How to Treat Men Better - Alison Armstrong

Alison Armstrong is a relationship coach, speaker, and author. Are modern gender dynamics leaving men feeling ‘castrated’? While men are often blamed for today’s social problems, far less attention is given to how shifting expectations of women and relationships may also shape male identity. What role do women play in this dynamic—and how can it be improved? Expect to learn how important it is for women to seem impressed or giddy or appreciative of their partner, how women can appear more receptive or appreciative, why men are being emasculated by women, how women can stop castrating men and much more… - 0:00 The Search for Heaven on Earth 5:28 Are Men Really As Simple As They Seem? 14:53 Why Safety Shapes Women’s Choices 25:14 The Twelve Foundations of True Compatibility 31:03 The Four Traits That Make Women Irresistibly Charming 40:02 Why Men Thrive on Being Needed 52:04 Are Independent Women Emasculating Men? 01:02:57 Surrender vs. Submission: The Trust Dilemma 01:14:42 When Your Needs Begin to Break the Relationship 01:24:08 How Women Accidentally Teach Men to Shut Down 01:36:22 The Hidden Triggers That Make Men Feel Small 01:56:54 Should Women Prioritise Taking Care of Men? 02:01:39 The Three Energies of the Attractive Man 02:15:41 Do All Babies Really Look Like Their Fathers? 02:26:37 The Actions That Earn Men the Most Love 02:38:36 Why Women Want Men Who Think Like Them 02:45:23 What's Next for Alison? - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Download Alison's E-Book: ⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/5983h4ke⁠⁠ (Click 'for ME' and use code AlisonGift 2025 at checkout) Find out more about Alison's programs: ⁠⁠https://tinyurl.com/4cd96kh5 Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  You asked why it is that I wanted to speak to you and that you were surprised that I would. I can't believe that you're surprised that I would want to speak to you. I think the stuff that I've learned about you and your work is, I think you're phenomenal. I think you're absolutely wonderful. I think the idea of working collaboratively to help women get more out of men, as in, treat men in a way that they want to be treated, that causes them to behave in the best way that they can, to serve their partner, to create this alchemy that ever refines and transcends and includes, I think is wonderful. I think it's fantastic.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  It's a privilege.

• 0:54Chris Williamson?

  What is it?

• 0:56Chris Williamson?

  What is it that you're trying to achieve with your work?

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Heaven on earth.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Love. People choosing love again and again and again over everything else. It's probably the easiest way to describe it.

• 1:14Chris Williamson?

  There's a lot of different routes to heaven on earth.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:19Chris Williamson?

  What's the one that you've chosen?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Oh, boy, there's so many ways to go with this. I would say the one that I've chosen has to do with paradigms. Exposing paradigms, revealing paradigms, reverse engineering, how, the way that a paradigm, every paradigm, makes certain things easy, simple, obvious, and makes other things impossible. And if the results that you want are impossible in the paradigm you're operating in, get a new one. invent a new one. And even trade them out.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Like, oh, this gives me access. Okay, let's go there. And...

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Well, since I started studying men in February of 1991, when I found out I was bringing out the worst in y'all, which was great news. I don't know if you've seen that in any of the content you've watched. This is the best news. Can I swear?

• 2:34Chris Williamson?

  You can swear as much as you'd like.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  Oh, good. We have a policy about swearing, and that is that we do.

• 2:41Chris Williamson?

  We are pro swearing. We are proudly pro swearing.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  But, but only because you can't separate truth from transformation. If you water down the truth, you water down transformation.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Oh, and you are molesting the truth by getting in the way by limiting people's ability to use language?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  Well, you water it down. And I'm all about potency. And so precision and potency, I think like an engineer, so reverse engineering. And then depending on the result you want, like there's such a thing as too potent for a particular result.

• 3:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's too refined, too condensed.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I love the word precision.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, or there's, um, in some cases, I, like I general, I'll generalize. I'll generalize and I'll swing the pendulum, the pendulum so people can find themselves. So it's purposely imprecise, right?

• 3:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, the best songs do that as well.

• 3:50Speaker 01

  The best?

• 3:50Chris Williamson?

  Songs, music songs. I think there's a degree, I think there's a degree of vagueness in lyrics. So for a long time, just because I hadn't thought about it enough, I assumed there was nothing that could be said in a song that couldn't be said in a book or a podcast. Because I have way more words. I'm way more precise. I can explain, I can revisit, I can loop back, I can come from a different angle. But there's tons of stuff that you can say in songs, regardless of the fact there's a melody. There's stuff that you can say, there's a better way to say it. There's stuff that you can say in poetry that I can't say on a podcast.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:26Chris Williamson?

  You go, well, the poem is limited by its pentameters and the syllables and the phrases. And how is that the case? Well, because.

• 4:36Chris Williamson?

  The vacuum, the absence of explanation allows people to inject themselves into the story and it sucks them in. So the purposeful vagueness resonates.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Well, that's why Keys to the Kingdom and the Queen's Code and the sequel to the Queen's Code, which will be the King's Code. That's why they're, like, there's sex in those books, but it's vague. The more explicit you are in a sex scene, then people are judging, like, do I want that or not that? You just leave it, just broad breaststrokes, and then everybody finds themselves in there. They fill in their own pictures and then it can resonate and, yeah, can get through.

• 5:26Chris Williamson?

  A man easy to please.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  How rigorously are you using the word please?

• 5:36Chris Williamson?

  However it lends for you.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Okay, all right, we'll go in then. So there's please and there's pleasure. And when men talk about pleasing women, they're talking about causing pleasure. Thank goodness, that's how you mean it. For women, which I assert is from being the smaller and weaker gender, by virtue of the

• 6:21Speaker 01

  hormones that kick in at 21 days of gestation, if you're destined to have ovaries, or sometimes I call them undescended testicles.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  We're just always going to be that way. The physical strength is a function of testosterone. And so because of that, and if you think of millennia of survival, mostly depended on physical strength. Earth has a physical paradigm. There's physical dangers. It's, hmm, need the brawn. And so, and it's lasted all this time. And I, I mean, you know, I've talked to thousands and thousands, thousands of women. And I would call it a human instinct, except for what I've been working on for about the last five years is,

• 7:21Speaker 01

  how many survival instincts are consistent in humans, but they're not human? Like, we share survival instincts with herd and pack animals, with herd or prey, pack or predators. So many of our behaviors are consistent with that, including status. Like, the status determines survival. You gotta, you gotta find it, build it, protect it, find your place that you want to be in the herd or the pack that's consistent with the amount of accountability that you want.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Most people think of status as power, but ultimately, it's accountability, the level of survival. And so we have all these, all these behaviors, and pleasing is one of them. And for women, we're terrified of being displeasing. We strive to please and to avoid displeasing. And we're watching you so closely, so closely, to see...

• 8:42Speaker 01

  What's pleasing and what's not pleasing. The cableman within has been tracking you since the moment you walked through the door. And you laughed at something. It's like, oh, okay, I did that. Like, just like noticing. And you laughed when I laughed. And then I went and told you about the eyelashes. So it's a constant. It's a, you could think of it as it's a macro program and it's running in the background. How about now? How about now? Is he pleased? Is he pleased? Oh, was he displeased just then? And we'll actually act upon it.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Your expressions, your gestures, your tone of voice are cues to us to how to change and adapt so that you'll save me. Because we don't know who men really are. We think you're only going to save the women you're pleased by. And if the tiger arrives now and we've just had an argument, right? Oh, shit, I'm gonna die. That's what it seems like. And so one of the things this makes us really sensitive to is preferences. We're just, we're just to suck for what your preferences are.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And we remember them. And we think we're paying attention to your preferences because we love you. And so if you really loved me, you would be paying attention to mine. You would remember which drink I chose. Including that when I chose the other one, I chose the blueberry, right? And it's, I mean, it's just one of a thousand ways that we expect a man to be like a woman. That you'd be tracking my preferences. You would hear all the hints as a request. You would hear criticism as a request, a complaint as a request.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Why didn't you do that as a request that would cause you to act? And when it doesn't, we draw all these conclusions that would be what would be true for us. You didn't act upon that, so you must not care about me. It never occurs to us, it wasn't actionable.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  That comment did not speak to the Action Command Center at all. It has nothing to do with how you feel about me.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  So when you say, "Please," are men easy to please?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  There are women who've spent their entire lives trying to please men. And you're not that hard to please.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  It's just not worth much. You don't...

• 11:44Speaker 01

  The point in a man's life for what he cares most about is being pleased?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  That's like, "All the hunting's done, all the building's done, all the accomplishing's done, all the animals have been caught and killed and butchered. So now we're gonna pay attention to what type of beer do we want?" But it's... That comes after everything that men are driven to do. Everyone's... We've created everything, we've protected everybody, we've provided for everybody. Oh, yeah, no, I'd rather have a Dos Equis. It's so tiny, the meaning of being pleased to a man. But yet, women are zeroed in on being pleasing. And then they miss the substance.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  They miss...

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I mean, would a man rather be pleased or empowered?

• 12:44Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Would a man rather be pleased or admired? Would a man rather be pleased or accepted?

• 12:54Chris Williamson?

  Would the same not be true for women if you offered them that task, that option?

• 13:05Speaker 01

  I wish women could be that clear. I mean, that was easy for you, right? That was, that was an easy, those were all easy.

• 13:13Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  So easy.

• 13:14Chris Williamson?

  All my chips are on one.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  So obvious, yes. Unfortunately, we, because of the meaning we attach to it, we want it all. We want you to strive to meet my preferences and my needs and honor my values without me really talking to you about what that would look like. And of course, the mischief maker of all, meet all my expectations without me having to tell you anything.

• 13:50Chris Williamson?

  It's a surprise that anybody's able to have a functioning relationship at all.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Well, I've been accused of laughing too much, you know, in an interview. Why is she laughing so much? I have to laugh. I, I mean, we have a principle in our company. We have a sense of humor about it all. I have to because we're doomed. We, we, I, a surprise? It's a miracle. We have opposing instincts. We, we seeks, the way I seek safety and you're likely to seek security, you, men only use the word the safety when they're talking about, okay, my family's safe, or you're safe to

• 14:39Speaker 01

  talk to. That's what men will say. She's safe to talk to. The rest of the time, you don't pay attention to safety. You pay attention to being secure and it's fact-based. It's not a feeling.

• 14:53Chris Williamson?

  Can you delineate between safety and security for me?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Some people would use them interchangeably, but I pay a lot of attention to the words "menus." And as I just said, I've only heard men use the word "safe" in regards to "safe to talk to." And my family's safe. Everybody's safe. Like the fires in Los Angeles. How are you? Everyone's safe. And and and security is based on a

• 15:32Speaker 01

  there's usually facts involved in security. Yeah, I'm secure. I've got this much money in the bank. I've got this track record. I'm respected by these people. I have these people owe me favors.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  What are my connections? What are all my resources? Right? This is my influence. Okay, we're good. We're good. We're on track. It's gonna turn out. And

• 16:02Speaker 01

  and women who use the word "safe" a lot and it's hard to convey, but we're always paying attention to safety. It's a constant. It's one of the estrogen creates a different kind of vision in women than in men. Hunting vision versus gathering vision. And part of that gatherer's vision is always monitoring safety. And for us and for children, for example, we're

• 16:36Speaker 01

  constantly monitoring safety. And it's a feel-safe. It's not so much fact-based. It's a feel-safe. And

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I remember

• 16:49Speaker 01

  my late husband, when he came to our Understanding Women course, and he started to get it. Living with me didn't always have him get it, even though he was my he was my prime guinea pig. Right? And whenever we'd blow up the lab, he'd, when it was all cleaned up, he'd say, "This is gonna be in a workshop."

• 17:18Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  And and I'd say, "If you're willing." And he would say,

• 17:26Speaker 01

  If it'll make a difference. And oh, you got so much acknowledgement. We need to sit in the back of the Understanding Women workshop. And I'm teaching men to understand women. And the women are learning to understand themselves at the same time. They didn't know this about themselves. It took about.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  I'd been studying men, I think, for about 12 years. By the time I realized I could translate a woman into a man's reality. And but he he got it. And he got this thing like.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Greg Greg is was a car guy. Right, he left me three convertibles.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Included including his favorite, the Porsche. And and so moving in and out of traffic. And that was just fun for him. But when he found out about women's peripheral vision and that when he would like move into a space, it occurs like that car is going to hit me on the passenger side. Or there's studies that show the faster an object's going, the bigger the difference between a man's ability to track it and a woman's ability to track it.

• 18:45Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, so so he would be. He would be approaching and just slide over. Remember, we're coming, but we're just come out of Las Vegas towards LA. And he's slide over. And I'm sitting there and I'm having this terror reaction. And I'm trying to fight it with facts. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Let's be factual. He's never hit a truck, never in all these years. He's never hit a truck. He's never hit a truck.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  While my body is going. We're gonna die.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  So I'm not sure how we got there.

• 19:32Chris Williamson?

  Safety and security.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yes, so if I'm pleasing you, then I'm feeling safe.

• 19:40Chris Williamson?

  Because there's no way that somebody, there's no way that a man who is pleased by you would not also look out for your safety.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  We think that.

• 19:53Chris Williamson?

  That's the.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  We think that, but it's, there's so many things that women trust too much, including trust. But one of the things we trust too much is connection. So we feel safe when we feel connected, when we're resonating, when we're like, okay, you're with me. We have this thing going on. Like the first time you went like that, and it was like, ah, the reaction in my body to you doing that was just.

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Everything's gonna be all right. Okay, we're connected.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  But again, we're.

• 20:37Chris Williamson?

  I didn't do it for you, but I'm glad it had that effect on you.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  I assumed it was real.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  But we're constantly monitoring it. So in the next moment, are we still connected? Are we still connected? But what I mean by trust too much is a woman will think, like women in sales are mystified when a man doesn't buy. But we had such a great connection. You know, he doesn't ask her to marry him. But we have such a great connection, we should get married. Wouldn't she, like, anything that you don't say yes to, when we have a great connection is, it's shocking. We, we think it should count for more than it does.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Way more. Like interviewing men, 12 things that make a person the right person to commit to, the right person to marry. Love and connection are not in the list of 12.

• 21:37Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  They don't show up. Oh, we have a great connection. No, there's 12 things and they're all factual. They're all practical. They're all, men are so much smarter about commitment than women are. And yet you're accused of being non-committal. No, a whole other myth to blow up. I was talking to Ryan about it. Y'all are naturally committal.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Testosterone creates single focus. Single focus is commitment. Specific destination, result.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  A goal. I mean, you pick it and your brain screens out everything irrelevant. Be really interesting to know what you came and focused on for today.

