Former No.1 Pick-Up Artist: “We’re Wired to Cheat After 7 Years”, “I Was In A Relationship With My Mum”, The True Danger Of Porn: Neil Strauss

What can the former world’s best pick up artist and now recovered sex addict teach you about love? In this new episode Steven sits down with 10x New York Times bestselling author, Neil Strauss. Neil Strauss is a former music critic, cultural reporter and ghostwriter, he is best known for his books, ‘The Game’ and ‘Rules Of The Game’ which documented the secret world of pickup artists. In this conversation Neil and Steven discuss topics, such as: How he went to rehab to overcome sex addiction His emotional evolution How he redefined his idea of love Dealing with a toxic relationship with a parent The reasons people have commitment issues Why dating is so hard Three steps for healing trauma How we are wired to cheat after 7 years in a relationship Why marriage is now a tick box exercise How to attract a perfect partner Why all relationship issues are historical The dangers of masturbation and porn What he learned as Kevin Hart’s ghostwriter The one attribute that made Kevin Hart a success Kevin Hart’s key to resistance How to overcome fear of abandonment Why your childhood is the reason behind your relationship problems The 5 things men need to do to find love How to break out of a toxic dating cycle Why checking a partners phone is cheating Living in a separate world when you cheat You can purchase Neil’s most recent book, ‘The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships’, here: https://amzn.to/3u9gm17 You can purchase Neil's book, 'The Game: Undercover in the Secret Society of Pickup Artists', here: https://amzn.to/3udYx13 Follow Neil: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3QAzZ9I Twitter: https://bit.ly/3MEH0FA Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Steven Bartlett?

  This is certainly an interesting topic. Is it okay to ever check your partner's phone?

• 0:04Speaker 01

  It's a form of cheating. Here's what's interesting. I found that

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  Neil Strauss, the former world's greatest pick-up artist.

• 0:10Speaker 02

  Best-selling author. He opens up about cheating, monogamy. Whose work is insightful and controversial.

• 0:15Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it's natural to be faithful to one person?

• 0:17Speaker 01

  In my research, the most evolutionary argument that made the most sense was that we're wired to cheat after about seven years. That said, I realized that all relationship issues are historical. For example, I hurt someone I'd love to offer a sexual experience and it wasn't that great. Went to a sex addiction rehab and then the therapist said, "The reason you've never been in a healthy relationship is because your mother wants to be in a relationship with you." My mom never approved of a single person I dated. When I wanted to live with my girlfriend, my mom cut me off. She'd come in my room and tell me about how horrible my dad was and I was the only one who understood her. So you grew up trapped. We call that emotional incest. And then what happens as soon as you're in a relationship, you want to escape. Having that outlet of cheating or drugs means we're not just trapped with this one person.

• 0:56Steven Bartlett?

  And how does one go about unwiring that?

• 0:59Speaker 01

  These little things program us, so you've got to disengage it. And so what works is

• 1:03Steven Bartlett?

  The people that really are struggling to find that love, what advice do you give to them?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  People have this fantasy about what they want, but you're going to attract someone who's at your level of growth and self-esteem. Everyone who has that list of, "This is what I'm looking for," make that list for yourself and become that person. And then you'll meet that person. It's like just 100% true.

• 1:20Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think about masturbation?

• 1:22Speaker 01

  I like how you just asked that question. Just, I've never shared this. I'll probably regret it. I did an experiment once, so.

• 1:37Steven Bartlett?

  Neil, I first came across your work when I was, I'm going to say 17 years old. Your book was the first book I ever read without moving from the moment I opened it. The book, obviously, the book covers the life of pick-up artists and you kind of go on that journey with them and then you kind of shine a light on that world. But for me, what the book taught me was a lot about human psychology and that human psychology was even quite a significant thing in life, business and everything in between and relationships. And then I read your second book, some years later, called The Truth. And again, this book changed my life, but for very different reasons.

• 2:20Steven Bartlett?

  For reasons centered around the fact that I was struggling in relationships, I was struggling with commitment. I thought that a relationship was prison. And your book, The Truth, gave me an olive branch that maybe I was wrong. And it showed me sort of a, gave me a mental model to redefine how I saw relationships. There's a lot of people struggling with relationships.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's why I wrote it. I was one of those people.

• 2:48Steven Bartlett?

  Give me a little bit of an overview of your story up until, up until writing The Truth.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  I think we're really similar. We were talking a little bit before the show in terms of like being a late bloomer, in terms of relationships and commitment and freedom being important and all those kind of criteria. I just thought, you kind of think everything's normal and everyone else is strange and you're normal, until you like hit a bottom and something goes wrong. And for me, what happened was,

• 3:15Speaker 01

  I mean, it's super vulnerable to share, even though it's in the truth, but it's weird to say it in person. I was dating someone who I thought, oh, this is more serious relationship. Maybe this could go the long way. And then I cheated on them. And sadly, people usually don't learn a lesson when they cheat, they learn the lesson when they get caught. So I got caught. And, and then, then you face the reality. That's when the compartment breaks down in your mind and you face the consequences of what you've done. And, you know, her being smart was like, I'm done with you. You cheated on me. You betrayed me. Goodbye. Good, which is good for her. And I felt like just wrecked. I felt just, you know, I wrecked it.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  I hurt someone I loved and cared about. I destroyed my chances for the future that I wanted to have, all for like a sexual experience that wasn't that great anyway.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  So, and this is in the book, so his name's there. So, so Rick Rubin, the producer, the music producer, who's kind of been a mentor to me. He almost produces my life like the way, he literally produced my life, like the way he produced a record where I'm living everything. He's, he's someone who can just, the way he looks at music, he can look at your life and see what your logical fallacies are. So he said, like, maybe you're a sex addict. I'm like, well, what do you mean? It's not like I need to have sex all the time. I'm not addicted to it. I'm not like out there doing crazy things. He's like, well, I mean, A, look at all the stuff you did in the game. Did that make you happy? You know, you got everything you wanted. Did that make you happy? And now you're, you hurt somebody you cared about for a sexual experience. Maybe you are a sex addict.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  We literally argued back and forth about that for months till he was ready to give up on me. And then I said, I don't know, but I'll tell you what, I'll go, I'll go to, I'll go to sex addiction rehab because it's not going to hurt. I'll, I'll, I'll learn something. And I went there very cynically into, into sex, into sex addiction rehab. And we do something, we did something called like a timeline. We write down your most, and you can do this at home. It's a useful thing to do to write down your most impactful experiences, positive or negative in your first 17 or 18 years. And you kind of write them out. I was going through my positive and negative experiences. Now the therapist goes, well, you know, the reason you've never been in a healthy relationship. I'm like, no, why? Because everything either I cheated or someone cheated on me or they just didn't work out.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And I go, no, why? She goes, well, it's because your mother wants to be in a relationship with you. And exactly that look you just had was exactly what I had. I'm like, what are you talking about? But logically, but in my body, like everything when it passed made sense. Then she said, and this was like a little intense. She's like, there's a word for that. We call that emotional incest.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  And I was like, what the fuck is that? Like, but almost like I'm feeling it now, like I felt this whole, like this cold wind blow through like my entire soul. And like my body recognized the truth that she was right. Like, why did my mom never approve of a single person I dated? Why was I grounded for most of my high school life? Why, when I wanted to live with my first girlfriend, my mom cut me off and said I wasn't allowed to do that, even though I was like, you know, 19 or 20 or something like that. Like, it's insane, you know? Why would I sit while we're watching TV and like massage her? It's fucking creepy, but like massage her hands and shit like that. Like literally, and why would she come in my room and tell me about like, you know, how horrible my dad was and I was the only one who understood her?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Like, yes, like it's crazy. And so, so once I recognized the truth of that, all of a sudden, like it just was never the same again. Basically.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Just like three types of parenting, right?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  This is, see, there's functional parenting, which is just a parent that takes care of a child's needs. There's abandonment, when a parent's not there for the child's emotional or physical, you know, emotional or physical needs, or the parent's gone. It can be abandonment, even if a parent dies when you're very young. You don't know that, that sometimes you might think that's about you. Then there's enmeshment, which is like most people don't know and don't recognize, which is when a parent's, when your job is to take care of your parents' needs.

