone then I can keep them. No. Okay. Why is that wrong? Well, there's a few things here. So, first of all, uh I talk about in the book that every relationship progresses through three distinct phases. There's attraction, negotiation, and maintenance. So negotiation of often gets skipped over but we got attraction and getting and keeping attraction and maintenance right one thing you have to understand is that once a phase starts it never ends. So that's the first mistake that people make. What does that mean? That means that sometimes people go through the trouble of getting somebody attracting somebody and then once the relationship is stable they think that they just have to worry about maintenance. No, no, no. Once attraction starts it never stops. It's just that now you also have to do attraction and negotiation. And then once that starts and it's successful, that never stops either. You now have to do attraction and negotiation and maintenance. So one of the things that people get wrong is they think, well, I'm in the maintenance phase. I don't have to worry about attraction anymore. No. Wrong. In general, it's a very good idea to continue to be and do the things, be the person and do the things that your partner was attracted to to begin with. we undermine the bases of our own attraction to our own detriment mutually. So that's the first thing is that even though we're in maintenance, we still have to worry about attraction, which generally means keeping ourselves in decent shape, dressing in a way that is attractive to your partner, um doing things that keep you alive and interesting and excited and good to be around, etc., etc. But um yeah, negoti uh attraction and maintenance are are totally different things. Attraction is like marketing. Often what works is bold and emotional. Like any successful marketing campaign doesn't sell the product. It either sells the solution or more commonly it sells a completely unrelated attitude. Like Coke doesn't sell carbonated sugar water. It sells joy. and friendship. You look at these medications that are sold to the general public. They don't sell a herpes remedy. They sell going to the beach and playing tennis with friends. You know what I'm saying? It has nothing to do with the product at all. But that's kind of what works with respect to the attraction is that herpes medication not so sexy. So, we're going to pair that through a it's almost like a a classical conditioning thing. We're going to pair that with an emotional stimulus that people enjoy, that will be memorable, that will resonate, and eventually when they take that medication, they might even get to the point where they're thinking they're on the beach. Beer commercials do that great. You know, there's a bunch of guys sitting in dark bars drinking bad beer thinking that they're in some beer commercial playing volleyball with hotties on a beach somewhere. Like that's how amazing successful advertising campaigns are. But if your product sucks, it's hard to keep people. Like you'll have a lot of churn with for some products. That's okay. But in general, most products want repeat customers. And that's means that your product also has to be good. So if they take the first sip of your beverage and spit it out, they're going to think, "Ah, I was fooled by the I'm not going to do that again." So they the company did get a sale but probably isn't great for their long-term solveny.

Is there a moment in every relationship I think it's what you call the crisis of disappointment where the fantasy shatters and the real relationship either begins or dies. Yeah. Is that in the negotiation phase? No, that's still in the attraction phase. So that could be the end of the attraction phase and potentially the beginning of negotiation.

Right. So I call it the crisis of disillusionment. So a great deal of attraction is based on projected fantasy. I am seeing what I want to see. And because I'm attracted, I am going to fill in the gaps in my knowledge base with what I would prefer to see there, which is generally what people do. We can call that a kind of halo effect. The issue is that it's only a matter of time before that projected fantasy comes into contact with reality. So either something big happens or there's just been an accumulation of small things or inconsistencies and then they aggregate a critical mass is reached and everything kind of shatters and you're staring at this person almost for the first time like who are you? Like you're the same person I was seeing before. They don't they might even look different within your perception. And this is when the relationship can potentially begin. Before it was actually a hall of mirrors. Like I'm using the shattering imagery intentionally. You're not actually seeing the person. You're seeing yourself reflected back on the surface of that person. Your own in yourself. I mean your projected fantasies. That shatters. And so now you potentially see the other person for the first time. Great. It's great because you're probably not that invested in the relationship yet. Like you might have been having a wild time and if you didn't keep a rain on your emotions after 6 months the honeymoon phase, maybe you're already engaged. Maybe you've met introduce this person to all of your friends and family and you're very emotionally invested. Probably a mistake, right? It's not a good idea to really invest emotionally until after the crisis of disillusionment because you actually don't know what you're investing in, right? So now that you can begin to see the other person clearly, you can say, "Oh, this is who you really are." Okay, so maybe there are things here that I can work with. Maybe you do have the skills and the resources and the traits that I'm looking for with respect to my relationship goals. Great. We're going to tentatively move forward. Or I'm going to say, "Wow, uh, I just don't know what happened and I don't feel the same way anymore. I'm so sorry. And you cut your losses because you're probably not that far into the relationship at this point. And that's probably for the best than trying to fight to keep somebody in your life who seems to be looking for the door.

What happens later on in the relationship? So after you've went on and now you're in maintenance phase and you're still trying to keep the attraction, everything going. What's happening psychologically when one person stops loving their partner? Well, you have to define love for me because that's the tricky word in that question. What do you think love is? Look, I think depends on the person, but I think for some men, let's just say hypothetically, right? It could be, you know, the physical went away slowly over time. There was there was attraction. they they first met. You know, it's like it's like when you when you're dating someone and you maybe you text the girl the eggplant emoji and she texts you back and then it's just boom, it's on. Versus that same relationship, let's say 3, 5 years down the line when you the same guy, same girl, you text her the eggplant emoji and she texts you back, oh, you're disgusting. Get away. It's like, what's changed? Well, what's changed is her attraction. So, I I made an episode about this called the lens of attraction. Everything that you do is perceived through a woman's lens of attraction. And this is related to the crisis of disillusionment that we're saying because that's a huge hit to attraction. They're much more likely to be attracted to their own projected fantasies than the reality of who you are. No matter who you are, the fantasy is always better than the reality. That's what makes it a fantasy, right? So even if you are, you know, a gorgeous, rich, A-list Hollywood actor who actually wants to settle down and have a family, that's still going to be not as good as her projected fantasy. The same behavior looks different depending on the level of attraction. And we already know this, like every trait has two kind of linguistic conventions about it. We could say on the one hand that I am a man of principle and I'm convicted. Or I could you could say that I'm stubborn and willful. We could say that I'm um I'm discreet and I pick my battles. Or you could say that I'm cowardly and meek. You could say that you are a gourm and with a refined pallet. Or I could say that you're a glutton who doesn't know how to say no. It's the same behavior. It's just that I've already decided in the one case to feel positively about it and in the other case to feel negatively about it. It can't actually be about the thing being discussed because it's exactly the same in both cases. So what's changed? The thing hasn't changed. The other person, the behavior hasn't changed. I've changed. And so if the eggplant emoji isn't working like it used to, that could be a canary in the coal mine in the sense that for whatever reason, and there's always reasons, we don't always know them, but there's always reasons, that woman's attraction for that man has decreased significantly. Maybe all at once, but probably more likely slowly and gradually over time. And if I were working with that person, I would try to troubleshoot what that could be and to get it back online to push the attraction to stimulate her emotionally to get things going. And then Well, yeah. Because a woman who's not attracted to a man, she's going to perceive all of his behavior and all of his traits.

in the negative category. And it's, and I think that's why she's kind of building a case for why she needs to leave.

Women are more loyal to their feelings, and men are more loyal to their commitments in relationships, which is interesting because neither one of them are technically loyal to the other person. But when a woman's feelings change and the attraction dips, then everything looks negative, and she's building a rational case for why she might need to exit the relationship.

Let's talk about body count. I've heard people say that it shouldn't matter. Some, some people care, some people don't care about it. What's your take on body count?

I mean, it clearly matters to a lot of men, and, uh, there's probably good reasons for why that is the case. Personally, I think that with respect to the success of a long-term relationship, it's probably more important to be that woman's first love than to be her first sexual experience. If you're the first man that she really loves and that she's very attracted to, there's kind of an imprint that that leaves on a person's mind or that person's heart. And that's really what's more important than if she has an intact hymen. In my opinion.

We, I also believe that men can be monomaniacally focused on the number. And for better or for worse, men are probably never going to know the truth about what that number really is. And also that women tend to count differently than men do.

Okay. What? Explain that. How are they counting differently?

Well, you know, you got to think, you got to think like, sure. You got to think like a lawyer here. You know, it's like, that doesn't count.

You mean counting differently? They're lying or counting differently depending on what type of sexual experience?

I mean, they can lie. Women lie. Men lie.

But they don't in counting differently, they just, they don't think of it as lying. They just think that that one doesn't really count. Maybe it doesn't count because it wasn't vaginal intercourse. Maybe it doesn't count because she was drunk. Maybe she doesn't count because she regrets it. Maybe it doesn't count because it only lasted 30 seconds. Maybe it, I mean, who knows? But these are all ways that it cannot count with women. And I don't think most men would agree with the accounting.

So, do you think body count? Look, okay, let's talk about, you know, someone out there that's, let's say 30 to 45, they're dating.