• 22:33Chris Williamson?

  Did I come and focused on for today?

• 22:42Chris Williamson?

  So I have a tendency, like a lot of insecure overachievers might do,

• 22:51Chris Williamson?

  to focus on control, planning, reduce down the optionality of the future so that I know exactly how things are going to go. That makes me feel, that makes me feel quite secure.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  You want to blow that one up?

• 23:10Chris Williamson?

  Has this turned into a fucking therapy session? I've inverted this into a therapy session or what?

• 23:15Speaker 01

  It's not therapy because it's not personal.

• 23:17Chris Williamson?

  I understand.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  It's human.

• 23:19Chris Williamson?

  Let me, let me just finish that one out. I would love for you to

• 23:21Speaker 01

  Please, I

• 23:22Chris Williamson?

  blow me apart in any case.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  I apologize for interrupting.

• 23:23Chris Williamson?

  Oh, no, no, you interrupt away.

• 23:27Chris Williamson?

  I don't know what it is. I've done a thousand, over a thousand episodes now on the show and sometimes I turn up with a real, a real focus that's something that I want to get out of this episode. And today, and because I'm trying to

• 23:44Chris Williamson?

  Push my limits of discomfort around lots of patterns that have been around for a very, very long time. I really wanted this to be emergent. I really wanted to see what, what comes out of this. How's it feel to be in the room with Alison? Like, how do I, how do I feel around her? And what am I interested in? And I don't need to try and control. Oh, well, because in the back of my mind, there's a bit of me that says, well, I've still got the open loop around the please men thing. And she said that that's not what's most important. So I need to go back to that at some point and I need to say, okay, please, men isn't what's most important. Da, da, da, da, da, da. Let's go through that. Well, she's just opened up this really lovely window about the 12 things that you need in order to choose whether someone's the right partner. So we need to go back to that. But she's also got this window open, which is that she needs to blow open my desire for security.

• 24:27Chris Williamson?

  So I'm like, you know, I've got this branching tree that's sort of getting very tentatively. But I'm also just, I really, really wanted to get comfortable with just sitting in the flow and, and doing that too. So I'm, I'm trying to balance both. My intention coming in was, was to just really sort of sit and see where you want it to go. I trust you. I genuinely trust you. And I think we were going to have an interesting conversation, no matter what, no matter how weevy it gets or how much it meanders and lists around.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:59Chris Williamson?

  I, I want, I want to hear these 12 things. I think the, the 12, it's too big of an open loop for me. I'm sorry. My old pattern's coming back in to get me.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  You put a pin in it.

• 25:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things where it's putting pins in.

• 25:15Chris Williamson?

  What are the 12 things that people should decide whether a relationship is compatible or not based on? Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now, because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition. And that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics and whole food ingredients in a single drink. Now they've taken it a step further with AG1 Next Gen, the same one scoop, once a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials. In those trials, it was shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels in just three months and increase healthy gut bacteria. By 10 times, even in people who already eat well. They've upgraded their formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients,

• 26:00Chris Williamson?

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• 26:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I wouldn't say there shoulds. It's what I've learned men look for.

• 26:33Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  That make someone the right person. Okay, so we've got.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  So many things you put pins in. Okay, I'm gonna rattle these off without explanation, which is very hard for me to do.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Getting to the point, like being concise, to me, it's like you sound cool, like when you say these things. But it doesn't serve people.

• 27:09Chris Williamson?

  Understand.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  It doesn't necessarily give them access to something, but I'm gonna try it anyway. Okay, let's see if I can remember them all. It's a long time since I led or watched that course. Okay, so one thing, let's just start here. Doesn't emasculate him too much?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Too much changes over time.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  In your stage, see?

• 27:38Chris Williamson?

  Ah, you're doing it. You're doing it. Come on, Allison, let's move on to number two.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:43Chris Williamson?

  God, you only got one in. A one-twelfth of the way there. Fucking 8%.

• 27:47Speaker 01

  But it changes.

• 27:48Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  What's not too much to a prince is way too much to a king.

• 27:53Chris Williamson?

  Stop it, stop it.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Okay, stop it.

• 27:55Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't emasculate him too much?

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Too much.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  She likes him.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Genuinely likes him.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  There's volumes on that.

• 28:16Speaker 01

  Sex. There's enough communication in sex. There's enough exploration in sex that he thinks that he could do this with this one person for the rest of his life. So enough variety, right here between us. Okay, wait, we can do this. It doesn't have to be perfect or...

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  All right, I'm gonna drop this one.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  He thinks he can give her what he thinks she needs.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  That's a cliff.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  How he figures out what she needs is a whole topic.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Their values,

• 29:24Speaker 01

  as in where they come from, are compatible.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  They don't have to be exactly the same. They can even be complementary.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Their futures

• 29:42Speaker 01

  have to be in the same direction.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Are we headed the same direction?

• 29:52Speaker 01

  All of these are standalones, by the way. Each one of them matters. Someone could be 10 out of 12. No, we're not gonna do this.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Oh, Polly.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Ah, um, communication. So sex is one area of communication, but communication in general um is productive.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  It's got to solve problems.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Got to identify problems, solve problems. Um. On the same team. The ki-

• 30:40Speaker 01

  The way a man put it was when there's a problem, she doesn't make me the problem.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Right, we stay on the same team, no matter what, we stay on the same team. Very hard for women to do. Okay?

• 30:58Speaker 01

  That's all I can remember right now.

• 30:59Chris Williamson?

  That's okay, eight of twelve, eight of twelve, eight of twelve is good. Um.

• 31:07Chris Williamson?

  I see, I see, uh, my friends and myself in, in all of those.

• 31:16Chris Williamson?

  There we go.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  She's attractive to him. Which women don't understand at all.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  He, she's attractive.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  What we would call making sense of men, both sexually attractive and he's charmed and enchanted by her. She's special.

• 31:38Chris Williamson?

  I think women wildly underestimate how much men are attracted to charm.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Well, another topic, the four most charming qualities in a woman.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  You want to know?

• 31:59Chris Williamson?

  Bring it on, let's keep weaving this thing, this tree's huge, it's a redwood, let's keep.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah, it's, it's, it's an Aspen forest, um, which is what I live in, yes.

• 32:09Chris Williamson?

  Four most charming qualities.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  In a woman.

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  In a woman.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Number one. Self-confidence.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  It's hilarious because I've had panels of men say it's probably different for other men, but for me, it's self-confidence. And they all say self-confidence. Um, I've unpacked that for a while. What does that mean? Uh, yeah, like about 20 years. Uh, the second would be authenticity.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  And men almost always use the word courage. When she has the courage to be direct, when she has the courage to speak up, when she has the courage to be who she really is, when she has the courage to say what she needs, when she has the courage to share her dreams and authenticity in...

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And so much of being a woman is about pretense. Seriously, we're taught to pretend. Pushed... What was it called, that bra? The Wonder Bra.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Um, laugh at jokes that you don't think are funny. I mean, so much of being a woman, we're literally taught to pretend in order to be pleasing. And this is where we miss the mark. Men would much other have authenticity than someone who's pretending in order to be pleasing. Now, will you take it? Eh, okay, it's better than nothing, but...

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Not, not worth a whole lot.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  So, self-confidence, authenticity, passion.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Passion, which is... It ends up in the domain of marriage as well. She's... The way that men put it is she's gotta have something outside of me, outside of us, that feeds her. So she's bringing something to us. Um...

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Can I go down this way a little bit?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  It doesn't seem to matter what she's passionate about, as long as there's a passion. A shared passion, though, is how cool is that? Right? Yeah. And

• 34:39Speaker 01

  women wish that men would listen to them talk longer.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  But they don't know that how long you can listen to us talk depends on how we're being. If we're complaining.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Give me about 30 seconds. If we're talking about something we're passionate about, and it's actually been measured, that that being with a woman, who's obviously, I've had a show of hands. Men spend two days with me and I go, okay, how many of you have a greater sense of well-being than when you arrived? They'll raise their hands. It's a fact of a woman being passionate. You guys actually, it can be measured. You'll have a testosterone spike, which is the well-being hormone. And so, yeah, women's gotta have a passion and be passionate. And it's really cute how men talk about.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, my wife collects ceramic cows. I don't know why, but it's her passion. So I'll spend my time off buying her a ceramic cow. Like, it becomes worth it. And then the fourth one, the fourth one is the most difficult for women. Because, and they don't know why it's so difficult, because self-confidence, authenticity, and passion all shift how a man's being.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  And it's the opposite of sexual attraction, which

• 36:26Speaker 01

  Self-confidence crosses over.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  But then there's shiny hair, which is an indicator of being fertile. There's a shapely body. All kinds of definitions of that. Men have no control over their imprint of the shape that gets them.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Sensuality, being present to the pleasure your own senses are bringing you, which causes men to think of the pleasures they would like to bring you. And then the most, the most is sexual energy. And it's the, the way I used to say it was it's the energy a woman puts out when she wants to put out.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  And so, but these cause a man to want to take.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Give me that. I gotta tap that.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  One of the things I got in touch with about 15 years ago was like, if we were paying attention, not just subconsciously.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Do you like dogs?

• 37:43Chris Williamson?

  I love dogs.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  You love dogs. Have you trained a dog?

• 37:45Chris Williamson?

  Tried to.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Tried to. So, so as in humans, we had the limbic system, right? Which is always a split second ahead of the prefrontal cortex. Right? So this is the impulse to do, and then this is choice. This can override. Well, a dog, I have a border collie. And when he was a puppy, I started training him as if he were a horse, which proved really effective. And he, he, his body would be shaking. And I realized that the shaking came from impulse override, impulse override, impulse override. And he, he wanted to jump up on me so badly. And he knew not to.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  It's just shaking, shaking, shaking. Well, what women don't know, and it's one of the crazy things about how much they lead with sexuality, is that a man is having the same reaction, that the impulse is grab it, grab it, take it, carry it away. That's the impulse. And then he's overriding that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. To whatever degree he has to, depending on how antagonized the most primitive instinct on the planet. But it's why women feel really safe around gay men. There's no, there's

• 39:15Speaker 01

  no override. There's no vibration. There's no, there's no tension. You're just, wow, you're just so easy to be with. But meanwhile, we, we exacerbate what makes it hard to be with it, with a straight man, because of how much we think sexual attraction is what matters. But this is what causes a man to want to take. And these other qualities, charming, is what causes a man to want to give.

• 39:47Chris Williamson?

  What was the fourth charming quality?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Haven't said it yet. Good job. Receptivity. Because the first three make him want to give. But if she's not receptive, she's caused him to want to give. And then she's like, no, I can do that myself. No, I don't need that. And I'll prove it to you. I don't need anything you got. What? That's being a man? No way. Am I going to be receptive to that? You want to give me your opinion? You want to teach me what you know? You want to, you want to protect me from a danger that you see that I'll argue against?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Men are looking for women who are receptive, both to who they are and and what they want to give. They need to give. Men need to give. Women need to give. We need to give.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  But both men and women suck at receiving. Suck at it. It's one of the best skills to work on.

• 41:08Chris Williamson?

  You say that appreciation is a form of oxygen. For men. How? You've probably heard experts like Dr. Rhonda Patrick talk about the benefits of omega threes. They reduce. Hello. Omega threes. There they are. They reduce brain function. No, they don't. They support brain function. Maybe I should take more. They support brain function, reduce inflammation, improve heart health, and are backed by hundreds of studies. But here's the thing. All omega threes are not made the same. Most brands cut corners. They use cheap fish oil, skip purity testing, throw in fillers and call it a day. But with Momentus, you know you're getting the highest quality omega threes on the market. They're NSF certified for sport and they're tested for heavy metals and purity. So you can rest easy knowing anything that you take

• 41:52Chris Williamson?

  from Momentus is unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. Best of all, Momentus offers a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally. Right now you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentus.com/momentwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. How important is it for women to seem impressed or giddy or appreciative or receptive of their partners?

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Well, I call it peacocking. Um, I remember when I realized that my soon to be boyfriend was doing it. Um, cause I, I do, I was with my husband for twenty years, so. Ay, ay, ay, I had to relearn everything after he died. And, uh, so a man is attracted to a woman. He thinks she's special. There's some, you guys are so perceptive, you can see it across her room. Oh, who's that? Oh, she's special. Right now, there's something at stake. Now there's a nervousness now being turned down. Ouch, right? And so he'll try to impress.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  But if she's not impressed, you guys know. If you can't impress her, your chances of making her happy? That's number ten.

• 43:34Chris Williamson?

  We're gonna end up excavating the remaining two.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  The remaining, yeah. Yeah, he knows he can make her happy. Um, huge, huge. Men marry men they, women they know they can make happen. Men don't marry women that they love, but they know they can't make her happy. They, um, if they can't impress her, like, oh, this is a nonstarter. If she's not impressed, which is like this much. How am I ever gonna make her happy?

• 44:08Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, I certainly know for me, the sense of being impressive is a wonderful motivator.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:18Chris Williamson?

  Do more of that. Good boy points.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  Points. Men play for points. It's not, I don't know, good boy. Good boy be minor, but it could be, you know, patronizing or matronizing, right? But, but good job, good job, or wow. Or.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  There's a, have you, have you listened to or read The Queen's Code?

• 44:54Chris Williamson?

  Yes, yeah, read.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  Okay, so, um, do you remember the line in there where Mike says to his wife Karen, "I'm always trying to impress you."

• 45:09Speaker 01

  And then she's like, "Then why don't you take out the trash?"

• 45:13Speaker 01

  He's like, "That would impress you?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  Well, that's our job. I mean, pleasing a man is, is, is tiny, like we talked about in the beginning, but to be impressed by him?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  He would so much rather that you were impressed by him than he was pleased by you.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  You know, we're getting towards the bullseye here, not like

• 45:48Chris Williamson?

  How do you advise women to cultivate

• 45:55Chris Williamson?

  more receptiveness, more, uh, displays of appreciation and being impressed?

• 46:03Speaker 01

  I can answer that, but I'm gonna start in a place that seems like I might not be, okay?