• 7:25Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, okay. When you kind of start parenting them or taking care of them.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yes, or, or instead of making choices about what are best for you, they're making a choice about what's best for them. So, simple version is you're taking care of them. In fact, you can see people who are adults and they call their mom or dad every single day and are always there for the problems that their parents are having and feel guilty if they're not. But then it can be more subtle, like maybe a parent's really anxious and you need to be home and close by and do all these things. But it's not for you to be a better child, it's for them to be less anxious and less worried. So, a sign that enmeshment is occurring is if, if you grew up feeling sorry for a parent. We're born with kind of all our brain cells, but the neural connections aren't made, right? And in our early, early childhood experiences, all that wiring is being put together. So they're like our programmers, right?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Like, they literally just programmed us, so these little things program us. And this woman, Pia Melody, she's brilliant. She has this great therapy called post-induction therapy, PIT. And she thinks of your, she thinks of your childhood as a hypnosis. And she's trying to wake you up from that hypnosis. And it's such a great way to think about it, that we're really indoctrinated into this cult as children, right? Like, and that cult is our family, our family values, the family system, the way it is. Mom, dad, like, we have nothing else, and that shapes the wiring of our brain. And then, as adults, so much of our journey is to, like, just wake up.

• 8:55Steven Bartlett?

  So how does that all come back around to this sex addiction?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  So if you grow up enmeshed with a parent,

• 9:03Speaker 01

  well, what happens as soon as you're in a relationship again? You feel trapped. And that trappedness reminds you of?

• 9:10Steven Bartlett?

  Your parents.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Your parents and your childhood. And so what do you want to do when you're trapped?

• 9:14Steven Bartlett?

  Fly, escape.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. You want to escape. And how do we escape?

• 9:18Steven Bartlett?

  Cheating.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:19Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting that cheating is a path to escaping. That's quite interesting.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it doesn't have, it's like, it's almost like a, and by the way, it's not cheat, some people will act out in some other way. It could be some other type of, type of escape, but often it's cheating because we feel trapped again and we feel, uh, we just want to pop a hole in that, uh, like plastic bag over our head before we suffocate, suffocate. And having that outlet of just cheating or fantasy or drugs or whatever it is, like something there like just helps us escape and not feel trapped. We have our own separate life or we're not just trapped with this one person. It's scary. We feel this like terror. I mean, sometimes like before I did all this work, like my girlfriend would like hug me.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And I'd just feel like my skin crawl. I just feel trapped and like, she's just loves me to hug me, but I feel like, just like I wanted to escape.

• 10:12Steven Bartlett?

  See, I can relate in a way because I remember when I would pursue someone that I was attracted to when I was up until the age, I'd say about 22. And the minute they showed an interest in me, I would kind of like dissuade them from wanting to be, be with me. So I would pursue them. Then once they were interested in me, I'd dissuade them. I, I would get like, my skin would crawl. When they showed interest in me, I really had to do a lot of work to get rid of that.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:38Steven Bartlett?

  Like I was, I had an allergic reaction to someone being interested in me.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's that exact same thing. It's like, and so that's why a lot of people who are avoidants don't recognize their avoidance. They're like, no, I want love. I want to be in love. That's my whole goal in life. Yeah. How does it feel when someone actually returns your love powerfully?

• 10:54Steven Bartlett?

  And how does one go about unwiring that or unlearning those limiting beliefs?

• 10:58Speaker 01

  I'll give it to you in the, the, in the way that I think is like the most effective. The first step to heal is humility. Like the number one thing you need is humility. And as someone once told me, the same brain that got you into this problem isn't going to get you out of it. And a lot of people think, well, if I read books and I write books, I love books and I listen to podcasts and I love podcasts and do podcasts as well. But just taking in information, you're not gonna, you need, you need really humility to say, shoot, I don't know the answers. I need to surrender to a. To an expert and just say, I know nothing. That's why we're talking before the podcast about AA. And the first step is realizing we were powerless. And I think that humility is the first step to change.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  And it's, man, it's a hell of a step because it's hard for people to really be humble in this world. And say, I don't know. So from there, this is the three things that I think they work in combination. I really think this is the formula. I'd love if the therapy model was redone around this, which is, one is you need deep, intensive workshops where you're that, where you're really like an emotional puddle on the ground crying. This stuff came in emotionally, and I think it can only heal emotionally. I think anyone who's listening, or maybe even yourself, if you had a moment that really changed, it's something you felt emotionally. It wasn't, oh, if you, if there's an idea and you're like, oh, I get it. It's just a behavioral problem and then you change it.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  The things that you understand and you keep making the same mistake, you know, as they call it in NLP, conscious incompetence, those are the things where it takes something deeper. So, so deep, intensive, emotional workshop. And then everyone goes to these things. The Hoffman process, for example, is very popular right now. Have you heard of that?

• 12:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I have. One of my friends put it into the group chat the other day.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So it's powerful. It's great. What the survivors program at the Meadows or it's the Rio Retreat Center is amazing or therapeutic, but they're a bunch of, so you go to these, what always happens, or even after any kind of seminar is you leave, you're like, this is amazing. I totally get it. I see who I am. I'm going to go live my best life now. And then you get around the same environment and the same behavioral patterns start, you know, sneaking back in and you're back to where you started. So you need the big shift and then you need something for maintenance. That's where talk therapy comes in. So step one, deep workshop. Step two is some kind of ongoing maintenance. And here's something I recommend, and it's also cheaper, I think, than therapy. Not everyone can afford to see a therapist every week.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  So you need something that where every week or every couple of weeks, your wrong thinking is corrected. So as an example, I got a bunch of guys together in my neighborhood, different men are at the same level in life, and we all chipped in for one therapist. So instead of you buying a therapist, five, six, 10 of your friends can ship out a therapist. You can do that, you know, skip, skip a few coffees a week. And then we meet every week. We've done this for probably since my, you know, seven years now. Same, almost, almost the exact same group of people, a few people come in and out. And every week, we go in there, and here's why group therapy, I think, and a lot of research backs this up, actually. But research can back anything up. Is that, that it works better than one-on-one therapy is if you're having a discussion with me or a therapist,

• 14:11Speaker 01

  you can just say, "Well, I think you're wrong. I disagree." Even though you don't have an agree, I disagree. But if that therapist and like eight of your friends all say, "No, man, you're wrong." You're like, "I disagree, but if you all say so, you're probably right. I'll consider that." So I think it's really powerful. And the other great thing is you don't have to wait every week or every two weeks to see a therapist. You're in touch with all your friends. Like you said about your group chat, you're in touch with all your friends all the time. So, so group therapy, like for example, we know each other's patterns. So I could be in my therapy thing and start to say something, like I'm starting to see this person and this is going on. And right away they'd be like, "Oh, man, you're doing that same thing you did with your last two people you started dating. Why don't you try this new thing? They see you so well."

• 14:52Speaker 01

  So, deep shift, ongoing maintenance, that's where the talk therapy comes in. Then the third thing is tools to use when you're backsliding. As an example, we talked earlier about how someone would, I'd get hugged by my girlfriend and I'd start to feel that, what you said, that same feeling, like I just felt like uncomfortable and wanted to escape. So the tool there was something called reparenting. Reparenting is being the, is like talking to your, talking to your inner child or talking to yourself. And I'd just say, "Hey, she's not your mom. You can relax. I've got this. I'll take care of you. She just loves you and cares about you, and man, accept that." So I'll just give myself that inner monologue.

• 15:35Steven Bartlett?

  And why, why do you think that works?

• 15:37Speaker 01

  The reparenting or the tools?