Their age is 30 to 45.

30. Yeah. Sorry, not body count. Well, we maybe it's high or lower than body count, but they're, they're 30 to 45 years old. They're dating. Does a high body count in a woman predict anything meaningful about her as a long-term partner, do you think?

The research seems to suggest that it does. Yeah.

And what does that show?

Well, it, it does. Well, it's kind of extrapolated. For example, there's data that show that the divorce rate is lowest when the woman is a virgin. It is not as low, but still significantly lower when she has only one body. It's not as low. So that we can extrapolate, kind of a, a correlation. It's probably not strictly linear because the top 1 or 2% of both men and women really tend to skew the numbers. It's like the median number of sexual partners in a man is one. Or it might even be zero, especially under 30. But that's not the same as the average. Median is a type of average, but it's not the mean. So, it gets kind of complicated there. The thought is that the more bodies a, a man or a woman has, the less able that person is to pair bond in a long-term relationship. I think that might be more true of women than of men. Though, I do know men. I've met them who kind of get lost in the game. They just become players and they might even be sex addicted. Their numbers are astronomical and they've kept such a tight reign on their emotions that they might not know how to unclench that in a relationship. But, um, I think it's very difficult. I made, I made another episode about this where, as I said previously, I think it's more important to be the, if possible, the first man a woman really loves. And if you can't be that, then you absolutely have to be the best man she's ever had. And that's also what makes it challenging. As a woman has more bodies, so let's say on the extreme case, she's got 50. You're number 50. What's the likelihood that you're going to be better than the other 49 guys like in every capacity? You're going to be that's, you know, 2% just as in a random thing, but you're going to be the 2% lover. You're going to be the 2% in height and attractiveness and wealth and status and showing her emotional experiences. This is why when you go on TikTok, on Instagram, there's, there's women who are talking to other women seriously and they think, "What's wrong with me?" Like, I'm with a good man. I'm with a man who loves me, who cares for me, who gives me foot massages while we watch Sex in the City or whatever it is, but I'm still thinking about that one guy. And he didn't even treat me right. He didn't even commit to me. And it's like there was something about that emotional experience that imprinted itself on that woman's mind and heart. And it's made it difficult for her to be fully invested in her relationship, even though she might be married for 10 years with kids. So that's kind of the danger with respect to that in my opinion.

You've mapped out the five possible end games for women in the sexual marketplace.

Oh yeah.

And the math is pretty brutal.

Is it? Walk, walk me through it. Oh, that episode came out a couple years ago, so I might not have the statistics right at the top of my head. But I don't think it's as brutal because the final analysis is that in most cases, women end up taken care of. Like, we do know that in general, 60% of all women have reproduced and only 40% of all men have reproduced. Women are just much more likely to pass on their genes and to end up with somebody. It might not be their first choice, but they're not going to end up in the gutter. The gutters are overwhelmingly populated by men. That episode kind of hinges on the idea that you can either get the man that you want or you can get the relationship that you want, but it's very, very, very difficult to get both. Like that's option A in that scenar option A is the best, which is that a woman gets the relationship she wants with the man that she wants. That what I'm suggesting there is that the guy is handsome, nuclear physicist, makes eight figures a year, 6'4, you know, it's like think about your ideal person. And he's loyal and he's commitment-minded and he gives you a wedding and several kids or whatever it. It's like that's extremely difficult to get. It's extremely difficult to get. So, I say that that's going, conservatively say that that's going to happen 1% of the time. In reality, it probably happens even less. But just to make the numbers easier to work with, I said 1%. Which means that a woman realistically has to look at herself and say, "Could I beat out 99 other women for that same man? Am I more physically attractive than 99 of my competitors? Am I going to do the things that the other 99 won't do?" Like, on some level, the cost of winning is overpaying. You have to be willing and able to do the things that your competitors won't in order to win. So like how are you going to go above and beyond what the girl right behind you can do, let alone the last, you know, the bottom 80%. It's extremely difficult. Now, the issue is that we're dealing with in this case a very attractive man from a woman's, from women's perspective, right? In general, men are in the sexual marketplace trying to exchange resources, which is not just money, but resources more generally for sexual opportunity. And in the disregulated sexual marketplace, more and more women are concentrating their opportunity into the top percentiles of men. This is a really great time to be alive if you're a top 10% man because like 80% of the women are making a concerted effort to put themselves in front of you and can entertain all kinds of different sexual relationships with you. Like they might have to do what the other women won't in order to secure even this man's attention, let alone his commitment. Does that make sense? So these men are unlikely to commit to any one woman. Like the more optionality a man has, rationally, he's thinking, "Yeah, this one woman is great, but is she better than the other five I'm currently dealing with and the other 10 I could be dealing with in this year alone?" And those are conservative numbers for some of the the top men, right? So now this woman has to be better than every other woman that this man is actually currently transacting with and every hypothetical woman that he could be transacting with in the future, which will likely increase as he's already attractive now. His fame, his status, his wealth are probably on the up and up, which is what made him in the top 1% to begin with. So most of these men are not going to be the loyal, committed, exclusive family men that women might prefer. So option B is the woman gets the man, but she doesn't get the relationship, which means she has an arrangement. A lot of these guys, whether they're extremely wealthy or extremely famous or they're very high status, they have arrangements with their wives. We've talked about, uh, the don't ask, don't tell. Or I mean, certain people have even written it into their prenuptial agreements. You know, I think that's fair and anything if it works for them.

If it works for them. And is that what that woman would prefer? Probably not. I don't think any woman who really loves a man loves the idea of sharing him with other women. But she might tolerate it because she understands that if she were to draw a really firm line in the sand, she would probably lose access to that man. So, she has the man, but she doesn't have the relationship. She doesn't have everything. So, she's in some ways settling a little bit, but she's getting what she wants. Not everything she wants, but she's getting most of most of what she wants.

Yes. But it's so difficult for any person, man or woman, to get everything that that they want. Right. So, it's got to come out of somewhere. And I think a lot of people, a lot of women, if the man is attractive enough, it'll come out of their relationship preferences. And that's not something that's commonly talked about, but I think that's the truth.

You've pointed out that women actually punish the men that they're most attracted to.

Sure.

Does attraction create that dynamic? And if so, why?

Well, you have to understand that punishment is a risky, labor-intensive thing. Like people don't argue with people they don't care about and they can gain nothing from. It's just a complete wasted effort. And punishment is effortful. It requires emotional resources, time, and it is a bit of a gambit. And the purpose of most punishment is to stop a certain behavior and or to bring someone back in line. You're not going to want to punish somebody that you want to leave your life. That keeps them potentially in your life. Does that, you're giving me a face here. Does that make sense?

So, so if a man is getting tested?

Well, tested and punishments aren't necessarily the same thing.

Okay. Maybe he considers it, he might think it's maybe, you know, when a woman comes back at him with whatever she's coming back with, and he may think, "Ah, she's just being argumentative." But is that potentially a green flag? That's because she's interested. She's she's interested in keeping this going. She just wants one thing to change or whatever that mean.

It definitely means that she's interested. It might not be a green flag. I don't think it's a good sign. I mean, to be honest, I was inspired to make that episode around the events of Tom Brady's divorce. And we know that after winning six Super Bowls, he said he wanted to retire, but that didn't last very long. And he says, "No, I'm going to go back out on the field with the Bucks." And his wife was like, "No, you know, you can't do that." You know, started putting pressure on him, suggesting that maybe they're going to separate if he doesn't leave football and stay home with her and the kids. That was my understanding of it. And he says, "I got to do what I got to do. I'm the GOAT of all time. That's the T, right? You know, I'm the greatest of all time. You knew I was into football when you met me. This is who I am. This is what I want to do." And of course, he went on to win the seventh with the Bucks, which was awesome, right? And they're divorced now.

And she's with the jiu-jitsu trainer or something.

A lot of people don't know that Gisele actually has a higher net worth than Tom Brady does.

Really?

And she got it from, I think, cosmetic industry. So, she does pretty well for herself. And that's probably part of the reason why their divorce apparently was so, it wasn't contentious or long drawn out. I mean, they're both famous personalities in the public light, but that doesn't always protect you. But her net worth was higher than his, as I understand it. But do you think that she would have put pressure on Tom to return home if she wasn't attracted to him? If she didn't want him around? No, she would have said, "That's okay, sweetie. Good luck. Bye-bye." On some level. So, I could potentially see that kind of pressure as a punishment. It makes my life more difficult. And it's designed to coerce behavior in line with her preferences, which is basically what a punishment, if it's successful, does. It makes you stop doing the thing I want you to stop doing. That's how I know that it's a successful punishment. And I'm only going to do that because I want you around. Women, when women don't want anything from a man, they're not going to punish him. They're not even going to insult him. All of those things are more likely to keep him around and potentially to make the situation more dangerous or unsafe for her.