• 46:09Speaker 01

  So,

• 46:11Speaker 01

  this has showed up in the last year or so, as I started letting The King's Code come through. You know, I didn't write the books, right? Okay, so,

• 46:31Speaker 01

  women have an instinct that anything important, we have to tell you when and where we were when it happened.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  They're all located in place and time, the important things. So I was in my car driving to Wyoming when the King's Code started downloading. On the day that I put on my calendar that I was gonna start typing it. And it didn't get the memo that my daughter needed me, I was going to Wyoming, I'm not in front of my laptop. It just came, it just started coming. And what I was shown was how men and women both are always scanning for strength, searching, hunting for strength, scanning for strength, depending on the brain.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  And women are scanning for strength that tells me you'd make a good provider, you'd make a good protector, you could save me from the tiger, you could make sure I don't starve, and, oh, with those eyelashes, I want to have your babies. I have kids with long eyelashes. So it's cute to watch. You're kind of blushing.

• 47:51Chris Williamson?

  It's charming.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  It's adorable.

• 47:54Chris Williamson?

  It's a delightful compliment.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So, so we're scanning, procreate, protect, provide, procreate, protect, provide. And what we don't know is that what, that men are searching, and they're searching for strength, but what they're looking for, depending on the context, and let's talk about mating, men are scanning for complementary strength. Complementary strength. The way one man put it to me was, Tom Brady is not looking for another All-Star quarterback. Tom Brady is looking for Jerry Rice.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Someone whose strength literally altered the possibilities of his own game. That's what a man's looking for in a wife. That she has complementary strengths that alter his possibilities. I'd be so much better off with her. I so should be with her. And but women don't know that you're doing that. And this horrible thing happens, which is why I'm more on the side of age differences because it can happen less. Not knowing that she's been picked for complementary strengths, then she criticizes him for not being strong the way she is.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  When what he needs from this person he admires for her complementary strength is that she's admiring his complementary strengths. This is what I bring. Why do you keep expecting me to bring what you bring? This is what I bring. It'd be like Tom Brady being pissed at Joey Rice that he can't throw a ball. So women will, they'll be picked for complementary strength, not knowing it, and then they'll attack him, they'll criticize him for not being like her, and then instead of seeing his strength and being impressed by it.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I mean, it's intoxicating in a good way to be admired by someone you admire. And it's, but it's like something happened to us. Probably in that vortex that I grew up in, a Barbie doll meets feminism. Very, very tough being born in 1960. I mean.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  You gotta get a man, keep a man, try to make him act right. But never need him for anything, anything he can do, I can do better. Oh, yeah, that, this was my message.

• 50:55Chris Williamson?

  I think it's still the message now.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  It is, yes, you have to have thigh gap and a man.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  But don't need him for anything. But he's got to make more money than you. Because how are you going to be better off with him?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Which is another part of the question you're asking. How can women get better at this? Is to pay attention to what you need from men.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  That even if you can do it. Right, even if you can do that, would you let him contribute that to you? And, and even to go looking for, I gave this assignment to this woman. She's like, I have never met a man stronger than me, ever. And she's in our Smart Singles Program. And I was like, okay, here's your assignment. I want you to, for every man you encounter, I want you to have the question at the top of your head, like a treasure hunt. It's all about listening is all a treasure hunt. Most people, the way they listen, they filter out all the treasure. What do I think about that is how most people listen? So I want you to have the question at the top of your head, how is this man strong?

• 52:12Speaker 01

  And when you've gotten used to that question, and every man you meet, you see strength in him in some color of the rainbow. Then move on to, how is this man stronger than me? Scary, it was so scary for her, she's like, oh, said, yeah, go looking. How is this man stronger than me?

• 52:33Speaker 01

  And I said, after you've got that dialed in, then switch the question, how is this man stronger than me? And I like it.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  If you go looking for that, the whole world of men changes.

• 52:48Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Who, what you can see who men are instead of seeing how he's not acting like a woman. And so what's wrong with him and what's wrong with me that he won't

• 53:00Speaker 01

  treat me the way I clearly deserve to be treated. Oh, maybe I don't deserve it. Let's work on that. Oh, that's a nightmare. Whole other places we could go, but um.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're, we, it's a fundamental difference, actually, in men and women. Where our brains are wired to find flaws. What's the imperfection? What's the flaw? What needs to be fixed? And we think when you're looking at me, that when you're looking at us, that you're doing that. Women don't know that men are fed by beauty. So men's brains hunt beauty, sort for beauty. You can find beauty in anyone.

• 53:48Speaker 01

  It doesn't have to be perfect for you to find beauty. Oh, that nose, those lips, like, like it just.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Who wouldn't want to be fed, right? And especially when if you're

• 54:03Speaker 01

  My grandpa, he would say, I'm surrounded by pulchritude.

• 54:11Chris Williamson?

  I don't know that word.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  It's a, it's, it's, it's an ugly word for beauty.

• 54:17Chris Williamson?

  Okay, alright.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Pulchritude, yeah.

• 54:22Chris Williamson?

  The

• 54:24Chris Williamson?

  desire of men to feel needed and useful. Uh, I think is really interesting. Um, and it is certainly coming into conflict with a modern environment that is teaching men, uh, teaching women that, uh, men are optional as opposed to, uh, mandatory investments in that way. I wonder whether career women who have spent years cultivating masculine energy in their job. Will also want to be looked after.

• 55:03Chris Williamson?

  Make it a difficult situation for for the guys because women can behave in a hyper independent way like you don't need looking after. So they get treated as such by men. So the very thing that they want is the very thing that they signal they don't need. And if men think, well, you know, I've tried to do these things and she didn't really seem that impressed and she's adamant that she's got it herself in any case and she doesn't really need me all that much, I'll just stop offering it. I saw this, um, I saw this really fascinating Instagram reel a few months ago that said, in a relationship, men start off treating a woman the way they want to be treated.

• 55:45Chris Williamson?

  And after a while, treat the woman the way that they have been treated by her. And this like, I want, I want, I want, but I'm also really trainable. I'm super, super trainable. And after a while, this is what I've been crafted into. That was what I wanted. And this is what it seems like you wanted.

• 56:08Chris Williamson?

  And, uh, yeah, this challenge that women have here of, uh,

• 56:18Chris Williamson?

  blending a culture that says you should be as independent and reliant, self reliant as possible with men need to be needed. They need to feel impressive and admired and useful. And you go, well, if I'm just optional, if I'm a, a, a, a ketchup packet on your value meal of life, it doesn't make me feel very good.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  Okay, you just said volumes.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  The place that you started.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  If a woman has the attitude, "What do I need men for? What do I need men for?" My assignment is answer that question.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Don't ask it, answer it. So what do I need men for?

• 57:23Speaker 01

  It's another treasure hunt. What do I need men for?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  It's a great thing to answer and to look and to actually see there are answers. If I'm not proving I can do everything, what do I need men for? And

• 57:46Speaker 01

  I've done a lot of informal surveys. We used to, I was leading workshops

• 57:53Speaker 01

  24 to 26 times a year for 20 years. And so I'd end up in mostly all women for a very long time and then co-ed. And I'd do these surveys and I'd, I'd ask the women, "Okay, so think about how many women that, that you, that you know are for you? They're your friends. How many women does it take to make you feel as safe as one man you know is for you?" And I've watched them and they're thinking and thinking and thinking. And then they start to shake their heads.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  There is no number of women that makes a woman feel as safe as one man

• 58:48Speaker 01

  that she knows is for her.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  And this is why this thing we were talking about sexual attraction versus charmed and enchanted. If a woman is leading with sexuality and bringing out take energy in men,

• 59:04Speaker 01

  they're either scary or she's sure she can manipulate them, but she's still not going to feel safe. Where if he's charmed and enchanted by her, which causes a man to care, which is, you guys closely guard caring. Something else I learned from men, you know it's your biggest expenditure of energy. And it has this paradox, which is another thing I love about you all. You're the walking resolution of paradoxes. All the time. Women think men are simple. Men even say men are simple. No. No.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Not caring can feel like freedom. Ah, I don't care. I don't care. I'm free. I'm free. But not caring can turn into, I have no purpose. My life is shit. It's not for anything. Right? And then men have said, when a woman needs something from me, I have a purpose. It's just like, there's something really beautiful about it. You know, and I think of it like this, you're making those other, which I think of it like this. I go this way, I have providing, receiving, providing, receiving, providing, receiving. And this beautiful dance, if we're allowing for it, if we're feeding it.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  And you asked about appreciation. Appreciation is, it's feeding. It's feeding providers and providers are grateful to be received. You let me. I asked him once, why do you do so much for me? He said, because you let me. Oh, women aren't very good at letting men these days. Haven't been for a long time, letting men provide what is, what they're compelled to provide. And so, there's so much that's cattywampus and...

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  But the addictive thing is such tiny changes make such a huge difference. And like, I was teaching a course in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And we had just done that part about how many women make you feel as safe as one man. And this, and we were, we were finishing the workshop and people were sharing from their seats. And this young woman took a microphone and she announced to the whole room, she said, I am gay. So what that means, men, is it doesn't matter what you do, I'm not going to fall in love with you.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  But I want to say that still what she said about one of you making me feel safer than any number of women is true for me.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And then on the other side, this big man stood up, took the microphone and said, "It'd be fair to call me a redneck. And my daughter's marrying a woman." And they started to cry. But now I know from what that young lady just said that I still have something to give her. But tears coming down his red face, ah.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Another way I would put it, Chris, is that femininity is a gift to women from men.

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  That femininity is its own kind of strength. Feminine forms of power is own kind of magic, mystery. I learned all this from men, by the way. But as long as we're being the warrior, we're the warrior, we're the hunter. We're protecting ourselves, we're providing ourselves for ourselves. We have no energy left or space left to be feminine. Until we let ourselves be protected, that we entrust you, which involves information women don't impart.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Honey, what makes me feel really safe is, oh, I mean, you said trainable.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Decades ago, one of my first interviews by telephone was like, I was talking about how women have it backwards. What we take personally, we shouldn't, we don't take personally, we should. And she's, and the woman said, so like, women are dyslexic? They get it backwards? And it just popped out of my mouth. I said, yeah, if we treated men like gods instead of dogs, it would work much better.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  And then I apologized to a group of men for, I'm so sorry that if you live with a woman who treats the dog better than you. And there were men, I mean, you could see it on film, like the faces are just like, you could tell the ones. And like, but even, so, yeah, men are dogs. They're loyal. They want to bring you stuff. They're always happy to see you. They're so bummed when they, when they think they have it down. Good.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Okay, where are we going now?

• 1:05:13Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Uh, it's interesting. The direction of the arrow of causation.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:05:23Chris Williamson?

  Between these two things. I saw a tweet. A while ago.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Trying to jumpstart me.

• 1:05:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, I am riling you up. You haven't even had caffeine yet.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  The direction of causation? Like what? Someone who's obsessed with cause and effect?

• 1:05:37Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  The direction of causation?

• 1:05:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so I saw, I saw a tweet a while ago that said, uh, women love to submit. You just have to be him. And I think the suggestion here is that a woman's inability to be submissive or soften up or show needs is because their partner isn't doing something right. And it seems like you've kind of left both sides open a little bit at the moment. That femininity is a gift from men to women. That that is something that occurs because we were able to protect and provide and make them feel safe, maybe a little bit secure, but mostly safe.

• 1:06:16Chris Williamson?

  But also women's.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  I'm sorry. I had, as soon as you said, maybe a little bit secure, I was like, oh, yeah, that's what this is about.

• 1:06:25Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  Put a ring on it.

• 1:06:27Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Then I'm secure. You've promised all of your friends.

• 1:06:29Chris Williamson?

  That's a big statistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  That

• 1:06:35Chris Williamson?

  it's men's job, it's their gift, the femininity, I'm showing up, I'm protecting, I'm providing, et cetera, et cetera, but also that the receptivity of women, the preparedness to say, I

• 1:06:48Chris Williamson?

  I do need you. I want to need you. I want to be able to open up. I want to soften.

• 1:06:55Chris Williamson?

  I don't think, I, it, that that tweet. Got to me a little bit, women love to submit, you just need to be him. Because it laid, it laid at the feet of men, women's unpreparedness. It was almost like a, like a shit test. You heard of shit tests from pick up artist street? Do you know what these are? Okay, so supposedly during the flirtation stage, women would sort of throw little sort of neggy jokes around to see how a man would respond. It's kind of a test of your self-assuredness. Okay, yeah, women maybe do do that in a little bit of a way. It's like, I'll poke you a little bit and see how you respond. Are you able to stand up to this sort of a thing? And I get that. And I think that in the flirtation stage, that that's an interesting challenge.

• 1:07:38Chris Williamson?

  If you scale that across the rest of time throughout an entire relationship, on every different domain that you're trying to relate to your partner in, which is in order for you to submit, you have to be this never stopping, unrelenting, completely omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent force that is able to blast through. So well, women love to submit, you just have to be him. Is exactly the same as saying, my shortcomings are your fault.

• 1:08:10Chris Williamson?

  My unpreparedness to open up, my unpreparedness to be soft or to be gentle or to be submissive.

• 1:08:17Chris Williamson?

  That's not a me. That's your job to overcome.

• 1:08:22Chris Williamson?

  That doesn't sound very collaborative. I'm wondering, when it comes to the direction of the arrow of causation here, how you come to think about that with regards to needing.

• 1:08:35Chris Williamson?

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• 1:09:50Chris Williamson?

  There you go.

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  I want a dictionary.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  I want to look up the difference between submit and surrender.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Let me just put, I'll just say this, this way. In, in a certain context, I love to be ordered around.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Tell me what to do. I am a happy camper.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  In a particular context. Other than that.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  So submit. To, to me, submit has an element of putting up with. You're submitting like, like I, one of the things I teach is beware of demanding. Demanding doesn't work because the other person only has a choice to submit or resist.

• 1:11:10Chris Williamson?

  Interesting.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  And both will create resentment.

• 1:11:13Chris Williamson?

  I think with that,

• 1:11:16Chris Williamson?

  that is being used in the form of soften up or surrender, I think, is, is probably what that means. So you're right to say, do you really mean submit? You mean maybe submissive as in please take care of me. But not submit as in,

• 1:11:33Chris Williamson?

  okay, I submit. So I think you're right to call that out.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I worry about that and

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  the him part is an impossible ideal. Impossible.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Men have a saying that I didn't understand for the longest time. I'm only human. I didn't understand that I'm only human. And then I realized that women expect men to be omnipotent and omniscient. Omnipresent. Oh, omnipresent. Every time I look at you, you're there receptive to me looking back.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  And I realized, oh, that's what women are looking for in men. That you're all powerful, all knowing, all present. And men are going, but I'm only human. Oh, we really do judge men relative to what only God is supposed to be. And where there's a flaw, then.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm talking about this, but I gotta bring in this. Okay, do you remember very early on, I said, women trust too much?