• 15:38Steven Bartlett?

  The reparenting part.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the reparenting part is this. Like there's- Inner child's kind of like a word that if you haven't done the inner child work just sounds like so woo woo. So another way to think about it is this. When you see something that's familiar that traumatized you as a child or a teen, right away, your protective mechanisms from then are going to take over. So you gotta, you gotta like disengage it. And so what works is saying, is works is recognizing it and saying like, no, this isn't that. This is actually okay, so you can relax and just accept.

• 16:17Steven Bartlett?

  And that's all quite unconscious, isn't it? So you won't consciously know that the reason this hug with this person is giving me the like the heebie jeebies or the creeps, whatever, is because it reminds me of my mother or whatever, whatever. But unconsciously, that's kind of what's going on. The old circuits are starting to fire, but you haven't had a thought yourself. You're just experiencing a feeling. Like I would experience that feeling of feeling like I was trapped, but I wouldn't consciously know why.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  You wouldn't know, no, of course. So you would have no idea. You literally just think, I'm trapped. And that's why these things all work together. So like the package, the short version of it, because it's a long answer, is deep intensive workshops, ongoing maintenance through group or talk therapy and tools to use when the old behaviors come up. So, once you've done that deep intensive workshop and recognize, oh shoot, I react like this because I'm getting flashbacks to being like suffocated by my mom or my dad, then you're, now you're conscious about what's happening. And then, as you consistently use the tools, it's you, you, you get to intervene quickly, right? So the key is like intervening quickly. I'll give another example that a lot of people might relate to, is like when you're in a

• 17:24Speaker 01

  conflict, or you're starting to get upset about something, right? And then, if you just stay there, you might start to get upset or behave in a way that you don't love. Does that make sense?

• 17:36Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So what you want to do is start recognizing the signs of, oh, my heart's starting to beat fast, or I feel like maybe there's something you feel in your chest or in your arms. For me, like my arms start to get like, I feel like a, I don't know, just sort of like a weird tension in my hands as soon as I feel that. I'll just say, one second, I'll be right back. I'll step back, bring myself back to earth, and then come back and I'll never react. So I think one of our goals, I think the goal of self-improvement in this work is to be like non-reactive, connected, but non-reactive.

• 18:09Steven Bartlett?

  Masturbation.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:11Steven Bartlett?

  What did you think about masturbation?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  I did an experiment once because, like, there were a lot of people who, Billy Corgan from the Smashing Pumpkins, for example, like, doesn't let his band, like, have an orgasm the day of a show, or something like that. I think Darren, some director, I don't want to say his name wrong, felt like, there are all these kind of artists who I was talking to, who, by not having an orgasm, felt like they could use, and I think Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich or something, talks about just not letting the energy out, and then kind of recycling and using it for productivity in your life, and I'm sure a lot of tantric and other teachings say the same, so I tried an experiment of not doing that. I just felt horrible, and I was attracted to everything.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  I remember watching South Park, and like, Cartman's mom came on, and like, and I felt like aroused. I was literally like-

• 19:01Steven Bartlett?

  What chapter of your life was this in?

• 19:03Speaker 01

  This was like, in a pre-truth.

• 19:05Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  So the answer is like, I don't, maybe I'm not there yet, but I don't have a strong, I think that, as long as it's not compulsive, as long as it's not changing your healthy relationship with women or sexuality, and there's a difference between masturbation and pornography.

• 19:19Steven Bartlett?

  Pornography is, what's your view on pornography?

• 19:22Speaker 01

  I don't think it helps.

• 19:24Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  But here's, here's, let me give you a last thought on masturbation, this is like, a crazy thought, I've never shared this, I'll probably regret it, I'll probably call you later and ask you to cut it out, but I think that everything in your life, I think you can be giving yourself a seminar in your life all the time. So, maybe we'll end here, so, but, but when, but I try, I almost think of it as training, so if I'm gonna do it, I'll just think, okay, my goal is to like, last longer, or try to like, do it twice or something, so I try to think of everything, how can I, even with that, I'm like, how can I train myself to be better?

• 19:53Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  And so I'm always thinking, even in my life, on like, how can I, how can-

• 20:00Speaker 01

  So a lot of people talk about the, even I mentioned this kind of cliche of the authentic self versus the false self. And I always think like, shit, what is authentic? How can I measure authentic? I don't know what's authentic. I think I'm, when I was really inauthentic, I thought I was being authentic. And I realized that a better dichotomy is the creative versus the destructive self. So like if you're watching pornography and then masturbating and like you feel better afterward, was it constructive for you or was it destructive? And so trying to do things that are constructive feels right.

• 20:31Steven Bartlett?

  Is that just an excuse, though, for a destructive behavior?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Go ahead. What do you mean?

• 20:35Steven Bartlett?

  So is it, so in the context of masturbation, you're giving it some kind of purpose by saying it's a practice or like it's a training?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I might just, I might just sort of deluding myself by giving myself an excuse. This is okay.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I guess the answer is like you, but you know, you know the seed by the fruit. So to see if it hurts in my relationship by sexuality or my relationship with women and things like that.

• 21:01Steven Bartlett?

  What about pornography then? Do you think pornography is harmful?

• 21:07Steven Bartlett?

  For relationships, love?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  I guess the, I guess the answer again is like, it depends on how you're using it. I don't know. I haven't really thought this out and there's certainly a lot of studies that show the opposite of pornography, but I think if you're, if it's just becoming regularly and it's, you're doing it too much, or I'm sure you can use pornography in a healthy way with your partner and watching together and maybe getting turned on and then experiencing something together or mixing it up sometimes. And I'm sure there are ways. I think everything can be healthy and unhealthy. You can drink too much water and die.

• 21:38Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think it's natural to be faithful to one person for life?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  In all my research, I think the person who came up with what I think is the most evolutionary

• 21:49Speaker 01

  argument that made the most sense was Helen Fisher. And she's an evolutionary biologist, I believe. And she said that she thinks it's natural to,

• 21:59Speaker 01

  and she studied marriage patterns, divorce patterns, and this changes based on the number of kids, but where she believes we're wired for seven years for,

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Serial monogamy with clandestine adultery. That's what she says, meaning serial monogamy means one partner at a time, but secretly cheating sometimes on the side. That's how she thinks we're wired. And that the average is about seven years. If you have more kids, that lasts longer, meaning that's enough time for the child to grow up and kind of take care of self. And then you get to, you know, have new children with someone else and vary your genes. That said, that's like the evolutionary perspective. That said, I don't believe like evolution is destiny. You know what I mean? It's probably evolutionary for people to want to take someone's usurp someone's power and money and I don't know. I'm sure there are all kinds of evolutionary impulses that we have a prefrontal cortex that allows us to make these choices.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I mean, if we had to do everything, I think you have a choice whether you want to be faithful or not. That said, fidelity is different than honesty, meaning that I think you can be honest with your partner. And for example, I know people whose partner, maybe the partner went through menopause and sex stopped and they had a discussion and said like, I still have these sexual needs, what do I do about it? And they renegotiated the relationship, you know, and some, so I think that we can rethink a relationship as an ongoing discussion between two partners and probably the partner with the lowest comfort will generally win out. I talked to this woman, Stephanie Koontz, who's like the biggest expert on marriage. She wrote a book on it. And she said the history of marriage was originally, it was, you know, for property

• 23:36Speaker 01

  rights and inheritance and kids were just extra workers, you know? And then, um, and then it was marriage for love was this radical idea. And she says now we're in this thing where it's just, you know, tick a box. Like I was at a dinner the other day and a bunch of people were there talking about their relationships and someone's like, well, I'm going to have a kid, I'm freezing my eggs. I want to have a kid later and, and I'm going to do this. And someone else is like, I'm never, I'm want to get married and fall in love and have kids. It's like a tick a box thing. Do you want one partner or many? You know, do you want, you know, a lot of people are into, you know, ethical non-monogamy now. Do you want kids? Do you not want kids?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  You can just check a box and decide, and we're in this way where we have so much choice.

