Cheating & How To Get Over Someone

Relationships 101 & 102 both landed in the Top 50 Chart Worldwide on Apple Podcasts, here we go again. Jonny & Yusef join me as we delve into the murky depths at the end of a relationship. We explain our views on why we have cheated in the past, our strategies for getting over a partner and the best approaches we've found for delivering breakups. Discover what research says men & women fear most in relationships, why cheating is just parabolic discounting at it's finest and why saying "I'm not attracted to you, at all" is a suboptimal approach for justifying a breakup. Extra Stuff: Relationships 101 - https://youtu.be/Sm4lIGLmYEE Relationships 102 - https://youtu.be/O9FA4uJj_pM How To Get Over Someone - https://youtu.be/tAsH_LXT9P0 Stay In Or Leave A Relationship - https://youtu.be/YGV5o6UHjxM How To End A Relationship - https://youtu.be/VPXIzJcfAMk The Worst & Best Ways to Tell Someone It’s Over - https://youtu.be/f4d6UcRCQDc - Video & production by Dean Hindmarch https://www.deanhindmarch.com/ https://www.instagram.com/deanhindmarch - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/modern-wisdom/id1347973549 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr?si=iUpczE97SJqe1kNdYBipnw Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:06Chris Williamson?

  Welcome back. It is Johnny and Youssef from Propane Fitness.

• 0:11Jonny?

  Hi there.

• 0:12Chris Williamson?

  Hello.

• 0:14Jonny?

  Youssef, stop. You're always messing up.

• 0:15Chris Williamson?

  I'm always messing up the start. Today, we are going to talk about Relationships 103. We have done

• 0:24Chris Williamson?

  two very successful episodes that I think have helped a lot of people, or at the very least helped us understand our own stance on relationships.

• 0:32Jonny?

  It's ended a relationship.

• 0:34Chris Williamson?

  Pardon?

• 0:34Jonny?

  It's ended a relationship.

• 0:36Chris Williamson?

  It ended a relationship. So I got a message from someone. I won't say who. I got a message from a girl on Twitter saying that after she watched one of the Relationships podcasts, she decided to finish a relationship she'd been unhappy in for a long time and was now four weeks hence and feeling liberated and better for it. So congratulations.

• 0:56Jonny?

  Instagram funnel.

• 0:58Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. So today, we're actually, speaking of ending relationships, we're getting to the darker parts, I think, of Relationships. We're going to talk about cheating, how to get over someone, and how to end relationships. It's quite a murky world, this one, isn't it? We're down into the depths now, where all of the fish have got long teeth and they've got those little angler things that come off the top.

• 1:25Jonny?

  Globe and their teeth come like this.

• 1:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And one of the worst things is that all of us have got really terrible.

• 1:32Jonny?

  Brilliant stories about us.

• 1:33Chris Williamson?

  Brilliant slash terrible, however you would like to.

• 1:36Jonny?

  Look at it indeed, yeah.

• 1:37Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think we left off last time, kind of trying to work out how to establish a good relationship and move it forward. But obviously, it doesn't matter how well you try and start things off. Inevitably, relationships do sometimes go awry. And certainly, in my experience, in relationships, the beginning of, for me, the first realisation that there's something wrong is when sexual interest starts to wane. So for me, that's like the. The first warning signal, like as soon as that starts, I'm like, ah, man. Like, I'm not being interested, I'm not being challenged, I'm not being, I'm just not as bothered.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I would say when sexual interest starts to wane, that's the sugary coating to the relationship. And it reveals any underlying malformations with the way that you've come together. And it makes it more obvious because there's no longer any sugar coating to make that better. And there was two themes that you mentioned in one O two about when you meet someone and you have slightly misaligned values. And as you grow together, those trajectories will move further and further apart. And then when they get to breaking point, then there's a natural progression which is breaking up. And the other thing was about tolerating things or what was the word you use, like keeping someone right or?

• 3:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, drawing lines in the sand.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, having, having those boundaries. And if you don't set them early on, over time, as the sugar coating starts to dissolve.

• 3:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, that's kind, that's kind of right, isn't it? Over, you, you get kind of like compounding interest on differences between the two of you. Or it's like the trajectory of a, of a rocket ship. Like if you're one percent off at the start, by the time you get to the moon, you're actually like a hundred thousand miles apart from each other.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  And it's like you're holding a rope and you both just start walking in the desert.