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  So

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  I think men are much more discerning about this than women.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Women want to trust, have a blanket trust. They want to be able to trust you.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Period. I trust you. Early on, when you said, you trust me, I wanted to say, for what?

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Right, because because we just want a blanket trust, which most women mean that if I trust you, that means you're gonna meet every expectation of mine.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Can trust you to fulfill my stated and unstated expectations. To trust you to fulfill them even though you've never agreed to fulfill them. And, and, and that's, so we want to be able to trust you for everything. And if you do one little thing, now I can't trust you for everything. I can't trust you. So how would I ever surrender? How would I ever give up my autonomy and authority? How would I ever get on the same team and let you call it a play? For gosh sakes. Can you tell I love sports? And it's a great place to study, man.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Oh, it's such a great place. So it, so the, there's actually something people can look up. It's called the trouble, the trouble with trusting the opposite sex. And I start with the trouble with trusting, period. And how we want this blanket trust. And then there's a blanket violation. Instead of what I propose, what I assert is you can trust everyone. If you pay attention to what you can trust them for. I could trust my husband to eat chocolate every day, no matter what he said otherwise.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  When he died suddenly and the kids came and they wanted to clean out his office. It's been six and a half years. There are still mice finding Hershey's chocolates and leaving the foil behind. And so, but you can, what can I trust him for? And so part of the clarity that men and women both need if they're looking for a mate or a business partner, what do I need to be able to trust somebody for?

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Be able to trust them for, meaning they're trustworthy. They've proven that they're trustworthy for that. In order to have them be that important to me. In order to have my business in their hands, in order to have my life in their hands. What do I need to trust them for? And, and then find evidence before you commit. People commit way too quickly. The due diligence is like, oh, we have chemistry and I love him and, and he makes me feel wonderful and, and if I squint, you know, yeah, I'm getting everything I need. Let's not look too closely at that. I trust that he will eventually.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Once we get married and I start changing him. So the unreality around all this, it's primarily what we're doomed by. But besides opposing instincts, if we just were aware of opposing instincts and knew we had to negotiate opposing instincts. It, it can turn out, but being clueless about that, thinking men are a kind of woman and women are a kind of man. No, it's never gonna work out. So, so this surrender part over here, right? Has to do with trust. And what can I trust you for?

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  And just being a grown up, I can't trust you for everything. What do I need to be able to trust you for? What, okay, what do I see that I, I do trust you for that? And there's evidence, it's based on evidence that I can trust you for that. Okay, cool. Is there anything else that would make a huge difference in my life if I could also trust you for that? And, and that's the thing to have a conversation about. And what would it look like? What, what, what would that look like to be trusted for that? Most women don't trust.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Their husbands to load the dishwasher. Cause he's not gonna load it like her.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  He's gonna load it so there's clean dishes. Acceptably clean dishes.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  It's one of the questions about asking like,

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  you're gonna close the door like you have a party? Is that why everything has to be grouped just right?

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:18:11Speaker 01

  Did, oh, then there's this other part that you brought up, needs.

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  I've studied so long needs. When I, when I first found out I was bringing out the worst in men, right? And went looking.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  What I was sure of was that men either didn't care what I needed, or they were actively withholding it.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Like to get me.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  This was really my behavior in my first marriage. Actively withholding.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Oh, well, we have our son. Who's just like about six months younger than you.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  And, and then I found out men do care, really. They care about a woman.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  They care about what she needs, right? One of the 12 things he thinks he can give her what he thinks she needs. And, and I thought, okay, cool. They, they want us to give her what we need. Oh, big problem. They don't know what we need. They think they know what we need.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Things they think we need and men will project onto women their own needs. This is how men project orgasms onto women.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Please, can I just go to sleep?

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Sleep, I don't need that. So.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  So, okay, so they, men want us to have what we need. They're willing to do what it takes to give us what we need, but we have to tell them what we need. And when I started teaching women that, they're like, "But what if I don't know what I need?" And then I figured out a way for them to figure out what they need, which is awesome. It's like so logical. Well, first figure out what you want to be. What quality do you want to be? Well, then, what do you need in order to naturally be that quality? It's actually really, it's like magic. You can be anything you want to be. So then I, you know, I was doing this for years. And then this woman stopped me on a, on a break and said,

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  "There's something I need from my boyfriend, but he's not giving it to me." And I said, "Have you told him?" She said, "No." And I, and I said, "Why haven't you told him?" And she, that was a really fun snort. That was awesome.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  That was such a great snort.

• 1:20:55Chris Williamson?

  I've been practicing.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  And you were, you were, like, in a, like, like, right there in the microphone. So, so I said, "Why haven't you told him what you need?" That's what I've been, I mean, I started teaching women how to tell men what you need in 1995. And men thought it was ridiculous. How could you have a nine-step process? We're simple. And then I walked them through the nine-step process. They validated every part of the process, what would go wrong if they didn't do that. And you would have encountered it in The Queen's Code, Chapter Six. And so this, this woman, she's, when I asked her, "Why haven't you told him what you need?"

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  And she said, "'Cause I can't get over what I think about myself for needing that."

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  It's like, what? And it led to this whole study. I call it the point of view. I identified six different points of view that men and women have about what it means to need a particular thing in the first place.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  And that what it means to need something in the first place is what causes this lockdown. Don't tell. Don't tell. And there's, can I, can I show you? It'll take your imagination. So imagine a spectrum. And on this end of the spectrum, having a need is weak and pathetic.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  And then moving this way, it might be selfish and self-centered.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  Or next door would be, it's unevolved and immature.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  A grown up wouldn't need that. Transformed person wouldn't need that, right? And then it gets to justified and reasonable. Yeah, I could see why I would need that. That's reasonable.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  And then there's bothersome and annoying. Ah, ah. And this is here for a reason.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  And the end is entitled and deserved.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  I deserve that. From you. Right? And I was thinking about this before you arrived. I was thinking, entitled, entitled is a perfect word. I'm entitled. Because of my title, you owe me that. I'm your girlfriend. You owe me that. I just did a course on how even when they agree that you deserve it, it doesn't make it happen. But we think that if I think I deserve it and you think I deserve it, now it's gonna happen. Mm-mm. So what we saw, and it was so fun because you were talking about songs earlier, Alanis contributed to this.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  She was part of the weekend where I was distinguishing it with a bunch of people. And that basically what happens is wherever you are mostly live in regards to your needs, something has to work its way all the way over. Justified and reasonable might be expressed because that's an okay thing to need, but most things have to work all the way over to, I'm now convinced I deserve this and I've earned it and you owe me and I'm gonna demand it. And so there are a lot of needs that don't make the whole trip and so they never get told. They never get asked for.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  They might, they might break the surface, like the tip over there, in a complaint. But a complaint is not an ask. Are you with me so far?

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  So then serving groups of women, and then later on serving classrooms of men, most women will fall in their needs are justified and reasonable or entitled and deserved. The few that are bothersome and annoying, they just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. But then when they're dead in a ditch, they're pissed at the people who should have foreseen that. I mean, it's really, really interesting dynamic. There's a lot of high performers here. And then, and a lot of high performers here because they gotta keep earning what they need, right?

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  So then asking of men, like, because we do this whole thing for them to figure out, find out themselves, and we got a whole grade of what they say and all that stuff.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  About half the men ended up in their primary reaction to having a need is that it's weak and pathetic. They just don't need. Y'all are like Superman.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  Have you ever seen a Superman movie where he ate?

• 1:26:12Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  No? Slept?

• 1:26:15Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  No? No, you guys think you should be able to do anything and everything without sleeping, without eating, without being appreciated, without having enough sex, without...

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Right? And so needing anything, it means you're weak and pathetic and don't dare. The warrior is never gonna reveal a weakness. Never, ever. It'll be used against you. You guys are... It's another thing women are pissed at you about. You won't reveal yourself. Well, of course you won't reveal yourself. It'll be used against you.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  You're built to not reveal anything that can be used against you. Which is why men talk about what doesn't matter to them.

• 1:27:01Chris Williamson?

  There's a nobility in stifling desires. I think that's how men see it. Maybe not desires is quite the right word, but there's certainly a nobility in suppressing what you need.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it could be thought that way, that it's nobility, but if you just confront getting it out of your mouth, you'll see the fear. Like, no. Don't say that. It'll be used against you. And it's one of the things women want men to open up, but we always use it against you.

• 1:27:35Chris Williamson?

  How?

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  You're trainable. We'll teach you to not open up.

• 1:27:38Chris Williamson?

  How? How do women teach men not to open up?

• 1:27:41Speaker 01

  Well,

• 1:27:43Speaker 01

  there's several ways. One is that you tell me a truth about you. And it's, "Oh, it's so yummy. Oh, he told me something really special about him. Who can I tell?"

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  So for a woman that an admirable man, a strong man, a cool man, revealed something to me makes me important. Status, herd instinct. But it's only worth something if I can tell someone else.

• 1:28:17Chris Williamson?

  Tashadin.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Yes. So you'll reveal to us and we'll reveal to them. It's a betrayal from a man's point of view. That's a betrayal.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  But you'll find out that we did it because it'll come back around. The end with revealing intimate information. The other thing we'll do is we'll use it against you. So I used to be really cautious. In 1995, when he started a workshop, it was called Celebrating Men, Satisfying Women. And I called it that to

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  to offend people who weren't up for it.

• 1:28:59Chris Williamson?

  I imagine he did.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, to just turn them away. Celebrating men, they're pigs, they're dogs, they're fill in the blank. But every once in a while, I would be like, you can do that? I want to do that. And they, okay, come on in. It was limited to 12 women. They were so scary at the time. So I was really careful for a long time. And then as I practiced natural horsemanship and learned how to hold my space. And then I started poking the bear.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  So I did a teleclass called Using Anger to Get What You Need. Because I wanted to attract all the women who used anger to get what you need or who wanted to use anger to get what you need. It's a rug pull. It doesn't work. And but I brought them in so I could pull the rug. Well, then I did a webinar called Why Men Can't Be Trusted to Tell the Truth.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, why can't they be trusted to tell the truth? And some of my graduates were just incensed. Alison Armstrong said this about men? So he sent out an email to all the men. The subject line was, "We Still Have Your Back." And I told them about the webinar and that the subtitle of the webinar could be, "How Women Teach Honest Men It's Not Worth It." And because what will happen is a man will tell the truth. And he'll tell the truth that's been true for him, maybe for as long as he can remember. For as long as he can remember. Or it may be a newer truth.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  It's only been the last couple of years or the last few months, but it's a truth. And he tells it to her. And she's upset about that. You shouldn't think that. You shouldn't feel that way. No, that's wrong. And because of how women are wired, where to be upset is to be displeased. Ooh, don't have anybody upset. So women believe, they're just sure of it. Chris, they're positive. They're sure that if you know how upset I am about what you've just told me is true for you,

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  you will change your truth. That you will, just like I would have. You will change your truth. No, men are smarter than that. There was no problem with that truth until it came out of their mouth, until they told her. It was fine as long as it wasn't said. So this is how men are literally taught, trained, as he said, to not tell the truth.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  She doesn't need to know that. She doesn't need to know that. She doesn't need to know that. But women cause that. And another thing I recorded called Why Men Lie, Why Women Lie? And, you know, I like to drill down, drill down, drill down. And basic survival instincts for all species. Fight, flight, freeze, you have reactions. And I discovered this fight line, this freeze line,

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  this flight line, I gotta go.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  And, but as I drilled down into it, and my kids were, had been young, children lie, horses lie, dogs lie. They, I've seen it in all of them. And, and I, and I realized that lying is a basic survival reaction. It's just fundamental to survival, just lie. Buff yourself up a little bit bigger than, right? Or, hold your voice still, I'm not here, I'm not here, right? All these things. And, but once I saw,

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  once I saw that lying is completely natural, and truth is my second highest value.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  So if lying is normal and not an aberration, how do you get honesty?

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  You have to celebrate it.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  So like in my company, I have fired people for lying about lying.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  The problem wasn't that they lied. It was that then they lied about lying. And I had people, employees, say, I lied to you. Really? What about? And then they tell me, oh, thank you so much for telling me.

• 1:34:00Speaker 01

  What had you lied about that? Oh, is there something you need me to do different? Do something you need from me? Like, if you want the truth, you gotta celebrate the truth even if you don't like the truth. Or the way I would say is a man's gotta get more points for telling the truth than he loses by what the truth is.

• 1:34:22Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:23Speaker 01

  Way more points.

• 1:34:24Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  I love you, admire you, and adore you for telling me the truth. I'll get over the hurt feelings. Just give me a bit.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  But thank you.

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Thank you for that. Oh, you're welcome. Huh, we keep doing this a while? Can I tell you a funny story?

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  We hadn't been together for very long.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Dan and I, it'll be five years and a couple of months, but we were very new to each other. And, um, and he, he knew truth is one of my highest values. Freedom is number one, which freedom and control.

• 1:35:09Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  I'm a freedom fighter. I want to set you free.

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  That thing we were talking about before. Strategy, strategy is a cage. So, the...

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  So, we, we were getting naked. And I, and I said, and I realized I was self-conscious, which is, that's the last thing I wanna be naked is self-conscious. And I said, I just gotta tell you, I'm, I'm feeling, I'm, I'm feeling a little chubby. And so I'm self-conscious. And he said, he said, you, you're not chubby.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  And then, like, about three seconds later, he goes, well, you're a little chubby, but it's all good. And I turned around and I like looked at him, I was crawling over him into the bed. And I turned and looked at him and he goes, I remember truth is one of your love languages.

• 1:36:10Chris Williamson?

  Be careful what you wish for.

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  But I'd never been so tickled to be called chubby, which I've been called since I was a little girl. It, like,

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  thank you for checking.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  That was funny.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  Oh, it's awesome.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Isn't it great just to be real? Just to be out loud? It's so awesome. So, yeah, so that was like the happiest time I'd ever been called chubby because he was just being truthful. And Dan's superpower, which I didn't even know could be a superpower, is acceptance.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  He's like, he's a genius at acceptance. He's like, yes, I'm perfectly imperfect.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  So are you. We all are perfectly imperfect.