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  Ethical non-monogamy?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:20Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't know that was a thing now.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:22Steven Bartlett?

  What does that mean?

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Some people call it consensual non-monogamy or ethical non-monogamy, but that's basically your, you're not monogamous with your relationship partner, but your ethical meaning, you're both honest about it.

• 24:33Steven Bartlett?

  Ah, okay.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:34Steven Bartlett?

  You, as you said earlier, you went on a journey to figure out whether that stuff could work for you, like polyamorous relationships, swinging, all of those kinds of things. And you concluded that it just, it can work for you. I think you, I remember you saying that you kind of wanted like a half-open relationship at the time.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  I think most people probably do. I think that was probably coming out of like a, that was me coming out of a wounded place saying that by half-open, you mean like I could do what I want and they don't or something? I think that usually, whoever says that, and I, including myself at the time, is probably like a wounded person, like in terms of like, I just want to do what I want, but I want to deal with uncomfortable, and you deal with those uncomfortable emotions, but, but, but you can't do what you want because I can't deal with uncomfortable emotions. So, so I think that the answer is, I think there's like three entities. There's you, there's your partner, and there's the relationship. I think the right answer is something that makes all three better. So, for example, when I was in those scenes, there were a lot of couples, and it wasn't sometimes it was the woman leading the charge, sometimes it was the guy leading the charge,

• 25:35Speaker 01

  where one partner was letting the other partner be more open, so they didn't lose them. And they were just silently suffering. That's not good for the person or the, or the relationship. But I think if you can find a way where like, for example, one person I met, he like, he thinks his partner's fabulous and other men can, should, he shouldn't just get to hog all that fabulousness to himself. Like he wants to share that, so that people can get to experience that. And so that's right for him and right for her and right for their relationship.

• 26:07Steven Bartlett?

  And you've met people that are in that, that sort of. Polyamorous situation that are like really, really, really happy.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and here's what's interesting. I found that just as many people cheated in polyamorous relationships is monogamous relationships. And I'll give you an example. Like, one of the first people I met, like, maybe they have a boundary, like, oh, you're not allowed to do this specific sexual thing with other people. You're not allowed to do this. Like, they would still break. They can literally do like ninety-five percent of what they want, then five percent is restricted, and they'll cross that boundary. I found just as much cheating in that is monogamous. And the idea being that, the idea really being, if you're healthy, whatever relationship you choose will be healthy. If you're unhealthy, whatever relationship style you choose will be unhealthy.

• 26:51Steven Bartlett?

  Maybe there was something in just breaking the boundary that people find somewhat appealing. So it doesn't really matter what the boundary is, but there being one, you're going back to that avoidant nature of trying to stop yourself from being a bird trapped in a cage. Maybe just breaking a boundary is part of the thrill.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's someone I met, probably the wisest person I met, I forget his full name, his name was Pepper, and he had two big thoughts, and one was that intentions are better than rules.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  And then his second thought was, your partner has to have an abundance of you before they can sort of be with other people.

• 27:25Steven Bartlett?

  So explain both of those, then.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Sure. Sure. The intention is like, well, what are our intentions? To to honor each other, to be honest, to respect, and to have sort of intentions, which are discussion points versus, well, you can do that, but you can't do this. And behind it, those rules is an intention. For example, what's behind the discomfort of someone sleeping with someone else is the intention to safety. I feel unsafe if you're off with someone else, because I could lose you. And so the intention maybe might is safety, and maybe there are other ways to get that need met. You know, you know, as a short guy who who's like, literally like five, six, and you, you know, and people are always looking for someone who's like six feet or over, a guy, and you're like, oh, man, I'm like six inches below the mark.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  I realized, oh, no, what they want is like, safety there, or security being with someone who feels bigger or stronger helps them feel safe. And I'm like, okay, I can do safe. I can't do tall, but I can do safe.

• 28:19Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  So um, so, so that's the idea of intentions. And the idea of a partner has abundance of you means a lot of people are like, this relationship isn't working, we're fighting a lot, like. Maybe we should split up, but maybe let's try polyamory. That's not gonna work versus, or it's just if your partner has enough sex, has enough love, has enough connection, and then you're with someone else, there's less of that fear because they're full, your partner should be full first.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Third thing, for people are considering doing this in case they're, I'm sure some people are like thinking, maybe this will work for me, and is, it's, I think it's called the burning period, which is that if you do open up a monogamous, open up a relationship, there's probably, there's a period of six months or whatever, that you, there's a lot of discomfort and awkwardness, and it requires a lot of communication to work through it.

• 29:12Steven Bartlett?

  Lot of insecurity, I imagine.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, our biggest fear as a child is abandonment, because what happens if our parents out there, we don't get milk or water or food, and we die, we can't take care of ourselves. And so, we're fear of abandonment. A great, a great line from The Truth, it was my, I think about this all the time, when people are scared in a relationship about being abandoned, this therapist named Lorraine said,

• 29:39Speaker 01

  unless you're a child or dependent elder, no one can abandon you except yourself. And you're like, you're not gonna die if the person you love leaves you, it's just gonna hurt and suck, right?

• 29:48Steven Bartlett?

  That's how it feels right on a psychological level. It feels like we are being, because that, that emotional reaction stems, I guess, right back to like, I don't know, being thrown off the island by our tribe or something. And when we think about the physiological consequence of loneliness as well, like, the body completely changes. We go into self-preservation, we don't sleep as well, just when we're, and that's just when we're lonely, so.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you nailed it. I think there's two sides. There's the abandonment, like, if a child's abandoned, maybe that child doesn't survive. And that's obviously happened to us, to children historically. And then the other side, like you said, if you're kicked out of the tribe, and this is why people are so fearful on social media and all these things, if you're kicked out of the tribe, well, you can't survive on your own out in the wild.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  So we are afraid of abandonment and social rejection.

• 30:34Steven Bartlett?

  There's abandonment and social rejection and loneliness.

• 30:38Steven Bartlett?

  Your first book, The Game, I think it spoke to some men who feel that way. Like, because I think those men, I think I was probably, maybe I was one of them, where I was a young man who wanted to figure out how to be loved. And The Game appeared to give me a code to that. In a world where figuring out how to be loved and finding someone to love me was kind of this like complicated, you know, thing that didn't make sense. And I reflect on, I don't know how many years we're on from The Game now, maybe 10 years or something.

• 31:18Steven Bartlett?

  But in terms of men feeling like they understand what masculinity is and loneliness and the statistics around the amount of men that are sexless, we've gone in a worse direction. Like, there are more men now that feel isolated, lonely, that are struggling to find love and a partner. We've had dating apps emerge, I think, since The Game, pretty much since The Game, which has confused the whole dynamic of how do I find someone that loves me? Where do I find them? It's roughly about 50% of people now meet online.

• 31:58Steven Bartlett?

  So there's this new generation of men and women that are struggling now to find that love.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you raise this question, like, why is it when we're more connected than ever that we feel more disconnected? I think that maybe one of the issues, I think it's really tough to all be connected because we thought that technology would, with this idea of the global village, Marshall McLuhan and stuff like that, technology is going to just create a global village, which it did. But we forgot that the village, it sucked to live in the village, because in the village, everybody's gossiping. You know, if you step out of line, you're, as we were saying earlier, you're kicked out of the village. Everyone tries to keep everyone down because it's petty and it's jealous. And if you're different or express yourself in some other way, you're like an outcast. It used to be that, you know, if you left high school, went to college or moved somewhere else, you get to just create a whole new life.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And now we're all in this fishbowl staring at each other and it's uncomfortable and maybe feels less safe. On top of that, I think there's some statistic. A few years ago, that 25% of marriages start in the workplace. And now you can't really date in the workplace anymore. So that's kind of off the table now.