You said that the men who pay the most are the ones women are least interested in.

Well, it kind of comes from the idea that all men pay when it comes to women. But the more she likes you, the greater the discount. So men can pay in all kinds of different ways. Just think about the average date is that I have to pay because I have to take the risk to ask you out. And for you to say yes, I have to have done all of this work on myself beforehand. As I've said before, it's taken me 10 years to learn how to pick up a woman in 10 minutes because I had to learn how to be confident. I had to learn how to be, uh, funny. I had to learn to close. I had to dress a certain way. I had to present myself in a certain manner. From her perspective, it just took a few minutes, but that's the result of years and years of effort and experience. Then there's the date, there's the time, there's the emotional engagement, there's the money, there's the opportunity cost. There's a lot that goes into dating and maintaining women. I think in general, it's more expensive for men to be in a relationship and more expensive for women to be single. So, take that as, as you will. However, the more a woman actually authentically desires you and likes you, the less you have to do any of that other stuff. However, if she doesn't like you, then on some level, she has to be compensated for her presence and the opportunity cost of spending time with you over any other man that she might even be more authentically interested in spending time with. And so that's when you have the, well, you got to send an Uber for me this way and pick me up and we're going to have to go to this restaurant and not that restaurant and don't expect any, you know, funny business. So that man is now paying for multiple expensive dates, is patient, is spending a lot of money, spending a lot of time, and maybe hasn't even succeeded in entering into a sexual relationship with that woman because that woman actually doesn't want sex with that man. She might allow him to access her sexual opportunity. She might have to eventually because she can only kind of string him along for so long. But because she doesn't want that, but she, he has other things that she might want, she's going to use the sexual opportunity as bait in order to get the dinners and the validation and the gifts and the travel. And that might be enough, especially if she doesn't actually have to go to bed with him at the end of the date.

What about the other way around? What about the woman has the money and the man is it maybe a younger man? He's the sexual opportunity for her. That can happen for sure. I mean, we saw that with Gisele just a few minutes ago, right? I doubt that jiu-jitsu instructor was making more than than her. You know what I'm saying? So there is this opportunity, uh, and there's a, there's a number of, uh, examples of very famous female pop stars or actresses who do end up dating or even marrying younger men. Uh, they tend to be very attractive younger men. They're like the cabana boys. You know what I'm saying? They kind of have a boyish energy about them. They could be vigorous sexual partners. I've actually talked about this in both the book and on the channel is that sometimes the younger man, older woman dynamic is really good for a number of reasons. Uh, first and foremost is their libidos are, they tend to be matched. Like young men can go all night, multiple rounds. It seems that women tend to peak sexually in their late 30s. I think some of that has to do with they finally become comfortable enough with their own bodies and their own sexualities. It's like female sexuality is a complicated thing. There's all these contradictory beliefs and statements that women have to contend with from the time that they're very young. So, it's not an easy thing to do. And, uh, but by the time they get to that stage, they often are comfortable with their bodies. They know what feels good. They know how to please a man. They could be very experienced in the bedroom. And the men, if he likes what he sees, he, he could go, he could go all night. And so it's like it can be fireworks, younger men and older women.

You've said one of the most costly mistakes men make is a is emotionally investing in a woman too fast.

Sure.

Once you give her the lollipop, you can't take it away without creating a problem. Walk me through what men are doing wrong here.

Well, it goes back to what we were talking about with the crisis of disillusionment is that you don't actually know who you're dealing with until that shattering occurs. You're dealing with your own projected fantasies. And some men can really get off to the races, especially if they don't have a lot of experience with women, which could be because they're young or they're not as attractive or for various other reasons. And if the woman is very attractive and they start sleeping together, he can very quickly get his emotions engaged. Can happen with women as well. Let's say that this, this person is very quickly getting ahead of himself. And that's a problem because he doesn't actually know who he's dealing with. All we really know is that he's very attracted to her physically and that he likes what he sees, but he might not be seeing clearly. In fact, we can almost guarantee that he's not seeing clearly. And so, we do kind of want to play a waiting game until that disillusionment occurs so that you know if this person is worth investing in for the long haul. I think women can do the same. So, to me, that's at least six months and probably closer to 12.

Before you kind of give her your heart or give her that emotional connection because you're waiting to see.

Who she really is.

Maybe. Or you're trying to.

I don't know if you've had this experience, Will. Like you told me that you got married fairly young.

I, I hope that's not a secret to anybody. Right. So, I don't know. Have you ever had your heart broken?

Yeah.

You have?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So, there was a little bit of dating experience before you met your wife. Okay. It sucks, doesn't it?

It does. It hurts really bad.

Do you want to go through that again?

No.

No. I don't think anybody does. Right.

Well, I know. Some would say, "Yeah, but if you're, you know, keeping your heart closed off and you're kind of and you're only going and you're just maybe and you're not diving in, you're not giving yourself the chance to feel love with that person. Why, why postpone that when if I'm feeling it, you're saying, "No, really, this is just guys are just driven by the looks, the sex, and that's just that that's going to take over." And you're, you're, you're going to think you're in love, but you don't really know them yet. So, give it time before you really give them your heart.

Yeah, I would say that and I've heard that argument before, but it's respectfully kind of a straw man argument. When I say that folks should exercise emotional restraint and to know who they're really dealing with before they invest in people emotionally, I am not saying, well, just close off your heart, not feel any kind of emotions or love for people. That's the total opposite extreme, which actually might be more successful in the sexual marketplace than the opposite extreme, which is falling in love with every pretty thing that crosses your path. We were talking about bad boys. This is kind of kitty corner to bad boy, but there's like the stone cold thug is one of the the subarchetypes of the bad boy archetype. And that works. Like being inscrutable and unemotional can work on women because they get a little, uh, uncertain. They, they don't know what's going on inside of that man. And that mystery and that inscrutability is emotionally engaging. I don't make the news, I just report it. You know, whether it should or shouldn't be the case, that's how it is. And we know that's the case because that's an enduring subclass of men. If it didn't work on enough women, we wouldn't see that trope.

I have a friend, he's married now, but when he was dating, he treated dating apps like a pure funnel, right? It was correct. I'm gonna write this many women. I'm going to track my reply rates. I'm going to AB test messaging. It's like a sales funnel. It's like a pipeline.

Good.

Is that the optimal strategy in today's environment for men?

Yes.

Yes.

Uh, we know from the behavior. I mean, a lot of women don't even swipe on dating apps. They just go into the who liked you page and choose. It's like picking fish in a barrel, right? And we know from the statistics that like a man has to swipe 500 times in order to get 10 matches, to get three responses, to get one date, and maybe she shows up. It's a coin flip. So with men on dating apps, it is absolutely a numbers game and you have to take massive action. If the man is just using those technologies casually, he's swiping 10, 20 times a day. That means it's going to take 50 days to get to 500. That's two and a half months, right? Is he still, did he keep it up? Is he, is he already hopeless? I mean, he's been thinking about this and trying for two and a half, uh, I'm sorry, a month and a half. Is he even there yet? So, if you're gonna use a technology, you got to use it correctly. And for men, it's massive action on dating apps. Nothing works without massive action on dating apps. There's other ways to meet women besides dating apps, but this is how men have to do it. For better or for worse, because the vast majority of women won't match with you. The vast majority of matches won't respond. The vast majority of responses won't actually meet in the real world. We know from self-report surveys that the number one reason that women say that they're on dating apps is because they're bored. They use it as emotional validation and stimulation. About half the women on a dating app at any one time have no actual intention of ever meeting a man from that app in real life. It's a fun thing she can do in the bathroom. She can flip through some pretty faces. She can see, "Oh, this guy's kind of cute. That's kind of nice that he thought that I was cute." And then she can kind of go about her day and entertain her optionality. This is why men can get upset about these sorts of realities, these sorts of asymmetries. But of course, getting upset isn't going to change anything, and it's certainly not going to make him more effective in the marketplace. So, it's a better idea to kind of understand what you're working with and adapt your behavior in an iterative process until you get what you want. Like to me, that's rational. Makes sense to me. And the game is always changing. Like we didn't have dating apps really 10 years ago. Who knows what we're going to have in 10 years.

Yeah. For the man out there listening that maybe doesn't want to go the dating app route, maybe he wants to go in person, right? And his goal, like most single men's goal, is to hook up. He wants to hook up this week, right? Okay. And what are the top kind of three things he should think about if he wants to hook up this week?