• 3:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  Like a stretchy rope, let's say.

• 3:31Chris Williamson?

  Long one.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Long, long.

• 3:32Chris Williamson?

  It's a must, Dan.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you both just start walking together. You think you're walking parallel, but over time you start realising you're both walking like that.

• 3:39Chris Williamson?

  Drifting apart.

• 3:40Speaker 02

  And then eventually the rope pulls more and more and more and you either allow it to pull yourselves together and you realign your values together. Or you carry on stubbornly going your own way until.

• 3:50Chris Williamson?

  Or you, you see someone else who's holding a bit of rope and think, fancy a bit of that rope while holding this one. And then before you know it, you've got a hold of five bits of rope.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Well, that's when you're trying to hold on to one, you just lean over and get the other one. And then they're hoping they don't notice, but they can see that you're holding on to two robes.

• 4:06Chris Williamson?

  I know.

• 4:06Speaker 02

  And then you've got one in your mouth and then you've got like.

• 4:08Chris Williamson?

  I don't think we need to talk about what we've got in our mouth.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Not yet. Relationships weren't for.

• 4:13Chris Williamson?

  That's one of them. That's a, that's a, available on a members only website.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  What to and what not to put in your mouth.

• 4:19Chris Williamson?

  Quite.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Certain requirements for that.

• 4:22Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. So, yeah, I think, should we start with cheating in a relationship? Because we've still got the relationship at this point.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. We're still in the relationship.

• 4:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, this imaginary, this imaginary relationship that's had a million different timelines.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  We should probably say then, like, if you've watched, if you're watching this and you haven't seen one O one and one O two, these move in chronological order from.

• 4:41Chris Williamson?

  God's sake, bloody hell. I mean, why are you watching one O three before you've watched one O two and one O one? It's because they'll think one O three's got better stuff in. I always do that. I always watch like part two. Have you bought an iPhone X and an iPhone one, haven't you? Fair enough, whatever. So cheating in a relationship, a couple of things that I'd like to kind of mention straight off is that there's certainly been times where I've, so I've been, my infidelities in relationships haven't been massive, but they have been, uh, they've existed. And one of the main reasons that I've done it, I think, is to kind of protect myself. I've kidded myself into believing that if I cheat in a relationship, that somehow gives me some sort of power.

• 5:22Chris Williamson?

  Or if I've got some insecurities about the way that the other person feels about me, it almost comforts me and kind of pads those out, gives it an artificial sense of inflation where I'm, oh, I'm not as bothered like, because I've like, I've slept with someone else, so I'm, I'm not really that asked. But all that you're doing there is you're just papering over cracks of a problem, which are going to get worse. And in fact, actually, you're just driving a wedge into them. Because if you're concerned about how you feel about someone, sleeping with someone else is a pretty surefire way of beginning to.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  So are you saying cheating, you, whenever you have cheated, it's been a political move? Or is it just that it's unconscious behaviour that then, as you think about it, it's like, oh, maybe I did that so that I can distance myself from it without.

• 6:08Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I, I think in retrospect, I'm not really too sure at the time. At the time, it's quite sort of,

• 6:14Chris Williamson?

  um, primal and.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  Tits and that.

• 6:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, tits and shagging and that. Um, but yeah, I think it, it feels like an insurance policy somehow against being hurt. But it's interesting. I've, so have you, have you?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  It makes sense, like, uh, yeah.

• 6:29Chris Williamson?

  Have you both cheated on people before? Yes.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  I've never cheated on someone.

• 6:32Chris Williamson?

  I have.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 6:33Chris Williamson?

  So I, I never viewed it in the way that you viewed it. That feels very.

• 6:40Jonny?

  Like step away from the situation. It's like, here's a situation happening. I'm gonna go in another room and think about it. And then come back in and make a decision. My, I feel like mine was always like. This, this s- situation's kind of, doesn't feel as good as it used to. So I'm looking for the next one. If that makes sense.

• 6:57Chris Williamson?

  Oh, so you were prospecting.

• 6:59Jonny?

  I think so. I think so.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  That's a different motivation then, isn't it? That's like, I'm unhappy in this, but I'm not doing it as an insurance. Policy to feel better about this relationship. I'm just looking for a new rope to hold on to.