• 33:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  And then I think the other thing is, uh, people, I noticed that on the apps, people sort of have this fantasy about what they want. And then they might be with someone, start dating a few times and say, oh, you know, that one thing's just not quite right in what I want. And, and there's so, so much abundance that they can just go back to the dating pool instead of working, working it through or, or, or writing it out. In other words, before you bet someone out, you exchange phone numbers. That was like exciting thing. You got the phone number and gosh, what minute should I call? I guess I'll wait two days to call and then you call and oh my God, I'm gonna see him in four days and you know, and, and there's so much excitement around that. And now you literally just, you like, you go back on one of these apps and within like

• 33:52Speaker 01

  24 hours, you have so many options.

• 33:55Steven Bartlett?

  In your, in the last two decades, you've met so many people that are like struggling in relationships and love. And I guess my question is like, what advice do you give to them? The people that really, really are struggling. And it's different issues for men and women because there's, there's different dating dynamics in play there. So for, for those, let's start with men, for those young men, and I've had many guests on the podcast talk to those, speak of the statistics around young men and also around the suicidality of those young men. And, um, I mean, some of the really crazy stats are around suicide. I think I've shared a few times before that. In the UK alone, someone dies by suicide every 90 minutes and 76% of them are male.

• 34:40Steven Bartlett?

  Look at some of the other stats. The number of unmarried men in the United States has increased by 50% since 1970. The number of men who are reporting that they are lonely has increased by 50% since 1980. The number of men who have had.

• 34:54Steven Bartlett?

  Sex by the age of twenty has decreased by twenty percent since nineteen ninety. The age men have their first kiss is now getting later and later. The number of men who are reporting that they have been victims of sexual assault by another man has increased by twenty percent. So the stats tell a pretty horrific story. And then the same, the same here for women. In nineteen seventy, only thirteen percent of women over thirty were unmarried. Today, that number is nearly fifty percent. The divorce rate for women over thirty has doubled in the past fifty years. And I can go on and on and on. So clearly, there's something going on with relationships, dating.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Let's, let's, let's hold two ideas. One is there's something going on, and the other one is stats. So when I wrote, when I wrote The Truth, I went through, like, I started the book with these, with similar stats, that, you know, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce. But I'm like, I got my start, one of my starts is like a fact checker at The Village Voice before I was like writing these books and things. And so I'm like, I just really rigorously check facts. If you really dig deep, you'll find that probably fifty percent of statistics are made up. You'll, you'll literally, to the degree that most of them, I couldn't keep the stats because either they, they'd never existed. In one case, we call the actual researcher, I think the divorce stat or the infidelity stat, and they're like, she's like, I never said this, this is not from my research.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  My name's always attached to this, I don't know how to stop it. So, so what happened, so a lot of these things, first of all, but I think the sense of all this is very true, I'd be slow to jump on a stat. It's funny, I did a piece for Rolling Stone on Elon Musk, and similar thing happened where I told him the statistic, and he's like, I have to see how they did that study before I could even comment on it. That said, I think we're in a crisis. I think what we're speaking of is a, like, we, we're really, like, there's a, there's a real mental health crisis. And if you think about when you were a kid, like, how often did you have doctor's appointments?

• 36:50Steven Bartlett?

  Gosh, not often, but I don't know, maybe twice a year?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Twice a year and have dentist appointments?

• 36:56Steven Bartlett?

  The same, I think, twice a year.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  How often do you have, like, therapist or psychologist appointments?

• 36:59Steven Bartlett?

  None.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Exactly, right? And that's our culture. Our culture is, your teeth better look great, got to make sure everything physically is fine, but no concern for mental health, no teaching of mental health, no, so we have no foundation to build on. And then we get to our age, where all those wiring and all those patterns are set, and either, and then if we want to heal, we better have a lot of money, because it's a rich person's game to heal, because insurance and nothing covers it. So like, we really want to work on this. And again, like, if I could be sort of a crusader, maybe I should be, I don't know, maybe I need to be, is, it would be for taking, like, mental health as seriously as we take physical health. Because guess what?

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Obviously, stress leads to all kinds of diseases, and also, so many, so much self-harm and other harm are related to, obviously, mental health issues. And then we have this idea, we all have some sort of mental health issue, you know, like, everyone does. And if you don't think you have a mental health issue, there's something going on, you know, look in the mirror, we're still, we're all wounded from the way we were raised. So, so we really need to get the culture and the system to take mental health as seriously as they take all the rest of education.

• 38:15Steven Bartlett?

  But we're clearly just finding it harder just to meet each other as well.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a great, there's a Japanese writer named Kobu Abe, and he wrote this Woman in the Dunes, which is a great book and movie. He has this great line, he says, like, he goes, "We're wired for this tribal existence, and the city is the first place where we had to meet a stranger that's not an enemy. And we're still not used to that. Strangers are scary." I think most people, people are scary. I mean, even now, back in the dating thing, I'm like, I'm meeting someone on an app and I don't know who they are. Like before, if I met someone, they were kind of in my scene or in my peer group, or somehow we shared these interests, but there's just a random person on app that literally like, maybe they're a scammer, right?

• 39:00Steven Bartlett?

  Are you, are you in that phase now where you're, you're dating again?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:05Steven Bartlett?

  How is it going? And what's, what's, what's new in terms of like, since last time you were in the, in a dating phase of your life?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Let's see, I just ended like a, like a short but serious relationship, which was interesting.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  And I guess what's new is just the things we, things we talked, we talked about. I think I'm, I'm with my son like Fridays to Mondays. So, so it's hard, I think it's hard for someone who's not a single parent, or doesn't have a child, to sort of understand that maybe I'm less available. You can react one of two ways when you recognize you're getting older, right? You can go buy a flashy car and start dating like, you know, people who feed your ego and you can just feed your ego till you're dead. And that seems like a horrible way to go. I remember my first time in LA, like when I moved to LA, I was at this like nightclub and there was this guy in a wheelchair with a, older, with a mask to breathe. He was like very old, like 70 or 80. I don't know. He was, he was at death's door and he was surrounding, he had these like two, like, you know, very young,

• 40:06Speaker 01

  plastic surgery women around him. And I'm like, oh man, like, you know, I don't know whether to feel sorry for him or what, but I was like, oh, that's, that's like, that's, I guess that's his life choice and, and good for him, you know? Some, so you can kind of chase that validation. He liked dating multiple women because he liked women competing over him. That felt good when there was drama, like it made him feel wanted. So you can live, basically you're living out of your unhealed wounds, right? You can either live out of your unhealed wounds, or you can sort of heal your wound and see what else am I here to heal, or what else am I here to do? What's gonna, what are the few things that make me happy and the few things I can contribute?

• 40:48Steven Bartlett?

  I've got close friends of mine that.

• 40:51Steven Bartlett?

  Feel somewhat similar from conversations we've had with them where they're in a relationship with someone and it's almost like they're torn into two pieces. It kind of takes me back to maybe the start of your journey into the truth, which is they love this person, but at the same time, they just can't stop the urge to be with, to either cheat or think about other people or to text other people, et cetera. And they're almost tormented by it. I know some people that are like really tormented by that.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, then you have to look at yourself. And I guess all the time is what parts coming out of a wound and what parts like authentic, right? So there's one part where, yeah, other people are attractive. Like if you're in a relationship and you find other people attractive or hot or like might even think someone's a better match for you. Like, that's healthy. You still have eyes. You still have a comparing mind a little bit and.

• 41:47Steven Bartlett?

  It takes the right person.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 41:49Steven Bartlett?

  Does it take the right person in your view to make you commit?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  It takes you being the right person.

• 41:56Steven Bartlett?

  Okay.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  It takes you a hundred percent takes you be the right person. And even to the degree that you're going to attract people, you're going to attract someone who's at your level of growth and self-esteem. So like literally everyone who has that list of this is what I'm looking for, like make that list for yourself and become that person. And then you'll meet that person. That's like just a hundred percent true. And but but then the other side, like you said, then there's the part where it's agonizing where it's like, oh, God, I, I mean, I can speak from experience that once I did all that work, we talked about in the truth, I was like really happily monogamous with Ingrid. Like I didn't look at other people. I didn't chase that other stuff. Like, everything was clean.