Okay. Well, first of all, uh, let's talk about hooking up because a lot of women are going to listen to that and think that's disgusting and terrible. They're going to have a lot of judgment about a man who has as his explicit intention to have short-term sex with women. My counter to that is that everything starts as a hookup. Everything starts as a hookup. In today's day and age, sex precedes commitment. For better or for worse, that's the room that we're all located in. The way it works in today's day and age is people go out on dates, they initiate a sexual relationship, and neither one of them knows if they're ever going to see that other person again. And the only thing that prevents that from being a retroactive one-night stand is that the two of them decide to go on a second date. But now they don't know if it's going to be a two-night stand. It's like everything starts as a hookup until it gets strung into too many different interactions over a certain amount of time. People start to like each other for other reasons besides the pure sexual attraction. And then you kind of, you have a nascent relationship that can then be structured and defined, etc. But no one defines and structures the relationship first anymore. Maybe they should, but they're, they're not going to, especially when there are options that are ready to go in the marketplace. So what are three things? So, uh, there are four ways to meet women. There are, there is cold approach or pickup. There are dating apps. There are social media and there's social circle. So meeting women in real life is either cold approach and or social circle. If you're doing cold approach pickup, personally, I like to go to like meat market bars for that. You know, there's going to be places in any city that you live that are really designed because of the layout of the place and they're the hip locations for people to go to meet each other. Like you should fish where the fish are on some level. There's some people who think, you know, best place to meet women is Whole Foods or I guess Aeropostale these days, you know, if that's your type. Uh, day game calls for a different approach than, uh, night game. I, I prefer night game because people are more or less there because they want to interact with other people. You don't assume that they necessarily want to interact with you or that that interaction means that it's going to lead to a sexual experience, but it's just easier when people are going to a place with the intention of socializing. And I think that's also what really helped me get over approach anxiety. One is just repetition. To get more comfortable with something or confident, you have to do the thing enough times that you can trust that you can do the thing, right? So there's really no substitute to getting confident with approaching women than approaching women a bunch of times. But I think a lot of people, a lot of men get anxious because they have too much writing on the interaction. It's like it's not in my control if she's going to like me. It's not in my control if she's going to give me her number. It's not in my control if she's going to go home with me. What I can do is like put the ball into play. I can go up and and break the ice. And then it's kind of her responsibility to hit the ball back. And it doesn't really matter what I say. I don't have to be funny. I don't have to be charming. I don't have to be smooth or risque. I just have to put the ball into play. As a man, it's like a litmus test. And she's going to evaluate me very quickly. Most likely, there's already been some sort of evaluation going on. You know, we've kind of like done the eye exchange across the bar. So, it's not like I'm totally blindsiding a girl, right? So, she has some ideas and judgments about me. And if there's still some eye flirting, that's probably a good sign. But, I just have to put it into play. And if she likes me, if she likes what she sees or what she perceives, she's going to, she's going to make it easy for me. If I tell a bad joke, she's going to do her best to laugh. You know, she's going to try to help me because she also has a stake in this potentially moving in the same direction. The idea, I think, is that it's bad for men to think that they're just like trying to take something from women that they don't want to give. That's gonna make you feel kind of creepy and awkward or whatever. But it's also just not true. It's like, why can't you have mutually satisfying relationships? Like when I approach a woman, I do so under the expectation that I can leave her better than I found her, regardless of the outcome. And so that's another thing is to define the outcome as that which resides entirely within your domain of control. Like it's not in my control if I get the number. It's in my control if I ask for the number. And so that's a win in my book if I asked, regardless of what the woman says. And that's, you know, that's none of my business really if she says yes or no. It's my business if I follow my attraction and I go after what I want.

So far so good.

Yes. So step one, fish where the fish are. Step two is it's a numbers game. So you have to make the approach, like make the attempt to get yourself comfortable making those cold approaches.

To get over your approach anxiety.

Yes.

Get over the approach anxiety. Another thing in terms of these markets, like I would call it, uh, kind of going hunting in the sense that I would put on my suit, go down to one of these bars and my goal would be to get like 10, 15 numbers in an hour or two. So that's another thing that men don't understand necessarily is you, if you approach a woman, it's a two or three minute interaction. It doesn't have to, you don't have to start the date right there. You don't have to tell them your whole life story. You don't have to do too much to prove your, uh, your worth or your value to the woman. It's like it's a little bit of banter and then you pull the trigger and then you exit. And personally, I don't really enjoy doing this, which is why if I do it, I'm going to go and try to get the contact information of some number of women and then I can then see where that goes over the next weeks and months so I don't have to do that every night or every week.

Right. And so let's talk about that cold approach, right? How, you know, how should a man approach? Are there oneliners? Like what, what does that cold approach usually look like?

Right. So we're fishing where the fish are. We're making the approach. So step one, fish where the fish are, right? These women, there's women that are at these bars and they're okay being approached by women. Men, if anything, they want to be they want to be approached.

One thing that men also have to understand is that it's very rare for women to be alone in public ever. And it's very rare for them to be alone at these types of places. They're probably with a girlfriend, if not two or three girlfriends. And that can be intimidating. I think a lot of women don't understand that. I understand they want to go for safety reasons with their girlfriends or etc. But it's hard enough to like stop a group conversation, single out most of the women and just say, "Actually, I just want to talk to you. Sorry, lady." Or what about the opposite? Ignoring the one you really want. Some guys say that that's a good way to proceed. Uh, I think that's a little disingenuous, but there's always, you know, magic always requires smoke and mirrors to some extent. So there's not one way to do everything. But my point here is that women understand what's going on. You're probably not the first guy to come up and say hi. You probably won't be the last. And so when you say, "Excuse me," the other girls pay attention to their phone and they turn away and they give you a few minutes of privacy. And you have your moment of interaction. And then you peace out. And then they go back to doing whatever they were doing before. So you don't have to be concerned about approaching women when they're with their girlfriends.

And does it matter what you say? That's what I was saying earlier. In general, it doesn't. Like don't, there's not a script. There's not a magic word or a magic phrase that just opens the doors to heaven, right? It's really more about how you say it and the the vibe that you give off. Like the only information that she's probably going to have about you is the way that you look and how you're dressed. And she's going to make some reasonable extrapolations from that data, but who knows, right? I don't know about, it's probably a little nicer here in LA, but like the billionaires in San Francisco look like the homeless people sometimes. It's very hard to tell if you're dealing with a guy who is, you know, has mental illness or actually is a founder, right? And sometimes there's even overlap. Uh, so she's going to go based on this limited amount of data. That's like your first bottleneck. So guys, if you're going out there and you're not getting much success in the cold approach, it's probably with respect to how you're dressed and your appearance. How you say what you say is more important than what you say. That's the vibe. Um, act like you've been there before. And the more repetitions that you do, the easier it will be to act that way. A guy can't change his height, but he can focus on what he's dressed. You know, he's doing his hair. He's cleaning. He's cleaning up. He's making himself look halfway decent. And then then it's about how he's saying it. Well, that's why I also find the denigration of like the pickup seduction community and nowadays like the looks maxing thing to be kind of silly. It's like, yeah, there are things that men don't have control over, but there's a lot of things that they do and there's men who are banding together and saying, "Here's how you can improve the things that you have control over to make it more likely that you can enter into relationships with women." Like, what's wrong with that? I don't think anything's wrong with it. I mean, it certainly can be taken to dark extremes, but on the whole, that's like making fun of people because they want to make more money. Like, do you really want them to be poor their whole lives? It's like, why, why not take action and learn skills to increase your financial, uh, attractiveness? Same thing goes in the sexual marketplace. Like, you can learn to get better at it. You can definitely present yourself. Everyone can be more attractive than they currently are. Period. And it's not completely subjective. Like there are, we know that there are things that tend to work and there are things that tend not to work.

Let's talk about what creates obsession in a man. Oh, from your clinical experience, right? What actually creates obsession in a man?

I mean, the main thing is really hot sex is the thing that creates obsession in a man. Like one thing that we're talking about is the emotional bond. Like this goes back to the body count discussion that we were having earlier. Okay. So bonding, attaching to each other. We now know that that's primarily facilitated through the neurotransmitter oxytocin. What is the single most important event for oxytocin release in men? Sex. Orgasm in particular. That's when a man gets flooded with oxytocin. Which is why the post-coital cuddling can be so important and why some guys who don't want to really be there, they get up and they don't stick around, right? They don't actually want to emotionally bond with the woman. Maybe they have some, uh, what might we call it? Um, post-ejaculative insight, as it were. And they're not going to stay in that location. So this is part of the reason why sex just seems to organically be hot and heavy in the early stages of a relationship. Like I said, sex precedes commitment in today's day and age. I actually don't know if I'm going to see you ever again. But if I want to see you, then I want to do things that will get you bonded or attached to me. Because people tend to return to the folks that they're bonded or attached to. What's the best way to get a man bonded to you? Have sex with him like repeatedly over and over again. And do the things that maybe he's never done with any other woman. I guarantee guys will be thinking about that years and years down the line. Like that's the way to a man's heart. They used to say it was through his stomach, but it's actually a few inches lower. And we can be prudish or puritanical about that. But then there's going to be a subset of women who will use that to their advantage. And they're going to do that organically. Like that's the, that's the crazy thing is that women don't have to be told to have hot, crazy sex with the men they really like. They're, they're, they're already going to be doing that. And that's why men can use a woman's sexual availability to him as a proxy for her level of attraction to him. If she makes you wait, if she says no to certain things, that's probably a bad sign because in all likelihood, there's another guy who didn't have to wait and there was another guy who did get those behaviors. And it's, I guarantee that she's was more attracted to that man than to you. And she will wrap it up in not, it's like, I've, I've made mistakes. I want to take things slow because I really like you. That phrase needs to be deleted from women's playbook. Like no man feels more liked when he waits for sex. I guarantee it. The way a man feels liked is he has to do less. He gets more for, he gets more for less. Basically, that's how you know that you feel that you're special to a woman as a man.