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Thank you. And it's, by the way, the difference in how men and women get married. When you guys decide she's the right person, it doesn't mean you think she's flawless. There even could be things that would be, that'd be nice if that went away. But when you choose, you buy the whole package. She is what she is and she isn't what she isn't.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  It just seems logical, factual. That's not how, what women do. So you commit. You guys, when you guys commit, you commit all the time. Just like the whole thing, the whole picture, the whole package, just scoop it up. And we can feel it. And I've, and women are like, where's the ring? Where's the ring? Give me the ring. And like, you guys, once there's a ring on that finger, he's going to be married. And he's going to start acting like a husband. And he's going to think he has a right to have veto power over dangerous things that you want to do. Where it's physically dangerous. Or a man who got engaged recently, I said, uh-oh, you're married. He was all happy. We got engaged.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  I said, does she know you're married? He said, what do you mean? I said, you're all in. You're already married. The ceremony is just like for friends and family. And he's like, oh. And I said, are you more protective? Do you seem controlling? Has she accused you of being controlling?

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  She's an actress. And she told me about a job she was offered. And I said, you can't do that, Ruby.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  And she looked at me like I was, what?

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  And it had been the most natural thing for him to do is protecting her career, her reputation, who she's becoming. No, you can't do that. And she was just like, who the hell are you that you can tell me what to do?

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  Doing my job, I'm your husband. He didn't say that, but that's what he thought.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Women commit one acceptance at a time. One acceptance at a time.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  I know women who had a wedding thirty years ago. And they've hardly accepted anything. They've been trying to change him for thirty years. They're not actually married. Women don't understand how men be married. We're a team now.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  It's us. We're a team. We're a team about everything, aren't we?

• 1:39:43Speaker 01

  You don't do that, right? You can't be on my team. It's, ah, breaks my heart.

• 1:39:52Chris Williamson?

  I'm interested in the role of emasculation here. You mentioned it a couple of times.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:58Chris Williamson?

  Kind of a, I don't know, it's just, it's a word that I don't hear much outside of your work.

• 1:40:05Chris Williamson?

  I wonder whether it appears in different ways. Whether other people, men, use other words instead of it to explain how they feel when what they mean is, I feel emasculated. But I'm interested in what your definition of it is and why it's so important.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  I was asked, six months into studying men, I was asked to stop castrating men. A harsh word.

• 1:40:48Speaker 01

  I did change my life forever.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  But I looked it up in the dictionary and it says to deprive of virility.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  And then I looked up, and it had a synonym, emasculate.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  And and over the years, right, since nineteen ninety-one.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Emasculation, the idea of emasculation,

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  it got captured. His name is Tomer. And we were talking about feeling bad. That women don't want to make men feel bad, and especially my graduates. They don't want to make men feel bad because they've given up the right to emasculate men. So they don't want to tell their man something they need because if he can't do it, he may feel bad. And Tomer said, "Feeling bad does not emasculate me."

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  He said, "When you diminish my ability to produce results, you have emasculated me."

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  And that sent me on a whole other trajectory of productivity versus connectivity, which goes back to that security through productivity, safety through connectivity. So you could call it the masculine and feminine if you wanted to, but so many women spend more time in a hunting, committed, goal-producing, committed state of mind that those terms have got...

• 1:42:44Speaker 01

  They were hard to deal with in the 90s. So much baggage to unpack. But if you're finding security through productivity, male or female, doesn't matter, if you feel safe through connectivity, which comes with an open state of mind, which estrogen naturally creates in the brain.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  So to diminish someone's ability to produce results as a man...

• 1:43:21Speaker 01

  It can be anything from being taken down a notch, the wind's out of your sails, the plug was literally pulled out of the wall and you, oh, everything shuts down.

• 1:43:33Chris Williamson?

  Get specific for me. What are some of the ways that women emasculate men? That's... What are the most common ways that they do it? Or, and/or some of the ways that they do it and they might not notice?

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Can I expand it a little bit? Because what we figured out after a long time was everybody does it to everybody. Women emasculate men, women emasculate women, women emasculate themselves. Men naturally emasculate men. It's part of war. Whether it's war in the boardroom, right? Or it's part of business, it's part of the workplace to compete and diminish. And it can be honorable or dishonorable. So, so what we saw is everything women do to men, we do to ourselves.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  And in the case of what we were talking about, not telling a man what we need because we thought it would hurt his feelings. And Tomer saying that doesn't hurt my feelings. One of the ways that we diminish the men in our lives' ability to produce results is we withhold quality information. We don't speak up about what really matters to us. We don't expose ourselves that way. We don't say it. This is why authenticity is so valued, so charming. And the way one man put it is a head turner, and you would have heard in The Queen's Code,

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  "A strong woman voluntarily vulnerable." So she's clearly capable and yet she's admitting a need. Oh, it's breathtaking, especially if what she needs he can give her. And he knows he can give her. And she'll entrust him to give it and she'll, she'll think it's worth a thousand points. Oh, my gosh, I needed that so badly. So that dynamic, right, can get really beautiful. But when we don't want to reveal a need because we think it's unattractive. If I need something, then I'm not perfect and I'll be unattractive and less pleasing to you.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  And then you won't save me and I'll die. You won't choose me. So, so it's just not speaking up about what we need. Okay. Is a masculinity. Give me some more.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  This is a hard one and I apologized for it earlier. We interrupt. So we'll ask a man a question, for example, and then he doesn't answer fast enough. So we'll interrupt his thinking. And he still doesn't answer, we'll rephrase and then we'll interrupt him again, right? Give him options because he's too stupid for an open question. We think this stuff. But we also, we don't understand that, and my husband helped me understand this.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  In studying natural horsemanship, Buck Braneman was talking about how horses are seeking peace. And I was thinking about how much men have talked to me about peace. Yeah, we're warriors and what do we crave? Peace. What do we want most when we walk through the door? Peace. And, and so I asked Greg, so when you accomplish what you're focused on, then do you experience peace? And he, he would look at me in this, it was the sweetest way. He'd just be kind of like.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Like, like when I was going, honey, the hierarchy of instinct. So is it protect, then provide, then procreate?

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  Is it provide, then procreate, then protect? Is it? And he's looking at me and like, and he goes, keep going. And I went, no. It's procreate, then protect, then provide? And he just smiled at me. Hmm? So then I asked other men, they're like, yeah, of course. You create it, then you protect it.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  You have an invention, you patent it. Like, like, it's the most natural thing to do. But there's a hierarchy. One trumps the other. This is why emasculation is important. Because women want men to be in provide mode. But when we criticize, which is a form of emasculation, a man will retract from providing to protect. And if it's a direct attack, like on your character, you're just like, you're fill in the blank. You're a father.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Now he's protecting himself. And that's what brings out the worst in men. When they're protecting themselves. Because it overrides their compelling desire to protect others. They're, they're, they're the smallest version of themselves. And they're protecting themselves. And they could shut down, right? They could, they could withdraw, or they could attack. And women cause men to attack. And then we think that's who men are. Women cause men to withdraw. And we think, you ghosted me, right? We have all these accusations after we've caused it

• 1:49:25Speaker 01

  by doing something like ignoring. For example, walking by a man day after day as if he's not even worth acknowledging his existence.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Women do that a lot.

• 1:49:41Speaker 01

  But interrupting, this business of interrupting. When I asked Greg, I'm like, so do you? Do you get peace from accomplishing what you're focused on? And he gave me that look. Said,

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  Single focus is peace.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Wait a second, this state of mind where you're committed to one thing and your brain is screening out everything it considers irrelevant.

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  Focus, single focus is peace. Your brains are designed to give you peace. You commit to something that screens out everything it considers irrelevant. It doesn't usually ask your opinion about, do you think it's irrelevant? Men's wives' voices are relevant. But, but when I got it, like, oh, focus is a state of peace. So he's being productive. So he's secure. He's being productive, we're getting it done. We identified the problem. That's productivity, right? Even just identifying a problem is productivity. And then she's interrupting him because she wants to connect. She can feel that he's gone. There's no connection.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  Honey, I'm going to the grocery store. What?

• 1:51:11Speaker 01

  And, and so now she's uber disconnected and freaked out and thinks he's... But she doesn't know she interrupted his productivity and his peace. Blew it up, ran the train off the track.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  She doesn't know she did that and he's reacting to that. So we interrupt. It's one of the biggest things I've been teaching women. Count to thirty. Wait. Count to thirty again. Wait. But estrogen creates a brain that's in a constant state of interruption. We're, we're monitoring so many things at the same time. It doesn't, we don't really understand interruption until we get older. Our hormones change. We get focused.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Actually, I had to tell my daughter, I've changed. I'm not ignoring you. I'm just focused. She thought I was ignoring her. I

• 1:52:17Speaker 01

  I was turning fifty. She was fifteen. She thought I was ignoring her. No, my brain was just rewiring, getting focused.

• 1:52:26Chris Williamson?

  Are there any other big emasculation?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Oh, golly. Um, let's see. Amongst the withholding. So we withhold quality information. We withhold attention.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  We with even bad attention. A man will seek bad attention is better than no attention. Ponytails in the inkwells, you know, goes way back. Affection, admiration. It's a whole lot of As. Accountability. We'll let you be helpful, but we won't entrust you with accountability.

• 1:53:03Speaker 01

  You help me with my plan. Don't you dare have one of your own. It's a whole area, a whole area to shift how we interact. Um, I call these the green emasculation because they're low energy, just what you don't do. Holding back, refraining from, um.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  Uh, the Cs, we criticize, we compare, we complain.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  E- even we have so-called compliments. Oh, a gentleman, finally, you're so rare.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  Okay, you just insulted my whole gender, but I'm supposed to feel good about that, right? So we, um.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  Let me see. I just was going through this a few weeks ago with my students. Let me see the board. Oh.

• 1:54:01Speaker 01

  There's the worst one.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  Be a better man.

• 1:54:09Speaker 01

  There are women who walk around sure that they are the best men they've ever met.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  What do I need you for? I am a better man than every one of you. I'm more everything than you.

• 1:54:24Speaker 01

  It's brutal. They could take out a whole room just walking in. What do I need you buggers for? Um.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  We withhold sex.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  Some women withhold food.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Just watch them power down and feed them.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, brutal.

• 1:55:00Speaker 01

  Can I tell you something sweet?

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  There was a woman who did the celebrity men's and women's workshop when she was eighty-six.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  And she came back to the second day of the workshop and she'd given up the right to emasculate men forever. And she came to the second day and she said,

• 1:55:24Speaker 01

  "I've been withholding sex from my husband,

• 1:55:28Speaker 01

  but not anymore."

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  And then, and then he died a year later.

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  And I asked her son, who's a dear, dear friend of mine, I said, "How's your mom doing?" He said, "She's doing great. She knows she gave him the best last year of his life that she could." I was like, "Oh, that's amazing." What's even cooler, ninety-one, she got remarried.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  That is super sweet.

• 1:56:14Speaker 01

  Ay, ay, ay.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  Can I tell you a part?

• 1:56:24Speaker 01

  So how we emasculate is here in the middle, like in terms of time causation. So over here is what triggers us to emasculate.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  And everything I've seen that triggers us to emasculate, which was one of the first things I had to learn after I gave up.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  You could boil it down to fear

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  and frustration, if you wanted to simplify. Fear and frustration trigger emasculation.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  And then there's how we emasculate. And then this piece, which I've referred to what we do about it. This is, this is the thing that if you take it out,

• 1:57:18Speaker 01

  these can fall apart. And, and what it is, is it's how we justify diminishing men.

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  How we justify stealing your power, taking your feet out from underneath you. How do we justify it? So one of the things I've interacted with women for a really long time, 30 years or more, even before we started our workshop. They called it the transformation of the Castation Club. Talked to women one on one about what triggered them, what they did and then why men deserved it. And they have all these different reasons why men deserve to be diminished. And, and it goes back to fear and frustration. But things like, well, they abuse power. Or they, um, they can't be trusted.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Or they don't do anything right.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  My mother's was, they're stupid.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  And what was interesting is as I would see the justification, I could see the flip side of it. Like my friend, who her justification was they have too much power and they abuse it, was like, oh, because you think that and therefore you diminish them,

• 1:58:42Speaker 01

  they can't ever use their power for you.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  And she got it. She's a co-founder of our company. She got it in her bones. And she, ah, she shifted so fast. She's my best student ever. So my mother, who was just determined that men are stupid. My father was a genius. My stepfather, number one, really intelligent man. Stepfather, number two, intelligent in a different way. Stepfather, number three, intelligent.

• 1:59:22Chris Williamson?

  She really went through it.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  In a different way. Great modeling. She could never avail themselves or of their intelligence, their unique intelligence, because she was looking for them to be intelligent the way she was. And since they weren't intelligent the way she was, they were stupid. So this complementary strength thing.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Never have anything be good enough. Never be satisfied. Be unhappy on principle. There are women who think if you, if they never give up the happy, you'll keep trying harder. They've got it backwards. You give up the happy. He wants to know how much happier he can make you. Well, if that made her happy, what about this? They don't know that.

• 2:00:25Chris Williamson?

  You mentioned at the start, right at the top, that pleasing men is pretty low down on the triaged hierarchy of.

• 2:00:34Speaker 01

  What men care about.

• 2:00:35Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Being pleased.

• 2:00:38Chris Williamson?

  What's higher, what should women focus on?

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Well, I mentioned some of them. Being taken care of.

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  It's stunning to men, like, so, while you're looking out after me. Ah, I mean, how much more productive, productive can a man be if he's being taken care of? You know, when I, when I left home to come be with you, I cooked a bunch of food to bring with me because I eat very particularly, and I cooked a bunch of food for Dan. So he can eat very particularly. And he just, it's, it's like, he just loves it. When my grandson was born, I was gone for a month. And I, I made his favorite cake.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  It's called, it's called Jack Ginger Apple Cake. And he was coming over, this was when I lived in his backyard. And he would come over once a week to water my plants while I was gone. And I left him with a ginger apple cake. And I didn't tell him that in each of the three drawers in my freezer, there was another ginger apple cake. So you can water my plants. I watered your plants. Oh, thank you. In the bottom drawer, in the bottom drawer, there's something for you.

• 2:02:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  And, and I said, which drawer? And he goes, did you already forget? And I wanted to make sure he looked in the bottom drawer because I didn't want him to find the other.

• 2:02:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:16Speaker 01

  Right? Although now that I think about it, whichever one he opened, he would think that was the only one. Right? Duh.