• 42:34Steven Bartlett?

  What changed?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  What changed was I wasn't afraid of going deeper into intimacy anymore.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Meaning that, that, that like.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Like I would just look at her and I wasn't, I just had walls up that kept me from getting closer.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  That of really loving her and really accepting her. So you can either do the work with another person or you can do the work against that person. And against that person is acting out and fantasizing in your head and resenting. Or the other thing is you can work on yourself and work on how can I get deeper with them? And how can I learn to accept them? And how can I realize the issues I have with them have nothing to do with them? There's a saying, I'm pretty sure it's a saying, but that all relationship issues are historical. It's not about them, it's about something that happened with mom or dad. The things you're trying to change and fix were things that you needed from your parents.

• 43:34Steven Bartlett?

  How important do you think it is to be completely honest in a relationship? I.e. your partner should have the PIN for your mobile phone or there should be no PIN on your mobile phone. That complete honesty where they are able to see and know everything.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, good, great, great question. I think the ultimate balance is they have the PIN for your mobile phone, but they never use it. Checking your partner's mobile phone behind their back is a form of cheating. And I think a relationship needs both honesty and trust to work. Honesty means one partner's being honest, but if the other partner distrusts, it's going to go just as badly.

• 44:14Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think that if you cheat on someone and they, and they never find out?

• 44:22Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think, what is the harm to you?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  So if you, if you cheat on someone, the harm to you is all of a sudden you've taken the relationship and you just like drove a cleaver through it and now you're living in a separate world than they are. You can't get back to the same intimacy that you had before because intimacy is showing who you are and your vulnerabilities to someone else and being accepted. Right then, you're lying in bed, you're thinking about that other person, you're worried about them texting. You start being a different, a little differently around your partner. They sense that and they feel like something's wrong, maybe it's wrong with them and they behave different. And it sets, it sets off a whole, you know, invisible chain into motion.

• 45:02Steven Bartlett?

  And you can never authentically connect whilst you're cheating on someone. If you're cheating on them, you can never really, it's not a real connection, is it?

• 45:10Speaker 01

  You're hiding, you're hiding and compartmentalizing something. Some people are so good, they hide it from themselves, you know? There's a great line, this is also from Rick Rubin, he said, it's in the book, so. He said, I don't trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure.

• 45:24Steven Bartlett?

  I don't trade long-term happiness for short-term pleasure, interesting.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Right? It's really good, and I hear, so I became of the mind of this, which is, in terms of guys like you and I and other mesh and women too who feel trapped in their relationship is, I recognize that they're not keeping me from sleeping with anyone else. I can actually go ahead and sleep with whoever I want. I really can, I'm there, I can sleep with whoever I want, but I have to be honest and accept the consequences. So if sleeping with that person is more important than my relationship, I'm free to sleep with them. It's actually my choice, so no one's being, you're not being made to do or forced to do anything. It's all your choice. You just have to accept the consequences that, well, that sex with that person better be more important than your relationship. And so you can still, no one's keeping you from doing anything.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  You made an agreement, if you don't like that agreement, then make a different agreement for your relationship.

• 46:17Steven Bartlett?

  You wrote Rick Rubin's book, but you also, you wrote Kevin Hart's book.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:23Steven Bartlett?

  What did you learn about Kevin Hart?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I love, like, and I, he's, he's one of, like, I learned a lot from him. He's really one of my, like, favorite people, like, what you see, he, what you see is what you get. He is who he is. What I learned is this, and, and this is like more of a business thing, but he has no resistance. He goes, he doesn't have resistance to everything, anything, meaning that we have a plan, we want things to work out, and there's an obstacle, you had Ryan Holiday, and the obstacle is the way, there's an obstacle, or someone's just being difficult to work with, or whatever it is. He just takes the call, he deals with it, hangs up, and he doesn't get into a story about it. And so, I don't know if it makes sense, because I haven't seen this, like, written anywhere as a principle,

• 47:06Speaker 01

  but when things go wrong, or there's something he has to do that he doesn't want to, he doesn't have resistance to anything. He just does it, rolls through it, and moves on. And he doesn't think, I'm like, one of the biggest actors and comedians in Hollywood, why do I have to deal with this? He just deals with it. Doesn't procrastinate? He doesn't procrastinate, he gets it done, he does stuff himself, he doesn't play mothers for bothering him, he really is like, and he's, he has a strength of positivity, he's, even if he's, I've seen like, quote unquote, yell at his kids, but he's so positive and accepting.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Interesting. When something happens, we get right into a victim place, right away, right away, we think, why me? Or, God, why do I have to deal with this? This is supposed to be like this. And he doesn't have that story, and he just does it. And going back to how we're raised, he was raised with a very strict mom, and like, you know, and he applies that strictness into his life as a discipline, and it works. And what about Rick? Rick Rubin? What have I learned? Man, I mean, that book, The Creative Act, I originally didn't plan to write it, I just said, I'll do all the interviews for the book, and you can find a writer, because I don't want to, you know, we're friends, and it's okay, like, you need to find the right person for your book, but I just want to do all the interviews, because

• 48:20Speaker 01

  I wanted to learn from him, because he's produced, but everyone, Kanye, Jay-Z, like, Beastie Boys run DMC, like Johnny Cash, and he's so wise. And so I just wanted to learn from him, and this is what I, I think the main thing I learned, and it's in the book, I'm not trying to make a book be something, I'm almost listening to the work and trying to hear what it wants to be. So I really learned to take the ego out of the creative process, and surrender to the moment, and understand that there's something being called into existence that's not about me, and I'm just trying to guide it there and not get in the way. And it was a whole new way of thinking, it wasn't an artist-centered form

• 49:04Speaker 01

  of creation, it was an art-centered form of creation.

• 49:08Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:09Steven Bartlett?

  If you're making a book or your podcast or whatever else, it's you kind of get you you out of the picture to allow the thing to become what it wants to become.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. As an example, the truth was going to be like against monogamy and trying to maybe create a new form of marriage of relational and marriage that works better because as you were saying earlier, it's all broken. But instead it became a book about healing my own trauma. And I sort of listened to that. And that's why maybe the book's impactful.

• 49:38Steven Bartlett?

  Well, it goes back to what we were saying earlier. You said the first point of what they were calling a sex addiction was humility.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, or anything. And that's it. And it's really having humility in the face of of the universe. There's so many other great points in that book. One of his great, one of his great lines in there is is about, and this is great, true, it's true of bands, is business relationships. You know, people get in conflicts or do you have like a business partner? Do you kind of do it all yourself?

• 50:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, I, you know, I used to have a business partner in my previous business.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he said, if you're disagreeing on things and not saying things the same way, that's great because if you both think alike in a partnership and want the same things and want to do things the same, then one of you is unnecessary.

• 50:20Steven Bartlett?

  So true.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Steven Bartlett?

  So true. We were successful in our business relationship because we were so fundamentally different. So there was never a crossover.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:29Steven Bartlett?

  And we, we knew each other's responsibilities were you could, a piece of work could come in and we wouldn't have to speak. We knew whose job that would be.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:38Steven Bartlett?

  Based on skill set.

• 50:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's great. And you're able to do that when you, and not everyone can do that. You know, they're like, it's a hard thing for them.

• 50:45Steven Bartlett?

  What's your mission now in life? Like you're, you've done so much, you've, you know, you've been successful in so many areas of your life. What are you aiming at now?