Is that how a man bonds or feels the attachment? Is it through, it's through this amazing sex versus a woman? It's more emotional.

It's not just sex, but sex is definitely it releases more oxytocin than pretty much any other activity for a man. It's, and the next few are just physical touch more generally. So if you can't be actually having sex, you should be touching, holding hands, casual touches on the shoulder, on the arm, smacking at our butt, you know, stuff like that. That kind of playful, constant physical contact is actually really good for bonding. It's very healthy and it shows that there's, um, a strong, a strong attachment to each other. Women also release oxytocin during sex, but at different times. It's generally not with their orgasm. It's generally like when their, uh, their nipples are stimulated because the real main event for oxytocin in women is relative to children. It's, it's not to men. And that's when a lot of the bonding occurs is when the, the woman is breastfeeding and the baby's looking up into the mother's eyes and the mother's looking down into it and they have this unbroken physical contact. That's when a lot of emotional bonding occurs. And a vestige of that is when you play with a woman's nipples.

What is the one thing a good traditional woman is consistently doing wrong in the bedroom that leaves her with maybe less of a hold over her husband than another woman?

Uh, I don't know what you mean by traditional, but what are they doing wrong? Everybody has the things that they like and don't like, and that's fine. And there are certain things that certain people just don't want to do. That's also fine. And I'm not here to argue that anybody should do things that they're uncomfortable doing or they don't want to do in order to secure a relationship. That's probably not a good thing to do. But in general, it's probably a good idea to air on the side of saying yes, then on the, the side of saying no, especially in those gray zones where it's like maybe you haven't even tried it yet or you don't even know if you're going to like it or not. Just coming down on the no is probably not great for the relationship. Like relationships are for, are forgiving. Why go and enter into relationship to hold back? Now, you don't give all at once. We've talked about that several times in this conversation. That's irresponsible. You don't do that with your friends. You don't do that with people that you might enter into business relationships with. Trust is formed slowly over time. But the ideal is you get to a relationship that's so intimate and so safe on some level that like you can, you can give. Why, why hold back? We don't, we can't take anything with us anyway, right? And in general, what makes a sexual relationship a sexual relationship is sex. And I say sex and sexual relationships because I think that's more honest than saying romantic relationships, which is generally the euphemism that we use. But I say sexual, what makes a sexual relationship a sexual relationship is sex. And so I think it's a very good idea to prioritize the quality and frequency and the tenor of that sexual experience in the same way that a professional relationship is about money. In most people's cases, it's the only relationships where they get paid. Maybe they should prioritize their earnings in professional relationships. Now, does that mean they have to be entirely mercenary and the only thing that they consider is how much they get paid? No. That's the straw man counterargument that to what I'm saying. Clearly, people take into account other things, but it's probably for the best. The most important thing is is income in the vast majority of cases. And if it's not income, it needs to be compensated by a series of perks that are greater than the diminution in income relative to other options. Right? Same thing with sex. It's like this is the one place that most people go to for that experience. In a, in a committed exclusive monogamous relationship, you are your partner's monopolized sex dealer. You're the company store. Like we're going to pay you in script and it is only accepted here. Imagine that store were closed. Like if you're going to put all of these restrictions over where I can shop, that store needs to be open 24/7, barring some significant event. You know what?

I'm saying? Otherwise, you might have to pay me in dollars, which are transactable in many other locations.

>> What role does porn play in all of this?

>> Well, it's certainly affected things. I think the main way that it's affected the sexual marketplace is that there's just fewer men in the sexual marketplace. Women are expensive. One, and I don't just mean that they cost money. It uh they take a lot of time. They take a lot of effort. Most guys have to go through a lot of rejection in order to get anywhere with anyone. Sometimes it might be easier and safer and more convenient and less expensive to get some sort of sexual release using pornography. It's kind of understandable from a rational perspective in the same way that women go to men for all kinds of different reasons, but one of the things they go to men for is resources and validation and attention. And it might be cheaper and safer and more convenient for them to get that from social media. So, we have two technologies that have differentially ins snared the genders. Like men are by far more likely to use porn than women, though women are doing their darnest to catch up. I'll tell you that. And it's interesting because the porn that women tend to use is far more aggressive towards women than the porn that men tend to use, which is interesting. So men still are disproportionately affected by porn and women are still disproportionately affected by social media. And it's just that these technologies make it easier and safer and cheaper to get what you want. Now, it might be a simulation of what you truly want. Porn is not the same thing as sex with a partner. Social media isn't the same thing as attention and validation from a person that you actually care about.

Like this is something that I learned as an actor and one of the reasons why I walked away from that profession is that there's a tendency to just seek applause. But you when you're on the stage, you can't even see who's applauding you. Like why does the adoration of faceless nameless people matter? Like it doesn't. But likes and those numbers, they do create an emotional response. The applause does create an emotional response. And it takes a it takes a little bit to understand that this is kind of empty. You know, it it's for most people don't get there immediately. So, I do think that the emotional stimulation that comes from validation and attention through social media is real. But is it as high quality, is it as good as attention and validation from somebody that you actually care about and whose opinion matters to you? Absolutely not. And pornography is definitely not as satisfying as sex, but it's like it's kind of close enough, I guess, given the advantages that these technologies afford according to not me, but millions of men and women all around the world. And that's another thing that's affecting the sexual marketplace today.

You said being a man has nothing to do with a beard or hunting or football or any of that stuff. That it comes down to two things.

>> Yeah. a spine and a pair of balls. I did say that. How to be a man. Tell me about that.

>> Well, I I do think that and and I made that episode before the term performative masculinity kind of hit the scene that there is a kind of uh performative machismo to masculinity. And I think that has become kind of a standin because masculinity has been dismantled over the last 50 to 70 years. No one really had to talk about how to be a man. It was like patently obvious. But as that started to get challenged and to get and to fall apart, then it became more uh there were things that were play acting that were props or costumes to stand in for the appearance of masculinity. And I do think that ultimately what comes down to being a man is having a spine, which is in the sense of you're willing to stand up. A spine is what allow enables you to become be erect basically to stand up from the undifferiated masses and to say this is who I am and this is really hard to do like extremely hard to do the studies on conformity are very very clear about this whether it's the study with the lab coat where they ask the people to administer the shocks or the studies with elevators and people are turned different ways It's actually very difficult for people to even stand against 10 people. That's kind of why that movie 12 Angry Men is perennially so relevant. It's like it was extremely difficult for that one juror to stand against even 11 other people. Most people wouldn't have the ability to do that. And that's because as soon as you stand up, you cast a shadow. As soon as you stand up, no matter who you are, what you believe, there's going to be darkness that gets attracted to it. People are going to attack it. People are going to disagree with it. Some people are even going to want to destroy it. But there's no escape from that. Everything under the sun casts a shadow.

So the next part is balls. If you stand up and you cast a shadow and you start to attract that kind of attention and disagreement and push back, then you have to have the willingness to kind of put your money on the felt to walk the talk. Otherwise, you're just going to fold back down as soon as you meet with that resistance. And I do think that that's kind of testicular fortitude here. And I think there are ways to do that that don't involve gutting a fish or riding a horse or smoking cigarettes or having a hundred women in your, you know, sexual history. Uh or driving a Ferrari or having a six-pack. All those things can be wonderful things. I'm not putting any of those things down necessarily. Uh but it doesn't necessarily make a person a man. I think what makes a person a man is to have a spine to stand up for what you believe and to have a pair of balls to say, you know what, even though you're pushing back at me, even though you might actually want to destroy me, I'm not going anywhere. This is who I am. And that's extremely difficult to do.

Like, give me an example, right? Give me an example of is that just a man just saying, "Hey, like, you know, this is what I believe. Maybe these are some principles I have and I'm just going to stand by these and I'm not." Is is that an example of having a spine and some balls? Like, hey, here's some principles I'm going to live by. I don't care what you think. I don't care what you think. I don't care what anyone thinks. This is who I am. This is how I'm gonna live. Is that an example or what's an example of that spine and balls?