• 2:02:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:02:24Chris Williamson?

  Take care of.

• 2:02:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just like to take care of him. And it's different for a different man. Like, you gotta ask, what would take care of you? And a man might say, it would support me if. Right? So they're, they're, it's interesting. I ask, how do you feel supported? Men say, I feel appreciated when. And I say,

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  How do you like to be supported? How do you like to be appreciated? Well, I feel supported when? So taking care of, support and appreciation. They all live in the same, right? What you appreciate, you take care of. What you appreciate, you support, you support. Like, they all live in the same domain and they're they're priceless in terms of quality of life and in a, in a partner that they'll take care of you. And they'll support you. They'll, you know, Sunday was my birthday and

• 2:03:27Chris Williamson?

  Happy birthday.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Thank you. Sixty-five. It's crazy, beat sixty-five. I feel invincible.

• 2:03:39Chris Williamson?

  You look invincible. I do.

• 2:03:42Speaker 01

  Thank you. So, you know, it's my birthday. It's special. It's my sixty-fifth. We gotta do something really special. We did do something really special. He went to Father's Weekend at CU Boulder with his son, who's a senior. He was there for all the frat stuff and the, and CU Boulder to beat Iowa. And I had three days home alone. It was heaven. It was so awesome. It was one of my best birthdays. But, but for me to support him, like, something women don't know to listen for, like, when they're sorting for a relationship, is what matters to him?

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  What matters to him? Just keep thinking that. He's talking. What's important to him? What matters to him? What does he care about? We call it listening to learn. And so it was obvious to me after the first three hours I talked to Dan on the phone before we ever met, the most important thing to him in his life is his children.

• 2:04:47Speaker 01

  Okay, I got it. I was real, I was glad. So many women, like women in your age group, they want to be a man's first priority.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  Tell them it's a huge mistake.

• 2:05:02Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:02Speaker 01

  Men's capacities are enormous. If he makes you his first priority, he will drive you nuts.

• 2:05:09Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. Dig into that for me. Why would a man who makes a woman his first priority drive the woman insane?

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Because you guys, you got so much to give. You have such capacities for productivity, for getting things done, for creativity. Like,

• 2:05:30Speaker 01

  y'all are amazing. And if that's all focused on me,

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  I don't need enough to occupy you. I, I, I need, I need enough that I, you could really help me. Probably every day, several times a day, in different ways. But to be the focus of all that attention, all that mind power, all that oomph, it would be emasculating to you and it would feel needy and controlling and icky to me. So just as a man is looking for a woman who has a passion that feeds her, that she can bring to a relationship,

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  you gotta have a purpose. You gotta have something you're up to. That's hat, what you're up to.

• 2:06:24Chris Williamson?

  You ever read Dr. Robert Glover's book, No More Mister Nice Guy?

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  I've never read it, but he interviewed me about three months ago.

• 2:06:32Chris Williamson?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:06:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:34Chris Williamson?

  I like Robert. Did you have, did he teach you the three things that make an attractive man? Did he give you that one?

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  No, he.

• 2:06:44Chris Williamson?

  I feel like there's a story here. What went on?

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Well,

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  the interview, which is on the internet, was for the men that he coaches. And he has a whole team. And he's adorable because in the interview, he talks a lot.

• 2:07:06Speaker 01

  And after it was all done, we, everybody was gone and we were in a room with a group and the group were saying their favorite things that they learned. And at the end of it, what Robert said was, I learned when Alison Armstrong's talking, I should shut up. And it was just so sweet that he caught it, right? It was really, really sweet. So.

• 2:07:31Chris Williamson?

  The three essences of an attractive man.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  What are they?

• 2:07:35Chris Williamson?

  A man who is comfortable in his own skin.

• 2:07:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07:38Chris Williamson?

  Knows where he's going.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:07:40Chris Williamson?

  And is having fun while he's going there.

• 2:07:44Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes. That's bringing back so many things. My husband was not comfortable in his own skin. He felt trapped in a human body. It was too heavy, it was too slow, it was just a burden. So I drove fast, rode motorcycles really fast, he was so happy. But when he died, which he did suddenly, I, I felt his exhilaration.

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  He was free. He was, he was free of this thing that had just been too heavy and too slow his whole life. I could hear him going. He was, it was incredible. It made it really hard to grieve in a normal way, to know what that was like for him.

• 2:08:51Chris Williamson?

  How interesting. I had a conversation with my coach, a guy called Joe Hudson. I had a conversation with him the other day.

• 2:09:00Chris Williamson?

  And I was talking about trepidation.

• 2:09:04Chris Williamson?

  And he asked me this question. He said, how much of it's fear and how much of it's excitement?

• 2:09:11Chris Williamson?

  And I was like, oh, you motherfucker.

• 2:09:15Chris Williamson?

  I really, really try and like, sit with it.

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:18Chris Williamson?

  Fuck. Like, the first fifty percent of the outside of the gobstopper is fear.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:09:24Chris Williamson?

  The core of it's excitement.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:09:26Chris Williamson?

  It's really messy. It's trite to do the whole, you're not nervous, you're excited thing. Uh, I think it's a little trite. Just it's, it, yeah, cool. Like, these two things can, a slight different perspective. You finish your workout, you're on the floor in a sweat angel panting, and you've got the taste of metal in the back of your throat and your heart and breathing heavily, and it's exciting. That happens spontaneously in traffic.

• 2:09:55Chris Williamson?

  You call an ambulance, okay? The same sensation. Okay, so our framing around the present moment largely determines our experience of it, like, eh, whatever. But that one around fear, I'd never heard before. Uh, and I've been working with fear a lot, especially the last month or so. And, um, I found it.

• 2:10:14Chris Williamson?

  I found it really interesting. I found it really interesting to think about when you're telling that story about Greg and, uh,

• 2:10:24Chris Williamson?

  why, there's less cleanness around the grief. There's cleanness available. I'm sad that he's gone and he was sad that he was going. But also, he was, in some ways, maybe glad that he was going, and I'm glad that he was glad that he was going, but he's sad that he went and I'm sad that he's gone and oh, here we go. Like, this is a big

• 2:10:48Chris Williamson?

  complex knot to try and cut through.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, grief is extraordinarily complex, um, and has so many gifts. May I say something about the fear and excitement?

• 2:11:00Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  So, one of the things I've found useful is, um,

• 2:11:14Speaker 01

  Is the awareness of having two nervous systems, that we literally have two nervous systems. They call them the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. And excitement and fear and anger, I would call those all emotions. And how you can tell, and someone, I wish I could credit them, defined emotion as energy in motion. So if you think about fear, fear moves in the body.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  It zings around, chemistry zings around, excitement zings around. What if those are all sympathetic nervous system responses? They're all in response to the perception of a threat or an opportunity. And opportunities can go either way. They can cause you to live or die. Right? It could be a fake, or you could not be up to it. So opportunities quickly become threats to the nervous system. Right? So if you distinguished that from a feeling,

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  and feelings have locations. Feelings have a place. Yeah, you have a place right there. Now, it's interesting where you put your hand, because that's your diaphragm right there, right? Yeah, well, if we were going to talk chakras, I'm not fluent in, I'm not even a novice in chakras. But right there, right? There would be the chakra of yourself, who you are. And...

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  And somewhere near there, maybe a little lower, you would find it would be the place that both men, it's gonna be a little higher, that men and women feel shame. Not when we've been shamed, like when we're, between me and me, I, I, someone was harmed, even if I harmed myself, by failing to be or do what I most value being and doing. So it's one of the few feelings that men and women have in the same place, which I find fascinating, because so many of our feelings are not in the same place.

• 2:14:01Speaker 01

  And women don't know this, so when they ask a man, so how do you feel about that? We think you should just look right here, which is where we would look, and you'd know how you felt about it. But do you ever notice a woman said, "You hurt my feelings"? She doesn't say, "You hurt my feeling", you hurt my feelings. Because like, we have a stack of pancakes right here. So many feelings that all, like, it's like a condo complex, they're all on different floors, but they're right here.

• 2:14:41Speaker 01

  And I started paying attention to men, and where are, where are these feelings? And, and this goes back to the emasculation, which is, it's so sad. So I started asking men, where do you feel happiness? They couldn't answer. Men pay women, attention to women being happy, they don't pay attention to themselves being happy, they just are when they are. And you were talking about fun, right? So have a, be at home when you're skin.

• 2:15:20Chris Williamson?

  Comfortably in your skin, know where you're going, has fun where they're going.

• 2:15:25Speaker 01

  Yes, so.

• 2:15:29Speaker 01

  Having fun, men at play. Men at play is when we fall in love with you. You having fun, you're open. You have an open state of mind. And we just like, huh, we just fall madly in love with you. But if you're always that way, then you're not strong enough to save me from the tiger. Right? So if you don't know where you're going and then be at play doing it, we need both. Right? And so back to the feeling thing. So I asked men, where do you feel happiness? And they couldn't answer. So I started, do you ever review videos in your head? Like your memories?

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  And you like go through the video and? I can take a video from 30 years ago and re-watch it and learn something. Ah, that's what was happening there, right? So I just was replaying videos. And then I got it that where you guys experience happiness, which you usually conceal that you're feeling happiness because it could be used against you, is right here. And there's this thickening of the neck and this hmm of this and this hmm. And there's a swell right here in the chest when you guys feel happy.

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  And if a man, if someone that you admire expresses admiration for you, that will cause a feeling of happiness right here. And but since warriors conceal, you can tell that it really affected them because they'll go something like this. You have to watch so closely, like, oh, that mattered to him. And it's hard because women will go on and on about what mattered to them. Right? So we expect you to go on and on. Oh, that was such a great acknowledgement. Thank you so much. That just felt, made me feel like a million bucks. No. There's just gonna be this subtle thing.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  But it broke my heart when I found out about it. The problem is where you guys feel happiness is also where you experience power. Your shoulders and your arms, this is the strongest part of your body. This is why when you guys pick something up, you lift it up. It's weak here. The pelvis is weak in men. It's the women's strongest part. We'll pick something up and we'll carry it like this. This is our strongest part. It's a good thing my pregnancy works, right? You guys will, I know this from cutting logs in the woods of Colorado and then the guys would chainsaw it and we would move them onto the truck.

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  But no, my girlfriend and I, we would roll them on the ground or we would clear the pathway. And the men are like, why are you clearing the pathway? Because they just lift something up and then they just step over what was in the path. And so I was paying attention to this, but anyhow, so power shows up here. Happiness shows up here. Happiness and power go together.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  But what are women terrified of?

• 2:18:44Chris Williamson?

  Power.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  Yes. Men feeling powerful is scary as hell. So guess when women emasculate men?

• 2:18:57Chris Williamson?

  When they feel happy.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  When you're happy, when you've had a victory, when you feel empowered. Off with these legs. We attack. It's terrifying to us.

• 2:19:11Chris Williamson?

  There's a really interesting idea from evolutionary psychology that you might be familiar with. Two types of relationships that are caused or mediated by

• 2:19:23Chris Williamson?

  an imbalance in mate value typically.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  An imbalance in mate value?

• 2:19:28Chris Williamson?

  Mate value.

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 2:19:30Chris Williamson?

  How I see your value, how I see my own and how those two relate to each other. It's not necessarily how it is, something usually sometimes is. Anyway, cost affording, benefit affording, cost inflicting. So two types of mating strategies. Benefit affording, I will get, I will cause our connection to deepen by doing more, by making you feel great, by

• 2:20:00Chris Williamson?

  good look at it through prestige as one of the ways that you have this and I'm continuing to afford these benefits to you. But if there's too much of a disparity, this can flip and it flips into cost inflicting.

• 2:20:14Chris Williamson?

  And this is, well, no one's ever gonna want you. It's cutting you off from seeing your friends. It's passive aggressive comments. And this is done when the fear is that delta in mate value is so great that I need to pull the one that appears too high down. And I can do this by little jibes and jabs and withholding love, attention, not making the effort that I know that I could do if I wanted to. And this will just erode away perhaps at your own self-image sufficiently

• 2:20:55Chris Williamson?

  for you to come back down into the same solar system of mate value that I perceived myself to be in. And it made me think about that, made me think about benefit affording and cost inflicting mating strategies.

• 2:21:13Speaker 01

  Doesn't sound lovely.

• 2:21:16Chris Williamson?

  Look, we are, we are, we are, we are a fascinating creature when it comes to the way that our mating systems work because

• 2:21:28Chris Williamson?

  everything's so predicated on status.

• 2:21:32Chris Williamson?

  Male parental uncertainty and male parental investment are probably in the animal kingdom, we probably have the greatest of the two. There's probably no other creature on the planet that has more male parental investment. In fact, I don't, there can't be, there's no other animal which comes out as neotinous and useless. It's a blob that can't look after itself at all for 10, 12, 14 years, something like that. So you need fathers around, but also women have concealed ovulation and when monogamish, but very clever and we can

• 2:22:08Speaker 01

  Monogamish.

• 2:22:09Chris Williamson?

  Monogamish and we can be devious and no woman has ever given birth to a child that they're not sure was theirs. But every man has looked at their partner giving birth and had in the back of their mind a hope that it is theirs. Until only 50 years ago or something, have we ever actually been able to do the test to be able to verify that. And when you combine all of this together, you have a fascinating dynamic that is I really can't afford to invest my efforts, women the same way, but for different reasons. But for men, I really can't afford to invest my efforts into someone who might not be as invested in me as I need them to be.

• 2:22:47Chris Williamson?

  And I can get them to continue that investment and connection and love and dedication through showing how valuable I am and how much better we can be together.

• 2:23:02Chris Williamson?

  Why would I ever look anywhere else? Like, how phenomenal the thing is that I have at home. On the flip side, why would I ever look anywhere else? Nobody else would want me. Right? That's the benefit of affording cost inflicting.

• 2:23:14Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  At least ten things would come to mind, but one thing you might get a kick out of is

• 2:23:30Speaker 01

  there, there's this, at least one study that showed.

• 2:23:38Speaker 01

  And if you ever take baby pictures in like, high school graduation album and you compare them, you usually can't match them. Because for the first year of life, babies look like their dad.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  And most people say they look like their dad.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  About eighty percent of his family will say they look like their dad. And they actually do look like their dad. And the point of looking like their dad is, I'm yours.

• 2:24:14Chris Williamson?