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. And it's funny, man, when I, when I was like a kid, when I was there, like in college, my whole goal, there was a newspaper called The Village Voice, which was like the cool newspaper in New York. I just wanted to write for The Village Voice. It was like, you know, the center of the art scene and the culture. And I started writing for them when I was like in my early twenties. And then everything, that was really my life goal. And then everything's been a bonus. And I really think in terms of projects. Like I was thinking before your show, I was looking at your, the podcast thing. It was like the relationship expert, the sex expert, the this expert, the number one this. And I was thinking, what do I do? Or what am I? And I believe I have this saying like, That don't brand yourself, like let the world try to brand you while you keep moving

• 51:35Speaker 01

  forward. And I really just think in terms of projects. So I have no goal other than I want the next project I'm working on. I just want to do really great at it and share it. And then move on to the next project that I'm really excited about.

• 51:49Steven Bartlett?

  The difficulty with labels is we pick them up when we are successful at something.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we get stuck.

• 51:54Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  I mean, how many people do we know that, say, the health industry, where someone's like, they stake their health reputation on some, something that's really true in the moment. And now maybe the research has changed and then they're still, they don't want to lose their audience, though they're saying something that maybe they don't even believe anymore. Because we grow and we evolve. And if you label yourself as something, well, man, it's hard to move on. And so we have to be really, I think we have to be really careful of that. Some people, by the way, there are certain people, they have just one mission, and that's their mission. And they, and that's great for them. There are people like you and I, who are very growth oriented, who keep changing. Like you had one identity before this podcast, you have a completely new one. And I no doubt that in like, five, seven years, maybe that was that saying, seven years and all our cells

• 52:40Speaker 01

  recycling are completely new, they're going to be doing something equally amazing and unexpected and cool.

• 52:45Steven Bartlett?

  What's that been, what was that like for you? Because your book was so successful, The Game. It was so successful. So you become the game guy.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And my, my thought was, if I thought was, okay, I have to do something else that's, strikes people so powerfully, I become the whatever guy. It was still like, okay, what can I do?

• 53:03Steven Bartlett?

  Logically, that's what I would think. I think, I just have to do something bigger, and then they'll know me for that.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  And then there are other people who are still doing that, who are literally the people in that book, The Game, who are out there still doing the same thing.

• 53:12Steven Bartlett?

  And with, with a book, it's not like a social media post where it just kind of falls off the timeline.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:17Steven Bartlett?

  It's selling every day.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're really fortunate to be thought of as, by other people, as the whatever guy.

• 53:22Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because most people never even are known as anything.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's like, I'm really grateful for them, that I'm like, how can I, what, what's next? Again, going back to Rick Rubin, his thing is, as soon as you finish a work, And you, once you share it, you just move on to whatever's next.

• 53:40Steven Bartlett?

  Why was it so resonant, that book, The Game, in your view?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's a weird thing. It was really out of my control. And it's funny because I really feel the books. I feel like you get the book. Like, to me, I was really writing about male insecurity. Like, it isn't a book about, like, like you were saying, you were lonely, you felt disconnected, you didn't know how to connect. That's what you said, right?

• 53:59Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, it was like, getting, I mean, it was the girls at school. Like, I didn't know why that dude over there was really successful with them, and I was less successful than that guy over there. And I didn't realize that there was this whole kind of psychology about my, like, posture and how I could present myself.

• 54:20Steven Bartlett?

  And honestly, one of the big things that I came to learn, I don't think I've ever said this before, was at eighteen years old, I was very unsuccessful with the women that I wanted. So whenever I wanted someone, I couldn't get them. Right? It didn't mean I couldn't get, you know, girlfriends, whatever. But whenever I wanted them, I couldn't get them.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:41Steven Bartlett?

  Which is obviously quite, quite annoying. So there's like five people, girlfriends in a row that I wanted, and I couldn't get any of them. I could get other people. I was doing fine. I don't want to make it seem like I wasn't doing fine. I was doing fine. And I always wondered why that was. And then reading about the psychology of the game and understanding that there's this sort of social proofing thing, and that I portray my values to people in everything that I do, how I speak, how I hold myself, how desperate I am, whether I lean in in conversations and peck them, and how to just be a little bit more composed.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Right, which you do very well, by the way.

• 55:13Steven Bartlett?

  Now I do. Maybe not so much then. And then I saw this really interesting thing, which was by twenty-five years old, when I was actually securing myself, my mannerisms all changed naturally. And I fell more in line to what, in the game, you referred to as a natural.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:32Steven Bartlett?

  As in, like, I did the high-value things naturally, and then I was successful.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I think it was like a real shallow path to, like, self-improvement or self-esteem.

• 55:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  And it's nothing, and I think it's interesting. I felt like the, I think it did well.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Because I think of the culture, things of it's like the douchebags Bible, or something like that. And for me, it was really like about male insecurity and, and that, that feeling less than, and, and then.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  Sort of finding this very shallow path and also like it's a path and go in the wrong direction if you keep like you did you you the goal is to become a natural and let go of all those things almost like when we're someone's learning to play to paint or play tennis or whatever it is they're following the form and then they let go and step into who they are.

• 56:20Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  People get lost in that.

• 56:21Steven Bartlett?

  I didn't need any funnily enough I didn't need any tips or tricks or strategies or little games whatever when I was securing myself.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:30Steven Bartlett?

  What's the book you'd write then instead if like if the goal is to get to a place where you're securing yourself what is the who what kind of book would that be?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think there couldn't be any other book because that was the path A that was the path I took.

• 56:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  And B like somehow I thought female validation would get me there when it really needed to be my own validation.

• 56:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, like how do we get that's what I'm saying like how do we get what's the book on our own validation?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's there's a couple of great books on that, but I also think there's no shortcuts to this stuff.

• 57:02Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Like again blessings to everyone who does plant medicine and I'm not against plant medicine in any way, but I think like like you can't just I don't and again there are plenty of exceptions to everything I'm saying, but I think like doing one ayahuasca like journey is not gonna you know, or doing one of the workshops that I do in the Hoffman process or doing anything we all we're this culture where we want these shortcuts. But like it's always that long cut it was like the many year journey per the many year journey we went on to to figure this stuff out is where we got there. So I think maybe there's no other path other than one we took and if the shorter path we went to gotten there.

• 57:42Steven Bartlett?

  That's exactly what I think I I wish I think men specifically like young disillusioned single men that are like looking for love and not having much success need now is is a book about the long cut.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:00Steven Bartlett?

  The long route.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  The long cut is good I mean that's your next book, The Long Cut.

• 58:03Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, gosh.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:05Steven Bartlett?

  I'm not an expert on the subject matter and have to write about it, but but like what is what does the long cut look like because?

• 58:12Steven Bartlett?

  The long cut to self-esteem is like going to the gym, working on yourself, working on your mental health, being of service

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:22Steven Bartlett?

  to society, friendships, emotional expression, those kinds of things.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  You just did a table of contents in your book. We're getting there.

• 58:29Steven Bartlett?

  No, but I'm trying to figure out.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Like that list you gave is really great. It's funny with my son is in the other room. We have Sunday service days and we do something of service. Cause I think that's like that. I love that you mentioned that, like we try to do something. So I think those, I think, uh, I think it's true that it's really a combination of stuff. And some people just look at one path, but it is a little bit of, of all those different components of, uh, working on your psychological health, feeling like, why do I feel less than? What was the thing? What's great, what's great about like the stuff in your past, looking at your childhood is you see that it's not you. I always thought it was just me, like somehow I'm not enough. And then I realized, oh no, I feel like not enough because these experience, you know,

• 59:12Speaker 01

  my mom calling me all these different names, I internalized that and thought that's who I was. And I can say, oh, that's not who I am. And now I get to change. So it's nice to look back and see how these seeds were planted. So we can say, oh, that's not me. That was just some programming. And then I can run a virus scan on myself, right? And, and quarantine the virus. So I think like the long cut to self-esteem is figuring out why, what those reasons are, and then working on them. And then all those different components you said of, I think the easiest step is being other oriented instead of self oriented.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Being of service instead of saying, I expect everyone to make me feel good. How can I make others feel good? And how can I make my, my job is to feel good about myself? There's a great line, I mentioned Pia Melody earlier, who's this amazing therapist and author. She, uh, says like self-esteem should come from the inside out, not seeking it from the outside in. And so like you said, Going to the gym, I think doing something physical, you know, like doing something meaningful, having friendship, social relationship connection, all those things, having, looking at those different areas of your life and keeping them full, and then looking at the things that are destructive in your life. How often are you doom scrolling, you know,

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  how often are you comparing yourself to others, how often are you chasing things you don't really want but feel like you should want, and all those other things.