>> Uh I mean, we saw a number of examples of that during the co shutdowns. I mean, think about how difficult it was to be somebody who was opposed to the mass vaccination program. These were people who often were medical doctors or specialists who were expressing reasonable concerns and they received death threats. They were fired. They were cancelled from uh uh social media platforms. I mean and and that think that was done to send a message to other people so that they don't start questioning um the the program as well. So, I think that's a concrete example of having a spine and a pair of balls is how many people do you know said, you know, wait a minute, I'm not so sure about this and actually resisted the social and personal consequences of that decision. Probably not many.

Let's talk about female disrespect and the boss test. You have a test for whether a woman's behavior toward a man is disrespectful, right? Which is, would you say this to your boss if you wanted to keep your job? And that's the test that I have suggested to women because I think that often times women don't even know when they're being disrespectful to men. And I've made some episodes on here are some examples that often fly under the radar that men perceive as disrespectful that women maybe don't. And so that's the test to women. Would you say the same thing in the same way to your boss if you wanted to keep a job? And the push back I generally receive from that is Orion, he's not my boss. And you can even see in that response that she doesn't even think of him as a peer. Like there's it's dripping with contempt and condescension, which is precisely where I'm coming from. It's this this attitude that even if the man is not higher than her in that relationship structurally, this is how men perceive respect. And why would you want I mean, why wouldn't you want to purge the disrespect from your tone or from your language in order to have more satisfying, harmonious relationships? It has nothing to do with who's actually higher than than whom. It has to do with the fact that tones and word choices are very that that's really where attitude gets conveyed. And when a a woman speaks to a man that she's in a relationship that way, what she's basically communicating is, I don't have any fear. For better or for worse, fear is the basis of respect. It always has been and it always will be. I have no fear because I don't think that you're going to retaliate at all and I don't feel like you're going to get fed up and leave and I could probably do better. So this is a woman who is operating from a actual place of of privilege and and power with respect to that relationship and this is how she uses it. Imagine being the boss who speaks in that way to your employees. Like if she doesn't think that the man is the boss, but that she is, well, what kind of a boss is she? What kind of a who would want to work for that boss who talks to people that way? You know what I'm saying? So, they have to leave aside the the literal structure of the relationship and understand that regardless of the direction, it's not a good look. It's not a good look to talk that way to your boss. And it's not a good look to be the boss and talk that way to your employees.

>> And does that female disrespect actually destroy the woman's own attraction for that man?

>> It's usually the other way around. So the attraction drops for whatever reason and then the disrespect starts and what she might be doing consciously or not is transforming that man into a person who would be easier to leave. And what happens from the man's perspective? Is it is it just he starts emotionally being disconnected after that? Or the main problem that men have is they think that women mean what women say. There are gender differences in communication. When men are communicating, the point is the conveyance of information. We understand that communication occurred because you can more or less summarize the the gist of what you've just heard back to me, the key points, right? So, how does this create problems? A woman might because she's lost attraction and has begun to disrespect the man, she might say something like, "I can't believe I have to remind you. like three times I've told you to take out the garbage and the garbage is still sitting there. And so the guy being a guy will listen to that will might feel a little at the tone but will say okay the problem is I didn't take out the garbage when trust me if that woman were a 10 out of 10 attracted to that man she probably would have said oh you you were probably too busy to take out so I did it myself like it would not even be a problem like no one would even be talking about the garbage if there was a lot of love and attraction in this relationship. But there's not. And so now we're talking about the garbage. But the men think, hm, woman has problem. Therefore, if I solve problem, woman will have no problem anymore. And so this creates pro this creates problems in the relationship because the man it doesn't solve the problem. If the guy starts taking out the garbage, the woman will find some other thing that is the issue. And so the man feels increasingly frustrated. He's like, "No matter what I do, it's like I I I pay for everything. I take out the garbage. I do all the housework. I let it's like and she's still pissed at me." But that compliance generally does not improve his standing in her mind. Unfortunately, or for better, for worse, I should say, women are not attracted to compliant men. And that's part of the bad boy energy that we were giving out earlier. It's like James Ston said, you know, the guy who stops at yellow lights is not going to do the thing that you like. Men who are willing to break the rules if necessary, who are able to say no and to weather the consequences are always going to be perceived as stronger and safer than men who don't. So unfor again I keep saying that for better or for worse non-compliance tends to be more attractive to women than compliance which leads to this very strange situation that you might actually get a woman to like you more by giving her less of what she says that she wants. Which is really bad news for kind of the nice guy romantics out there who just want to be able to give a woman what she wants. Wouldn't that be nice? because I sure would like to get what I want because men communicate more directly with respect to their uh to the information conveyed, right? And when a man says something to someone, you know, to another man, they're taking it very very literally literally, he's, you know, if you repeat that back to me, I'm like, "Okay, he got it." Versus with a woman, she may tell you something, but really there's something else going on there, and it's or it's it's it's it's not it's connecting with her emotions. So, let's take that same example, right? Let's say um she's complaining, "Take out the trash. You didn't take out the trash." Let's say, right, the man in that situation, well, you're saying, "Maybe, eh, take out the trash yourself." Maybe give her a little push back, but also too realize that that's not about the trash. There's something else going on here. Maybe let's work on the attraction. Maybe let's work on the seduction. Maybe let's work on stimulating her emotionally or these other core things of the relationship. And then if I work on those and we can get back to a good place over here, she won't complain at all.

>> Yes. A woman who is very attracted to a man does not complain. Period. So if a woman is complaining, there's an attraction problem.

>> And the attraction isn't just physical. It's it's it's the emotional.

>> Yes. Yes. But physical helps as well. Let's not sweep that under the rug because it's somehow superficial or not as noble as the emotional component. So if men use communication as a conveyance of information of ideas, women tend to use communication as a conveyance of emotion. So this woman was the the the actual intention in this hypothetical situation is that she was not actually trying to communicate about the garbage. The garbage just happened to be the atand vessel, the container for something else. And that something else was I'm frustrated. And beneath that frustration is probably like I don't feel appreciated enough. I don't feel heard. And because I don't feel heard, I feel disrespected. That might be what she's trying to say in belittling the man about the the garbage. And if the guy responds at the garbage and not at the level of the emotion, then we have ships passing in the night. So what you could do, and this is hard to do, I mean, I'm a therapist and it's it's not always easy for me to do. So, it's it's tough for the average guy, but to understand that the it's the tone that really is the communication with women more than the semantic factual information. And to uh if you're not sure where to go as a guy, a great first move is just like reflection. And it's better to reflect on the tone. and you'd be like, "Hell, you sound you sound frustrated." She's going to go, "I am frustrated." It's like, "Yeah, I can hear that, man. That sounds like what's going on inside of you." It's like, "I told you three times." And you Oh, so you told So you must feel like I don't listen to you right now. Yes, you get it. And so generally what happens is that as you start to decode the emotional communication, people get quieter. Unfortunately, when people don't feel heard, they get louder and it's not really a volume problem in the vast majority of cases. So, that just escalates the situation, but it seems to be human nature to do it. But, as you correctly identify the emotional component, then people generally settle down, both men and women. It's a great way to deescalate a situation.

>> How do you let go of someone after a relationship ends? I think you may have said you had a mentor tell you something. I think I just watched actually one of your videos on this around there's a breakup and completely not looking at their social media and all you what's the best method, right? You you've broken up with someone and you kind of you want to you want to let someone go, but it's hard because maybe that person broke your heart. Maybe they were your first true love. Maybe, you know, maybe it's really hard. What's the best way?

Oh, it's it's very difficult to get over somebody, especially if they ended the relationship against your wishes. That can be very difficult. In general, there are two ways to change emotions. According to behavioral psychology, there is exposure and there is extinction. Exposure is a great way of getting over phobia. It's like you have a fear of pickles. Great. We're actually gonna put you in a barrel of pickles until you melt and scream and cry and dissolve your ego and then realize that you're going to live and that while pickles might not ever be your favorite thing, they're probably not that bad. It's an extremely intense uncomfortable situation. That's called flooding, that type of exposure. But it's also over in like 20 minutes. And that can actually cure phobias permanently. No one wants to do it, of course, because it it's really really emotionally painful, but it does work. With respect to getting over a partner, my preferred method is extinction. Generally, it's no contact, which is you don't call, you don't text, you don't write them letters and send them. You can write letters, but don't send them. Sometimes writing a letter helps to clarify your own emotional process.

>> But is that extinction? Is that you're still thinking about the partner if you're writing them a letter?