  Wow, you think that's a reliable? So are you suggesting that human babies have evolved to look more like their father? Because that is going to increase male parental investment due to less uncertainty around whether or not the child's theirs?

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:29Chris Williamson?

  That is so cool. I've never heard, I've never heard that.

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:33Chris Williamson?

  That is so cool.

• 2:24:34Speaker 01

  But then what happens is over time, they start looking more and more like their moms. And it's a, it's a characteristic actually in.

• 2:24:46Speaker 01

  In herd animals where um like you know the difference between donkeys and mules and horses? So, donkeys are the most masculine, you would say, in the equine world. They're, they're logical, they, you can't train them by the use of fear. They're, they're pound for pound, the strongest large animal. Had a donkey.

• 2:25:19Speaker 01

  Immovable, and if it didn't make sense, there's no way he's gonna do it. Also extremely sensitive, so to train them, you have to be super perceptive to everything.

• 2:25:33Speaker 01

  Horses, more on the feminine side.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  Um, easily controlled through fear, easily controlled through the desire to be pleasing. You can train them through that.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  You're not gonna get the best in them that way, but you can train them through it. So, mules are a cross between a male donkey and a female horse. A henny is a male horse and a female donkey. Hinnies are not desirable.

• 2:26:12Speaker 01

  They're not, nobody wants a henny. Why would I want a henny? Because the beauty comes from the female.

• 2:26:21Speaker 01

  This is not just horses, beauty comes from the female. And so, the mule has the beauty of the female, that attractive face and the ears aren't too big and all that stuff, and the grace in the body, but ends up with the intelligence and the sensitivity of the donkey. And it's a natural thing for men to look for beauty in a mate, because there's a primal knowing that the beauty in her is what's, my children are gonna end up with, and it will be an advantage to them.

• 2:27:02Speaker 01

  Beauty is a currency in human cultures, for sure. So.

• 2:27:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so babies look like their dads.

• 2:27:15Chris Williamson?

  I wasn't aware.

• 2:27:16Speaker 01

  And then their faces change and they don't look like their dad so much anymore.

• 2:27:20Chris Williamson?

  I don't know how uh human mothers and fathers contribute differently to looks. That would be an interesting one. I do know that there is something called the sexy son hypothesis, which is a additional benefit that attractive men have when being assessed by women. Not only is this man attractive, which is symmetrical face, good immune system,

• 2:27:48Chris Williamson?

  genetic profile seems to be sort of relatively all there, has been able to look after himself, hasn't incurred any great injuries, blah, blah, blah. But also, he's good looking. I'm attracted to him. That means if I have a son with him, the son will be good looking.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  Ah, interesting.

• 2:28:05Chris Williamson?

  As Steve Stuart Williams refers to humans as grandchildren optimizing machines. It's really cool. It's the start of his book, The April Understudy Universe. He goes through all of these different, he imagines an alien looking down on earth. And what is it that humans are doing? And he says, is it this? No. Is it this? No. Is it this? No. Now he's sort of building on it each time. So well, maybe they're children optimizing machines. And it's like, well, no, they're not. Uh, there's a really interesting, really interesting study done about Charles Darwin. Darwin, I think, ended up having 12 kids, something like that. Not all of them survived. And um

• 2:28:38Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:28:39Chris Williamson?

  Uh, some, you know, still Victorian England, maybe one or two died in infancy, childbirth perhaps. Uh, but the one that was most painful was the one that died around about age 11. And this seems to be reflected in uh studies. And the reason that's put forward, the evolutionary logic reason for this is you're a grandchildren optimizing machine. And your child was just about to get to the stage when they could have become

• 2:29:11Chris Williamson?

  a mother or father.

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:29:12Chris Williamson?

  And you lost them at that point.

• 2:29:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:29:14Chris Williamson?

  So no, maybe there's lots of things. You've had enough time to attach to them. You've fallen more deeply in love. There are all of these memories that you've got, so on and so forth. They still had all of their life ahead of them and yet you'd spent enough time to be able to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of that's lovely. And those are the proximate reasons. But the ultimate reason, and why, why that moment, why did that one hurt so much? The grandchild optimizing machine was just about to be able to start producing grandchildren.

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:29:42Chris Williamson?

  And I thought that was really, that's cool.

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that at any age that a child dies if they haven't reproduced yet.

• 2:29:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm an only child, so I've got a lot of pressure on me.

• 2:29:55Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:30:02Chris Williamson?

  Very fortunate, my mom's not ringing me that much, not yet.

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:05Chris Williamson?

  Take care, Christopher. One of the things you mentioned earlier on was that men play for points.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30:13Chris Williamson?

  Uh.

• 2:30:16Chris Williamson?

  What earns the most points?

• 2:30:20Speaker 01

  Hmm, what earns the most points with a woman or what counts as the most points to a man?

• 2:30:31Chris Williamson?

  What counts as the most points to a man?

• 2:30:36Speaker 01

  Happy.

• 2:30:39Speaker 01

  Happy is the bullseye.

• 2:30:42Speaker 01

  It's a spiritual quality, it's

• 2:30:46Speaker 01

  transformative, makes life easier.

• 2:30:55Speaker 01

  The saying, happy wife, happy life. It's a victory on so many levels. Like, for a man to be successful at what he does and his wife is obviously happy with him.

• 2:31:14Speaker 01

  He's a rock star.

• 2:31:16Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:31:20Speaker 01

  So I've worked so long with women on about happiness, how to, what does it take to make them happy? And.

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  And teaching men that it probably at least ninety to ninety-five percent of what it takes for a woman to be made happy is up to her.

• 2:31:48Chris Williamson?

  Does that, what's that mean?

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  Do you like geometry?

• 2:31:54Speaker 01

  So, so picture, picture this.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  Okay? So we've got the vertical axis, the horizontal axis. So imagine the vertical axis has to do with having what you need.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  A, a real need has a big payoff when you get it and a big loss when you don't. So like sleep is a perfect example of a verified need, right? So if this is about your needs being met, actually it's this one that's about your needs being met. This would be the enough line. The vertical would be the enough line. The horizontal is your needs met. So on this side, you're in the negative. You're in a deficit of food, sex, sleep, accomplishment even, right? This side, right here, you're right at zero, zero. A little over the edge or barely enough.

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  Over here, the more you've got, you've got like a buffer pantry. It's in the bank, right? So you can have extra sleep and then have not enough sleep and you, you're still fine. Right? So

• 2:33:19Speaker 01

  at the intersection here, down here is not enough of what you need. And you're not doing anything that makes you happy, that's fulfilling.

• 2:33:35Speaker 01

  Up here, you don't have enough of what you need, but you keep trying to make yourself happy. On top of not having enough what you need. You can't get happy. Over here, you have more than enough of what you need, but you're not engaged in what fulfills you. You're just getting what you need. This quadrant up here is where you have more than enough of what you need and you're engaged in the things that make you happy. This is the only quadrant in which you can actually experience happiness. So if a woman doesn't feel safe, which is feeling safe is something she needs.

• 2:34:17Speaker 01

  If she doesn't feel safe, she literally can't feel happiness. She can't experience it. It's a different nervous system. She's stuck. She's stuck in fear. She's stuck in the sympathetic nervous system. She's stuck in emotion, energy and emotion, energy, emotion. She can't be in the feelings. Happiness is this huge feeling for women in the middle of our chest. It's a like a direct connection to the eternal that we fill with. And but if she hasn't had enough sleep, she's not going to be able to feel it. If she hasn't had enough quality alone time, if she hasn't had enough quality attention,

• 2:35:02Speaker 01

  like a man will try to give her something that'll make her happy, but he hasn't been present enough to connect. So she's not safe. Right? And so that that a thing isn't going to make her happy. Um, so making sure this is this is mostly on her. There are some things that men can provide, but a lot of what we need is support. We need, honey, go to bed.

• 2:35:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I can't make you sleep. I can't make you eat.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  I can't make you sleep, but how about I put the kids to bed and you start your hour long process to fall asleep?

• 2:35:42Chris Williamson?

  Yes. Bedtime bullshit. Bedtime bullshit.

• 2:35:46Speaker 01

  Bedtime bullshit?

• 2:35:47Chris Williamson?

  Bedtime bullshit. Every girl's got bedtime bullshit routine.

• 2:35:52Speaker 01

  Ah, now I get it.

• 2:35:53Chris Williamson?

  Tons of bullshit.

• 2:35:54Speaker 01

  It, it, I know it would occur like bullshit.

• 2:35:57Chris Williamson?

  Bedtime bullshit.

• 2:35:58Speaker 01

  But that's so funny.

• 2:36:00Chris Williamson?

  Think what is all this?

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  I can tell you what it is.

• 2:36:03Chris Williamson?

  Is this a fucking incantation? Are you doing some sort of rain dance for tomorrow? I must apply the cream, I must do the thing, I have to do the dance, the sage everywhere. Like, what the fuck is going on? Bedtime bullshit.

• 2:36:17Speaker 01

  Okay, well, our bedtime bullshit is for the purpose of being able to fall asleep because our minds are quiet enough that they're not bugging us.

• 2:36:27Chris Williamson?

  Dishwashers loaded, living rooms clean, et cetera.

• 2:36:30Speaker 01

  The, the pillows aren't crooked, nothing terrible's gonna happen.

• 2:36:34Chris Williamson?

  I don't disagree, I understand orderly home, local specialization, I get it. I feel like sometimes becomes gratuitous. I think that that is used as an excuse for this like superfluous, it, it, it's a, it is a rain dance. I go to bow in front of the, the, the altar of the mirror five times and, you know, say Beetlejuice or whatever it is, bedtime bullshit.

• 2:37:00Speaker 01

  Well, I will, I will concur that the way that our environments literally talk to us and get us to do bedtime bullshit is worth examining. Like, really? Is that worth doing?

• 2:37:21Chris Williamson?

  Well, there's certainly.

• 2:37:22Speaker 01

  And we don't examine it.

• 2:37:23Chris Williamson?

  There's certainly an argument to be made around, uh, how could it be that the unfolded clothes in the laundry are causing me to not want to have sex with you as a woman? And you go, well, because I got the, there's this big open loop in the back of my mind. You go, you're kidding me. And guys are like, you being serious? You, we're not having, we're not having sex because the dryer's not been emptied.

• 2:37:49Speaker 01

  Okay, we could spend a whole, like, three hours.

• 2:37:52Chris Williamson?

  Let's not get derailed, let's not get derailed too much.

• 2:37:54Speaker 01

  Just, just.

• 2:37:55Chris Williamson?

  Bedtime bullshit, household bullshit.

• 2:37:56Speaker 01

  Well, no, and sex.

• 2:37:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 2:37:58Speaker 01

  And the difference between men, where men and women approach sex and what they need from sex.

• 2:38:04Chris Williamson?

  Three hours of sex is a lot even for me.

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  Pardon?

• 2:38:07Chris Williamson?

  I said three hours of sex is a lot even for me.

• 2:38:12Speaker 01

  That's funny. I had a brother in law said, what do you do the other twenty, three and three quarters hours?

• 2:38:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so what were we talking about? Oh, happy.

• 2:38:28Chris Williamson?

  Yes, happy. Happy, so it is on you.

• 2:38:31Speaker 01

  If she hasn't done these things, nothing, nothing rings the bell over there. But the miracle is that when a woman has enough of what she needs,

• 2:38:45Speaker 01

  the way I think of it is happiness is radioactive. So teeny, teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny amount. And I've, and I've, I've proven it. Like, I have had women get happy from remembering, like happy, like truly the feeling in their chest, by remembering something that made them happy. I've had them get happy by planning to do something that makes them happy.

• 2:39:15Speaker 01

  There, in fact, happiness, well, it's the bullseye. It's the most points. It's cheap. If you know what to pay attention to, you put all the energy into getting what you need. And then teeny tiny things make you really happy. We call it a moment of ecstasy, where it's a big happy. And it feels like that and the body's like, ah! And this feeling goes up from the center and it goes down the arms and the legs. And we get a little happy dance and we're like, ah! And it comes out of our cheeks and our eyes and every man in the vicinity is suddenly, let's build something, let's kill something.

• 2:39:54Chris Williamson?

  I did that. I made it happen. Happiness has been achieved.

• 2:39:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:39:58Chris Williamson?

  I conquered it briefly.

• 2:40:00Speaker 01

  Yes. Which the downside of that is one of the ways women emasculate men, is they make sure he knows it wasn't you.

• 2:40:13Chris Williamson?

  I'm happy because of my career. I'm happy because of this thing that I did. I'm happy of this, this thing that somebody else did for me.

• 2:40:19Speaker 01

  Why can't you just be happy for me?

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  Right? We won't, we won't go, look at the victory and I couldn't have done this without you.

• 2:40:27Chris Williamson?

  That's so interesting. That's so interesting. Why can't you be happy for me is the same as, look at how much the most important thing in my life was achieved in the absence of you.

• 2:40:45Speaker 01

  And it's a lie. It's horse shit.

• 2:40:47Chris Williamson?

  Well, of course, because even the patience of like, let's say that it was exclusively on you. It was this thing. It's the next book. It's the next convention meeting. It's amazing and all of the things. Well, even if I'm completely on the sidelines, I had to be sufficiently patient to let you do it.

• 2:41:08Chris Williamson?

  Even if I wasn't, even if you didn't speak for a week, didn't talk for a week.

• 2:41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:13Chris Williamson?

  I had to put up with not talking for a week.

• 2:41:14Speaker 01

  I gave you your space. I went with that what I needed to give you your space to go be awesome.

• 2:41:19Chris Williamson?

  That must have been really hard. That must have been really hard for you to put up with not speaking to me for a full week while I went away and did this thing.

• 2:41:26Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:41:26Chris Williamson?

  Thank you. So I couldn't have done it without the space. Yeah, very interesting. Why can't you just be happy for me? Look at how much happiness I am deriving without you.

• 2:41:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:38Chris Williamson?

  Maybe even in spite of you.

• 2:41:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:40Chris Williamson?

  Not because of you. Yeah. What a way to make someone feel like they're not a part of your life.

• 2:41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's the the opposite. Like, what's the

• 2:41:51Speaker 01

  what's the most amount of points? And then what's the most masculine?

• 2:41:57Speaker 01

  We we seem to have a sixth sense for that.

• 2:42:03Speaker 01

  How to get you.

• 2:42:06Chris Williamson?

  Why? Well, you said before, you said before about what it is is fear.

• 2:42:13Chris Williamson?