• 1:00:37Steven Bartlett?

  Your son comes to you at 21 years old and says, Dad, I'm struggling. I'm single, I'm lonely, nobody's interested in me, women aren't interested in me. Which book do you pass him, The Game or The Truth?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, good, good question. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, first of all, he probably would never, I feel like, I don't know. I don't know, I feel like The Game. Maybe I give him neither. I don't know. Maybe I, maybe I sort of just talk to him and listen.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like you almost have to read both until I get it, because The Game can be seductive in itself. And also, The Game's not a, The Game doesn't necessarily end well, even within The Game for the pick-up artists. Yeah, so I don't know which I give him. Maybe I talk to him.

• 1:01:33Steven Bartlett?

  Those characters from The Game, do you know where they are in their lives?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Steven Bartlett?

  You do?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I talk, like, I, I sometimes hear from a mystery who's out there doing his thing, doing workshops in Europe right now, I think. Yeah. It's funny, like, a lot of people still doing it, or going through, just still being them, doing them, right? Going in and out of relationships. And how, like, I think it's hard, how do we stop doing ourselves if our self isn't serving us?

• 1:02:00Steven Bartlett?

  So you will be writing a third book in this series. I know you've written many, many, many books, but a third installment of Neil's kind of journey in love.

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, or, or, or maybe not. Back to the idea, like, it feels natural that I do the next installment, because that's what I do, but how often are we trapped by what we've done before?

• 1:02:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Like, lately, I've been doing these podcasts.

• 1:02:21Steven Bartlett?

  True Crime.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  These True Crime podcasts, and I'm, feel like I'm hopefully helping people and making a difference in storytelling in another way, and trying to, like, help people locally.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  So so maybe I don't do that, but I don't know.

• 1:02:40Steven Bartlett?

  We talked about labeling.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:42Steven Bartlett?

  And and that's kind of linked in with identity. What what do you what do you want to be known for? And I think this is an interesting question because I think if someone asked me that, there's like a bullshit answer.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:55Steven Bartlett?

  And then there's probably like the truth. Like, if I could choose what people knew me for, I would be known for the businesses that I've built.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Steven Bartlett?

  I I guess this podcast as well, but for me, like I'm I have a preference towards that part of my identity for some reason.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Steven Bartlett?

  What about you?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I really like I always I always want the books to be known more than me. Like, I like you'll notice in the books, my picture is not on them or anything like that. I don't like I really want the books to be known. So we're just I guess I would like it like, oh, that's a new Neil Strauss thing. I can't wait to read it or listen to it or watch it. I just I just want to be known as like, oh, if he does something, it's worth noticing or reading or paying attention to. So but this is a writer or storyteller or something. But but really, like, I'd rather the projects be known, like the new podcast series I'm doing, which is different than the rest. Like, in my head, I'm just thinking, I just want it to be awesome and people to be like really excited by it. Like, and I think I'm just always thinking about the next project.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  And I can't wait for it to come out and like have an impact and.

• 1:04:01Steven Bartlett?

  When's it coming out?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Uh, I think January. I'll tell you about it offline, it's crazy.

• 1:04:06Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 1:04:07Steven Bartlett?

  Because when I saw you were doing a true crime podcast, I thought, does that mean you're like reading out stories from cases that were, you know, a couple of years ago or something?

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, I'm a big true crime fan, so anything I listen to.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, okay.

• 1:04:20Steven Bartlett?

  So I don't listen to any other genre. I don't even listen to this podcast.

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:26Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. The question left for you is, describe a moment in your life when uncertainty was dominant. How did you navigate this uncertainty? And how did it change you?

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  After nine eleven. And then after Hurricane Katrina, I think we had a certain thing in Americans that we felt were just Americans not touchable or something like that. Nothing bad happened. And then when nine eleven happened and we responded in the way we did as a country and felt like the whole world hated American terrorists and you know, you had yellow, red, all these alert levels. And when Hurricane Katrina happened and saw bodies floating down the street in an American city and here was a disaster, the government knew was coming and there was nothing we could do about it. I think I felt this existential uncertainty, which is like, which everybody feels now, by the way.

• 1:05:23Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  The whole world feels it now because no one trusts the system. No one trusts the government. But this was like, it felt new then. It's crazy how now everybody feels this way. But then certainly I felt was like, fuck, you can't rely on the system to protect you. You're on your own.

• 1:05:37Steven Bartlett?

  Is that why you wrote the book about prep, preps?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Prepping. Yeah, that's how I wrote the book about prepping. And then what I did was-

• 1:05:43Steven Bartlett?

  Prepping is basically preparing for the worst possible day. So like doomsday or I don't know, like a world war, a nuclear bomb. So you start stockpiling in your house stuff that will mean that you can survive on your own.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, learning kind of survival skills. So I guess the way I felt with that, so I felt that existential uncertainty and the way I did that was doing the things that would allow me to feel safe and give me like peace of mind. So the idea is when I feel the uncertainty, I try to take the steps that give me peace of mind and are constructive, not destructive. Sometimes it feels like we're in such an uncertain time, then people do things that are giving them peace of mind that are destructive to themselves or others, like a lot of hatred and division and things like that. But recognizing, I think, that that uncertainty maybe comes from within. So what I did, I guess, I guess, I guess, like, the answer is when I feel the uncertainty, I go on a journey that becomes a book, whether that was the game uncertainty about.

• 1:06:38Speaker 01

  Dating relationships with the truth or uncertainty about the world was emergency.

• 1:06:42Steven Bartlett?

  And are you still a prepper?

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I'm prepped. But, but at the same time, I also recognize there's only so much you can prep for. You know what I mean?

• 1:06:52Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  We don't know when this, these disasters are coming and, and we don't know how it's going to come or what it's going to look like. We had a pandemic, so we think we're preparing for the next pandemic. But the next thing that's going to happen is nothing we're ready or we're, we're concerned for. So I think the best thing you can do is be like mentally prepared for

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  the unknown in crisis situations. But, uh, but I did get like a second passport and all those things in case I need to get my family to safety.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  So, so second passport maybe is the answer.

• 1:07:20Steven Bartlett?

  Neil, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for writing The Truth, because this book has certainly helped me to, I, I said to you before we started recording, there was a, a, a part of this book where you describe a bird in a, in a cage. And that's exactly how I felt. And then you go on to reframe that notion to, to make me understand that I'm not trapped in a cage and that I am consciously making a choice to be in the relationship that I'm in. And at any point, if I wanted to leave, I can. And for me, that idea in this book is part of the reason I've been in a wonderful, successful relationship for the last four years that has enriched my life. So thank you so much for that. Your writing style has always been something I've admired so much. And even when I became an author, I remember that being front of mind, that you were able to take me on these incredible journeys. And then through the journeys, I learned something.

• 1:08:04Steven Bartlett?

  And that's how I've aspired to write. We can do a whole nother podcast another time about your writing ability, because that is profound. And evidenced by the fact you've written Rick Rubin's book, which is behind me and Kevin Hart, Kevin Hart's book and many others that people don't know about. So thank you for the inspiration. It means a lot to me and thank you for your generosity.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'm excited for where your journey takes you and at the next conversation I'm parenting.

• 1:08:24Steven Bartlett?

  I look forward to it. Yeah. Thank you. Do you need a podcast to listen to next? We've discovered that people who liked this episode also tend to absolutely love another recent episode we've done. So I've linked that episode in the description below. I know you'll enjoy it.