>> Yeah. Sometimes things have to get big before they get small. Like there's always little asterisk next to everything that I say. In general, people hold on to things because they have unfinished business most generally. And journaling or writing a letter but not sending it can be a way of disentangling one's own unfinished business, especially if that person isn't around to resolve it with you. Ultimately, closure is never something that someone gives you. It's something that you give yourself. Closure is when you decide to let it go. And I and letting it go is is like a physical letting go. It's like it's actually a relaxing. This is a clenching. Letting go is a relaxing. You do less. And in some level, the best way to let go of somebody is with love. Because all negative emotion tends to bind you more closely to the lost object. Love, real love, which I define as sacrifice for the benefit of the other. It's like it thinks nothing of itself and only wants what's best for the other. That's why it's like if you love something, set it free on some level. That's love. Love has no cage. Love is a garden. It's not a flower in a vase. It's like let let things grow. Let them be. Uh so you don't contact them. You don't hang around their usual cafes hoping to bump into them. We have no contact. But that's just kind of the first step. The second step is more important. It's you don't have contact with the cognitive object of that person, which means that you're not rehearsing the memories of the best times that you had together. You're not fantasizing about what they're doing now or who they're doing it with. You're not going through the picture role of your relationship. You just take a full break from this person psychologically. And over a long enough timeline, that tends to diminish the emotional salience of that stimulus until you might be able to get to a point ideally where you don't really feel anything at seeing your ex holding hands with somebody new one way or the other. Possibly you might even feel happy for them. And you'll also be able to do that if you yourself in the intervening time have succeeded in entering into another relationship with somebody who is a better fit for you. And ultimately anybody who doesn't want you is not perfect for you, dude. Like that should be one of your criteria of your perfect soulmate partner is that he or she actually wants me. I can't see how someone could be perfect and not want you for you. You know, do you believe in soulmates?

>> No. But, you know, I'm using language that other people use

>> because it seems like, you know, we talked about settling a little bit, which is, you know, there's a woman out there and yet she's 30 years old. And yes, in the perfect world, she wants a man that's tall and he's handsome and he has a six-pack and he's financially successful and he's great in bed, but she goes out on the dating marketplace and she, you know, there's a guy that has a couple of these things and there's another guy, he has these other two things. None. None of them have it all. And so is she just settling? Really?

>> I mean, we all settle eventually. The idea that Aphrodite is going to sit next to you on a bar stool on a Tuesday night and just hand you a relationship is a fantasy. So, everybody settles, but it's for everyone to decide where to draw that line. The hard part is when you get around 70 to 80% of what you want. Why is that the hard part? You would think that that's from people dating, they're in their 30s, 40s, it's that's that's what it's that's good enough, right?

>> Well, that can be difficult for those women in particular in the 30s and 40s that you describe. Why? Because they were likely more attractive when they were younger, which meant that they were able to engage sexual relationships with potentially more attractive men. And so now they have a memory of what they could get and they're anchored at that point which might make settling for somebody in their 30s or 40s who has less than that even more frustrating. Right? If you've never had that, it might not be as hard. But if you did, then it's going to potentially really hurt, right? Because it's a you actually touched it. It was a real reality. It wasn't just an ideal that gets compromised away given the realities of the sexual marketplace, right? I say 70 80% is tough because if it's less than that, it's pretty clear no. I'm just not getting enough of what I want here. If it's more than that, it's a very clear yes. This is amazing. Wow, you're almost entirely what I want in a man, in a woman. It's It's in the middle where you're getting some of what you want. That's tough. That's like standing on 16 in blackjack. It's really hard to stand on 16. This is the tricky part is getting some of what you want. And nobody gets everything. Everything is a trade-off. And that might be part of growing up. That might be part of maturing. But ultimately people on some level are about as mature as their circumstances allow them to be. And if one of those partners even after years of marriage suddenly had a significant life change, maybe they become very wealthy or very famous or very successful, that will open up an entirely different tier of the sexual marketplace. And then, you know, that spouse, that partner will now have some some work to do to keep that person. I've made a couple episodes about what men and women should do, especially in their 20s. I suggested that men try to find their ugly duckling, and I suggested that women try to find their dark horse. A dark horse is a horse with bad odds that actually goes on to win the race. The issue with respect to the sexual marketplace is that women tend to wait till the race is over and then try with all the other women to secure the winner. But it's unlikely that she as any one woman is going to beat out all of her interexual competition for that winner. But before the race, especially if the odds are bad, now you have potentially unobstructed access to a future winner. The issue is, of course, who knows what happens when the race is run. Um, to be able to pick a good dark horse, you actually have to know about horses. You know, you have to know about their pedigree. You have to know about their for locks and their teeth or whatever. You know what I'm saying? So, like women, in my metaphor, need to get better at knowing about men. They have to know like what makes for a a good man who can actually go the distance. It's like picking an undervalued stock. It's like it's hard to do. But the analysts who do it are wildly successful. Now, the major push back I've gotten from that piece of advice from women has been that's all well and good Orion, but one, a lot of most horses don't win. It's like, yep, fair enough. That's that's in the episode. But two, even after you win, once that man wins, you might support him throughout all the years of the race and and then as soon as he arrives and is successful, he'll leave you for the 20-year-old. And I'm like, that is fair. That does happen. But my rebuttal to that is it's always always always easier to keep a castle than to conquer a castle. Defense, if if defense and offense is equally matched, defense wins. Like the default is the default wins. Offense has to be more offensive than the defense is defensive for offense to win, right? So yes, a wildly successful man will be exposed to a different tier of the sexual marketplace, but you as the woman who's stayed with him and knows him and has intimate contact. You can gatekeep. You know this guy, there are things that you can do running defense that the woman who might be trying to poach him can't. So, it's still a privileged position to be in. And what are those things she should be looking for in that dark horse, right? you know, maybe is it he's ambitious? He's maybe he doesn't have a six-pack, but he's working on his health and fitness, or what what are those things that she should be looking for that that'll give her what she wants long term? But he he's not there yet.

>> Well, you said the key word there at the end, long term. So, there there's really only uh a need to think about the dark horse if you have some distance to travel, which means we are talking about long-term relationships. And so a woman has to be in that mindset to begin with, which might actually be the biggest obstacle in the sexual marketplace is that there's very few 21-year-old, 23y old women. They're out there, but they're they're becoming fewer and farther between who are like, I need to find a man to settle down with and have a family. Most of the time in the 20s, they're thinking about their education. They're thinking about their careers or they're thinking about collecting experiences, either going to parties or traveling around the world or going to Michelin star restaurants or just like riding all the rides as I as I put it. And there's nothing wrong with that except that it might in some way impact her eventual long-term goals once she hits her 30s because now her SMD isn't quite as high as it used to be in most cases. Not in the ugly duckling, which was the male equivalent of the dark horse, right? So, she has to be in a place that she's looking for that. If she's not, she could be faced with the most loyal, kind, devoted, hardworking, future successful husband and she's just it's pearls before swine, right? So industriousness is a big one. So unless he's a trust funer at 2021, he probably has nothing. Okay. Well, dude, if you have nothing, then at the very least, you have to have a vision. And women have to get better also at evaluating the vision because I swear I think most women go through a musician phase. Music is great because it just cuts to the emotional reality to the quick and that's what works with women stimulating their emotions like we discussed. But the guy could be broke and living in his parents' basement. He might know three chords on a bass, but he has this dream of like selling out sofi or whatever and his name and lights and you know if she is attracted enough to him she's going to buy into that dream as well as a stakeholder. He painted a vision of the future and connected the dots from where he wants to be to where he currently is. Right? Uh now a woman could do some due diligence over the likelihood that any one musician is going to end up in that situation and they eventually kind of you know the months go by maybe the years go by and the guy's still on the couch and who knows right but if you don't have anything you need to have a destination and you need to have a plan for arriving at that destination. If you're a young man and you don't know where what to do where to go that means that you haven't chosen a destination. If you know where you're going, the route is obvious. I knew I was driving down to LA. There was like two different routes I could go. I chose the more scenic route because I enjoy it, but that's it. You know, I'm not going to go north. So, once you have the destination in mind, then it's actually fairly straightforward to work backwards from there to where you currently are, and that should be your plan. Um, it probably will be best if the man doesn't yet have a great deal of optionality on some level. Like once a guy gets a taste of that, same thing with women. I, you know, I did a consultation with a guy recently who entered into a relationship with a woman who had over a million subscribers on Tik Tok and a million subscribers on Facebook, um, sorry, Instagram. So, she was she was very physically attractive. But this woman, I mean, she was cooked. Like, there's probably no way that any one man, no matter who that man is, is going to be able to provide enough attention and validation as millions of men possibly could. Like the I wouldn't say an average woman, but like an above average woman in terms of attractiveness can now get more attention and validation every day than like literal empresses got in their lifetimes through social media. It's it it's cooked in the same way that players are cooked when they have body counts of hundreds of women. It's like it's going to be very difficult for them to to say, you know, I'm just going to settle down with one woman. And they only do so when they become so sick of that that they just can't take it anymore. And so they had to like make it big before it contracted small. They're saying she's cooked because she's getting so much attention from these millions or hundreds of thousands of guys on every single post that this one guy is not going to be able to fulfill what she's receiving there. And then what' you tell your client? you tell your client like this is she might not be the best option for you because

>> well he broke up but he was uh still pining for her because she was very attractive and I I asked him I was like was that the hottest woman you've ever been with and he said yes and that's hard but you know I said if you can get one you can get another like you already have this isn't hypothetical you already have the demonstrated ability to enter into a relationship with a woman that has perceive as that attractive So if you can do it once, you can do it twice.