  It's very self defeating, the things that we do in relationships. A lot of the time, the thing that we want is the thing that we push away. We're wanting to be cared for, to be made to feel safe. But being so independent and in masculine energy themselves without needs that they don't allow anybody to actually help them.

• 2:42:35Speaker 01

  Well, if you think about it,

• 2:42:39Speaker 01

  the source of coupling is survival.

• 2:42:47Speaker 01

  Let's hole up in a cave together, fight off the tiger, try to protect our young.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  The source of human relationships is not fulfillment. It's not love. It's not satisfaction. It's not teamwork.

• 2:43:06Speaker 01

  That's not the source of romance. The source of romance is reproduction and survival, and survival into the grandchildren. Right? It's so when we're doing what we're compelled to do, which instincts are compelling, like there's a tension in our body and it's telling us to do something. Whenever we follow the tension, we reward the tension, we act on the tension, we're gonna do something destructive to love, to happiness, togetherness,

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  fulfillment. We're just gonna. But we'll survive.

• 2:43:56Speaker 01

  So most of my work is helping people to become aware of when they're not at choice. This is, this is all instinct acting itself out. And most of it is primordial. It's not human. It's not even pack and herd.

• 2:44:24Speaker 01

  Most of what we're compelled by,

• 2:44:29Speaker 01

  we share with bacteria,

• 2:44:32Speaker 01

  viruses, we behave the same way. And it's a thing I started working on about five years ago. It's like, hmm, I wonder if Chris and I'll talk about this.

• 2:44:48Speaker 01

  Most people don't want to talk about it. It's so ugly. So, oh, we've evolved beyond that. Really? Really? Really? Hmm.

• 2:45:02Speaker 01

  It started with someone saying to me, "The basis of the immune system is discerning me and not me."

• 2:45:14Speaker 01

  And my brain just glommed onto it. It just like went

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  fireworks, like, oh, a sneeze. A sneeze is a not-me reaction from your body to eject what is not me. A cough is a not-me. Diarrhea is a not-me. Get rid of it.

• 2:45:39Speaker 01

  But we have the same reaction to another human being. We, any human being, we're scanning. Are you me or not me? Oh, you're like me that way. Oh. And then we assign too much meaning. You're like me, so I'm, I'm safe and I, and you're gonna be like me in other ways, and so I can trust you to do what I would do. And you're like me, like me, like me. Produces this instant connection that's overestimated. Oh, you're not like me. And what's funny is women are like, "You're not like me, but you're strong." Right? Or, "You're not like me. You're, I'm not safe 'cause you don't do what I would do." Ah! Better take your power quick.

• 2:46:24Chris Williamson?

  Oh, right. That's interesting.

• 2:46:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:46:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  And

• 2:46:31Speaker 01

  so women are looking for men who are like them.

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  It's very confusing because then we have no chemistry because chemistry is caused by differences.

• 2:46:44Speaker 01

  Men lean into, oh, you're not like me. Ooh, you're not like me. Men have told me so many times, I don't want to be with someone who's like me. I don't need another me.

• 2:46:57Speaker 01

  I want someone who's not like me.

• 2:47:00Speaker 01

  But then women are trying to prove I'm as strong as you, I'm as smart as you.

• 2:47:05Speaker 01

  Everything you can do, I can do better, right? My mother danced around the kitchen singing that song after Guys and Dolls.

• 2:47:14Speaker 01

  So

• 2:47:17Speaker 01

  i- if you look at human atrocities, they're all me, not me reactions.

• 2:47:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, disgust.

• 2:47:26Speaker 01

  Boom, boom, boom, boom. But it happens so fast and it's usually below the surface and it and it tribalism.

• 2:47:34Speaker 01

  Survival. You, it's why we pick up accents in order to pass. If I talk like you, you won't kill me.

• 2:47:42Chris Williamson?

  Some really interesting research that you might be familiar with on.

• 2:47:46Speaker 01

  Probably not.

• 2:47:48Chris Williamson?

  I think you might be. Uh, people, people are more prejudiced against those with different accents than those with different skin colors.

• 2:47:55Speaker 01

  I'm not aware, but it makes sense.

• 2:47:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, ancestrally, the likelihood of you meeting somebody with a different skin color is very rare. The likelihood of you meeting somebody with a slightly different word for stream or river or leaf or meat.

• 2:48:08Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:48:09Chris Williamson?

  Oh, that's pretty high. Uh, so yes, somebody walks into the room, different skin color, same accent. Ah, what's going on? This person's got a lot to do. That's interesting. One walks in, same skin color, different accent. You go, hmm, where are they from? What do they do?

• 2:48:22Speaker 01

  Yes, not me.

• 2:48:23Chris Williamson?

  Not me.

• 2:48:24Speaker 01

  Me is safe. Not me is not safe. Unless, and I've encountered in teaching this, there are people who know that if you're like me, you're dangerous. Because they know they themselves are dangerous.

• 2:48:36Chris Williamson?

  Uh-oh, that's interesting.

• 2:48:38Speaker 01

  You're like me. Oh, not safe.

• 2:48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's cross, crosswired.

• 2:48:48Speaker 01

  Trauma, trauma takes hold very quickly.

• 2:48:53Chris Williamson?

  Listen, let's bring this one into land. It's been so much fun and uh I've literally could keep going for the rest of the day. Um, I think you're delightful. I think the work that you do is is fantastic. And I think that you specifically are very delightful yourself.

• 2:49:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:49:07Chris Williamson?

  Where should people go? They want to learn more about this, whatever this is.

• 2:49:12Speaker 01

  On this?

• 2:49:13Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:49:15Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Um, it depends on how much contact they want directly or how much information they want cheaply. Um, Youtube slash Alison Armstrong videos.

• 2:49:36Speaker 01

  Lots of information cheaply, even if you're not on my, I don't know if you've tried it, but Alison Armstrong into Youtube and there's literally videos back to the nineties on there. You can watch the whole, the aging of.

• 2:49:53Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Doing some archaeological research.

• 2:49:57Speaker 01

  Um, tons and tons, millions and millions of views of things, people who started collections of my stuff before I ever knew you could do that. Um, Audible has our, my, the old stuff, things I recorded before two thousand and six, but it's easily available and it's evergreen. Um, Instinct with the Opposite Sex is one of the most popular and I recommend it to people. Um, our website, AlisonArmstrong.com is where there's our formal curriculum, where I interact

• 2:50:37Speaker 01

  with students, answer questions about 10 hours a month for people. Um, about four hours of that's dedicated to specific clarifications of this is what you've learned and how do you apply it. I'm very rigid about it. And then we have a subscription program where no rules, ask me anything, I'll talk about anything. Um, it's really fun. Uh.

• 2:51:04Speaker 01

  We have hundreds and out, I mean, everything I ever discovered, I I needed people to know, they need to know this. So I recorded.

• 2:51:16Speaker 01

  I did an event just a few weeks ago called Feels Like Love, Looks Like Math.

• 2:51:22Speaker 01

  It's so cool. It's, it's, for my little brain, it's so happy, right? Like, so what feels like love?

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  Think about what feels like love from this person, from that person, what feels like love? It's always gonna be something that they do, that they took the time to do, that they remembered to do. Right? That they spent energy on doing. It's something that they're gonna do or say, which takes time to do that, too.

• 2:51:53Speaker 01

  And then we explored deserving and how that thing I said before, if I think I deserve it and you think I deserve it, we're good to go, right? No. You could think I did, could, you could think I deserve something and I should be with someone who could give that to me. You could think I deserve something and you know that you could do it and feel guilty about not doing it. But it's not worth doing. So it takes deserving and appreciation and then it all comes together in this thing called the worth it calculation. And there's the pre worth it calculation where everything's estimated. And then there's the ongoing worth it calculation.

• 2:52:34Speaker 01

  No, this is taking more time, effort, energy, pain in my ass than I was expecting to. It's not worth it. I'm not gonna keep going. There's a post worth it calculation. It's constantly being paid attention to, is it worth it? And it's mostly being paid attention to by men. Because

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  because you all have a, an awareness of time and energy and resources being limited, being put to use, no longer available to use, saved for use. Women, we don't so much, we're the thing that you all love about us, we we mostly have a connection to the eternal. We're present, we're we're connected. And in eternity, there's all the time in the world, so why not fold the laundry?

• 2:53:32Speaker 01

  Be one less thing yelling at me. So almost everything is worth doing. It just has to be a little bit worth it for a woman to do it. For a man, it's got to be, you know, I call it winter. Got to save for winter. The ROI has to be high to be worth doing. And there's so many things that women want from men, but they don't make it worth men doing. They don't provide the appreciation that would make a stupid thing worth doing.

• 2:54:05Chris Williamson?

  Oh, interesting.

• 2:54:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's what I did a few weeks ago. Feels like love, looks like math. And I mean, that's my thing is figuring out, okay, why doesn't this work? Well, what's, are you familiar with the term trim tab?

• 2:54:22Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 2:54:24Speaker 01

  Yep, yes.

• 2:54:25Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no.

• 2:54:26Speaker 01

  Are you familiar with Buckminster Fuller?

• 2:54:28Chris Williamson?

  Yes, the Oodaloop.

• 2:54:30Speaker 01

  The Oodaloop? Most people say the geodesic dome. Well, he's one of my heroes and credible inventor, philosopher, humanitarian. He's called the Einstein of our time back in the 90s. My dog's name is Buckminster.

• 2:54:48Speaker 01

  So he's the one who distinguished trim tab. And so take a, let's take a ship, a relationship. Right, so you've got a huge ship and you want to change its direction. It's off course, you want to get a better course, right? So you change its direction, so you got to move the rudder. But a huge ship, the rudder's ginormous. It takes so much energy to move it. Well, the trim tab is on the rudder. And if you flip the trim tab, it uses the current that the ship is moving through

• 2:55:30Speaker 01

  to move the rudder to turn the direction of the ship. So that's my addiction, trim tabs. Like women who want men to share more, to open up.

• 2:55:49Speaker 01

  Don't interrupt him. When he pauses, count to thirty. Most men will come in at about eighteen, unless you're asking about feelings. Could be three days. Don't ever ask a question that isn't worth waiting for the answer. And women start waiting for the answer. And low and behold, men start talking. Which is amazing. He's opening up. Then they have a new complaint. Well, I listened to him for an hour and a half, and then he didn't listen to me.

• 2:56:21Speaker 01

  Reciprocity. Men show appreciation by take and use. You know they appreciate the listening because they're talking.

• 2:56:32Speaker 01

  They know they appreciate the sandwich because they ate it.

• 2:56:36Speaker 01

  They know they appreciate the nakedness because they went, ooh.

• 2:56:41Speaker 01

  Women show appreciation by direct reciprocity. I listened to you for twenty-seven minutes. Now you listen to me for twenty-seven minutes. And women are profoundly aware of this. We know this. Okay, it's your turn. I've been talking this whole time. Now it's your turn.

• 2:56:57Speaker 01

  It's like a little ticker going.

• 2:57:00Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so women, the men will open up and then they'll complain, but they're not listening to me. Well, that's a whole other thing. Get listened to by a man. He's not going to do it in return. He's not built that way. So anyhow, so that's what I'm addicted to. If you just change this little thing. Like instead of saying, let's do it.

• 2:57:25Speaker 01

  When a man says, let's do it. He's completely present to the value of sex. And she expects him to be instantly present to the value of sex. The wonders of it. The fun, the pleasure, the release, the peace, the connection, all that. No, she's not. He just has to spare a couple of details. Just that's a trim down. I'd like you to feel, I want to make you feel things you've never felt before. How soon can you be in the bedroom? Uh, let me turn off the faucet.

• 2:57:59Speaker 01

  But it's just a trim tab, just a couple little more details, we're good to go. Forget the laundry, right? So those are all the little things I'm always looking at. If you just shift that, if you just, if you don't say,

• 2:58:14Speaker 01

  "Chris, we really need to take some time, probably every week, to talk about this issue."

• 2:58:25Speaker 01

  Why would I want to do that? Women don't know issues by definition are unsolvable.

• 2:58:32Speaker 01

  "Honey, could you help me with a problem?" What?

• 2:58:39Speaker 01

  That's what the hero language is all about in The Queen's Code, because women avoid using the words that are the most actionable to men. Okay, so your question was where? So alisonarmsong.com is where I get to talk to people and it's, it's part of what we call a process of transformation, which starts with,

• 2:59:03Speaker 01

  "Become aware of the cause of the results you don't want." Like, for women, emasculating men is giving you what you don't want. Stop that. Then, "New information or new point of view." What if there's a good reason for everything men do? What if no one's misbehaving? But there's a good reason for everything you do. So, a new point of view. Then there's making sure the new information, the new point of view, exists in empowering contexts. This is why The Queen's Code is the way that it is. So women can't just glean the information out and use it against men. It's a, I call it a fairy trap.

• 2:59:43Speaker 01

  The story, that everything about it is just to,

• 2:59:47Speaker 01

  just bring you in and transform you out is the point of that book, to transform the way women relate to men. Now, I love it transforming the way men relate to themselves, finding out the good reason you have to do things. And then the last part is a new good habit. So an empowering context, a new good habit. So I spend all this time talking to my students to make sure that they've...

• 3:00:12Speaker 01

  Got the new information. They really get it. It's clear to them. And it's in an empowering context, which for me is the context of partnership. It's my passion, partnership. And then that they're, they have the awareness, which causes, we have to celebrate noticing when we F'd up. Oh, oh shoot, I emasculated him yesterday. I noticed. I noticed. I'm aware of it. Thank you, brain. Thank you, brain. We have a thing called the notice dance. It's funny how many times you lose your pen.

• 3:00:47Chris Williamson?

  I like to play with it. It's over there now.

• 3:00:50Speaker 01

  Tickle, tickle, tickle, then it flies. And you lean over, then you get it. Yeah, okay.

• 3:00:55Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so YouTube website?

• 3:00:58Speaker 01

  AllisonHemshun.com.

• 3:01:02Chris Williamson?

  Allison, I really appreciate you.

• 3:01:04Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate you. I love what you're up to. I totally love what you're up to. It's very exciting to me.

• 3:01:13Chris Williamson?

  Thank you.

• 3:01:14Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 3:01:15Chris Williamson?

  Until next time.

• 3:01:17Speaker 01

  I'd like a next time. It'll be fun.

• 3:01:20Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 3:01:37Speaker 01

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 3:01:41Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 3:01:44Speaker 01

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 3:01:46Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.