>> Is there a belief you held, let's say, 10 years ago about relationships that you've completely reversed on?

>> Almost everything. I mean, I am a recovering romantic. I as a young man had a lot of love but not a lot of skill with respect to communicating that. And because I was also kind of a little strange, you know, I kind of marched to my own beat. I still do to some extent. I didn't have a lot of experience with women as a teenager. And um and I So where did I go for information? The movies, popular music, books, and what always works in those movies? The guy makes a grand gesture. The guy demonstrates that he loves that woman more than that rich corporate executive who never wants to spend time with her on the weekends. It's like, I thought that that's what you needed to do because that's what women wanted. And when it didn't work, my undeveloped brain thought, well, that it didn't work because you didn't do it enough. And so, like, my strategy was just to to do a grander gesture for the next time. You know, I I doubled down on my strategy, right? And it was only in my early 30s that I got to the point where I realized maybe my fundamental assumptions here are not correct. Maybe I don't know what women want. Maybe I don't know what makes relationships work. because if I did, I probably would have more success by now. And so that was the turning point in me re-evaluating pretty much everything about women and dating and relationships. But yeah, I've I've been wrong about pretty much everything. That's how I might be right about it now is like I've had to learn everything the hard way in my life.

>> Okay, last one. There's a man out there right now. He's 30 to 45 years old. He's struggling with dating. I want you to give your, you know, you're an expert at what you do, right? I want you to give your single best piece of advice and separately a woman in the same position. She's 30 to 45. She's dating. One piece of advice for each the man and the woman.

For men on some level, it's forget the woman. The best dating advice for men tends at the highest level to synthesize with self-improvement. The best dating advice for men is self-improvement most generally. Can you make your finances better? Can you make your health and fitness better? Can you make your fashion better? Maybe you need a better haircut, like ask your gay friend or your sister or something like that. Um, can you get better at having a a conversation? What are your social skills like? Don't think of these as traits that some people are born with and other people's aren't. Think of them as skills that you can learn. It might take some time, but at some point, just like a foreign language, you cross over from being a student to someone who's fluent. And that becomes part of who you are. Right? In this sense, at the highest levels, just be yourself, which is that perennial dating advice for men actually makes sense. But you have to be the self that has done all the work to effortlessly integrate all of these relationship and attraction skills so fluently and effortlessly that they become who you are.

Uh women, they're 30 to 45 and they're having trouble. They're not in a relationship, they're dating. One piece of advice, the best piece of advice for a woman listening,

>> you're not positioned correctly. So that could be they also need to work on their attractiveness. Like maybe they need to lose weight. Just putting it out there. Maybe they need to start dressing for the male gaze. Just putting that out there. It's like you have to give the customers what they want on some level. And there are things that women can manipulate within their comfort and their preferences that will make it more likely that men will attend to them. But still, even in today's day and age, men are expected to approach. So, if you're not getting the attention that you want from the men you want, then you're not in you're not around the men that you want to be approached by. You don't have to be passive. Women can hunt in the sense that they generally can pick a specific man and say, "That's the one that I want to talk to. That's the man that I want to go home with or that's the man I want to have a relationship with." If you're a man, maybe, but you probably have to go to a whole bunch of women before you find somebody who maybe will give you a chance, right? And the gates to that is sexual access. So again, that is something that women are going to have different levels of comfort with, but as I've said on the channel, that's the Trojan horse that causes men to open the gates. If you can pre present an attractive, hassle-free, fun, satisfying sexual relationship to a man, he's probably going to say yes. So now you've solved the access problem. That doesn't necessarily mean that he's not going to throw you out in the morning, but you have to be in to be thrown out. Do you know what I'm saying? So, that's a different problem. The next problem is how do you stay there? And h you stay there by being useful to the man. You look around and you see what's this guy about? What's his mission? What is he trying to accomplish? How can I help? Because if you could get there with that guy, chances are there was a bunch of other women who can or would get there as well. How are you going to differentiate yourself from that? I ultimately why does a man who's has a lot of optionality with women? Why does he ever settle down with one unpopular opinion, but this is why? Because it becomes too difficult, inconvenient, or expensive to extricate that woman from his life. For that to occur, that woman needs to have infiltrated his life. And the only way she can do that is by assuming real responsibility and by discharging actual use. So rather than think of requests from a man as unpaid labor or ownorous, see it as an opportunity for a promotion. I mean, think about that attitude at work. You want to get promoted by your boss. He hands you a big new project. Are you going to complain or are you going to say thank you because you understand that this is your opportunity to demonstrate that you have the competence and the capacity and the skills to move to the next level. It just depends on your intention. And then, you know, find your scene. If you like a certain type type of guy, find out where they hang out. Maybe there are social clubs, pickle ball courts, run clubs, uh where where are they circulating and then make yourself a regular there. People want what they see every day. So you can date around the scene and then once you find, okay, I like what's going on here and I like the people I'm interacting with, make yourself a regular. It will only be a matter of time if you've positioned yourself properly before things start to move.

>> What does the future of dating and relationships look like? Are we going to see AI? Are we going to see robot rel, you know, robot spouses?

>> We already are.

>> We're seeing robot spouses right now.

>> People are marrying AIs in Japan. It might have started here already. You know, I guess it would be kind of a performative marriage here, not a legal one. I think the same thing in Japan. But yes, it's wild right now. It's hard to predict what's going to happen in, you know, next year, let alone what's going to happen in 10. But yes, AI and robotics are going to change the sexual marketplace entirely. I made an episode about this. Everyone, whether they're single or married, their strongest intraexual competition within five years will be an AI.

>> Really?

>> It will not be.

>> And we'll be in relationships with

>> people already are. I mean, there's been more

>> I don't know anyone that is.

>> I don't know, man. Maybe there's been more than one documented case of people falling in love with chat GPT. And that doesn't even have a image associated with it. But how does that happen when let's say as a male you're you're you know the oxytocin where this is we're looking for sex. If you're looking for sex, how are you getting sex out of an AI? Oh, I mean I don't know for sure, but how do you get sex out of an AI? Uh there are virtual reality pornographies that are filmed in such a way that you put on a immersive head visor and you have a firsterson view of whatever is happening to you. With the advent of AI, you could film that once and then swap that with an infinite number of skins to make that woman exactly how you want her to look to change the tone of her voice. It will have a memory just like Claude or chat. It'll know your name. It'll know what you like and what you don't like. It will give you everything that you want and nothing that you don't. And especially if this is hooked up with some kind of tactile device, which those already exist as well. I mean, that's

>> Are we talking flesh light? What are we talking?

>> Uh, probably a more advanced flesh light. So, a flesh light, I think, is just a soft canister on some level, but yeah, you could have things that pulse in time with the video. I mean it it's and people will say, "Well, that's pathetic that you get." Yeah, but it's going to become more and more convincing and so it's going to trap more and more men, especially as the price of dating women gets higher and higher because women have just functionally disqualified the vast majority of men from consideration. And so men can say, "Well, hm, I could do the hard work of becoming a high value man over the course of 10 to 15 years and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't or all right, here's another two bucks and I'm going to get a new fantasy." I mean, it's like in Brave New World where everyone went to Felies and it was a full immersive pornographic experience. But to be honest, the people who are falling in love with AI are not men. They're women.

>> Really?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> Why do you think that is? Because what does chat provide? That emotional stimulation. Not necessarily stimulation, but it it it's the biggest co- in the history of humanity. Co- in like codependent, co-signatory. It's like you are always right to chat. Unless you explicitly instruct it repeatedly to challenge you, it's going to take your side no matter what. Your version is the only version it will ever know and it will tell you exactly what you want to hear which creates an emotional echo chamber. So the women feel heard, they feel validated and they begin to fall in love with that experience and it does so uniquely for that individual person. So yeah, that's happened repeatedly repeatedly. This crazy new world we're living in. It is. But it goes to show that these are the things that men and women differentially want. And if they can't get them from other people, they're going to find other solutions to those problems because they're not going to stop wanting the things that they want. Dr. Orion Sarban, thank you so much for being on the show.

Well, this was great, man. Thank you for the opportunity to come and share some of my ideas with your audience. Thank you.