• 7:11Jonny?

  So I think actually that's. I think the reason why most people cheat is that they believe that the sugary coating is the.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  The thing to chase.

• 7:24Jonny?

  Yeah. And so like, I also think that every relationship has a fixed trajectory. So like, there's this, you'll encounter the same problems. Now, like in the relationship you're in now, then then in, as you will, and the one that you move into by cheating. Assuming that most people, like they're married, for example, they cheat on their partner and then end up in a relationship with the person they cheated on. Thinking that they will never experience the problems that they had with that person. But actually, they're just starting again. And in two years' time.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Probably on a worse premise as well, because you've then started a relationship as an affair.

• 7:56Jonny?

  Well, see, the one way to know for sure that the person that you're with will cheat on you.

• 8:02Chris Williamson?

  Has the capacity to cheat.

• 8:03Jonny?

  Is is because you met them by cheating on someone and they were cheating on someone.

• 8:06Chris Williamson?

  There's a meme, there's a meme floating around that says, if he cheats with you, he'll cheat on you.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  Hmm. Well, like that, I don't think that's an unfair thing to say as well. Like, passive behaviour is usually.

• 8:15Chris Williamson?

  Fucking obvious.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  Fucking obviously.

• 8:20Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 8:21Jonny?

  So, all right, yeah. I.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, I'm different now. I've, I've changed. I'm a better person.

• 8:27Jonny?

  So that said, though, I think, um, having cheated on someone before. I now realise how just utterly pointless it is. Like it is, it is, it is hyperbolic discounting at its, at its biggest, most hideous form.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I've got cramp and it's flapping in my foot.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  Thanks, Johnny.

• 8:50Chris Williamson?

  Is it good?

• 8:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:51Chris Williamson?

  Great.

• 8:52Jonny?

  I'm glad for that.

• 8:53Chris Williamson?

  I'm glad that we featured that. So yeah, the hyperbolic discounting thing is from one on one. And you mentioned it in that. So you need to go back and watch it yet.

• 9:00Jonny?

  For heaven's sake.

• 9:01Chris Williamson?

  Um, so I, I totally agree. There's kind of like a product lifecycle.

• 9:06Jonny?

  Exactly.

• 9:06Chris Williamson?

  And then you've gone, you've got like intro, growth, maturity. And then as it begins to tail off, all that you're doing is just start again.

• 9:14Jonny?

  Yeah. And, and actually, I think

• 9:18Jonny?

  the, some of the, the best parts of a relationship are, are, are accessed only after you've gone through that period of time.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Through the, the lull and then it goes into maturity.

• 9:26Jonny?

  Or it's, it's a lull if you choose it to be a lull. It's a lull if you think like, I'm, so back into my analogies of like treating a, a relationship as an asset. Like people think that a relationship happens to them. And then when the relationship stops working, they think, oh, well, the relationship stopped working, so I need to go and find a new one, rather than the relationship's not working. Why didn't I invest more time in the relationship to try and make this relationship better? It's like you, you've gone, you put all this work in, finding this person, building a relationship with them, having all these experiences with them. And then as soon as some like sexual interest or, or whatever goes, a lot of people, myself included, at one point have gone, fuck this, I'm off. Rather than actually, why don't I just double down on this and, and see if I can fix the problem?

• 10:11Chris Williamson?

  It's like a, it's, it's like a startup cost or a fixed overhead to a relationship, isn't it?

• 10:15Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 10:15Chris Williamson?

  Cause at the beginning, everybody needs to do the same things. You need to meet the parents. You need to work out where they live. You need to work out their schedule. You need to try and align yours with theirs. And there is a

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Administrative headache.

• 10:27Chris Williamson?

  It's a nightmare. It's a bloody nightmare.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  To have to repeat that just for the sake of novelty is a bit, so we got criticised last time for, I think it was your analogy of the secondhand car market in relationships. And actually this-

• 10:41Jonny?

  Despite the fact that it's entirely accurate.

• 10:43Speaker 02

  But well-

• 10:44Chris Williamson?

  I will fight to the death, anyone who thinks that that's not right.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. You're, you're commodifying women. It's like, no, you're, you're assuming-

• 10:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, we're talking about that. We're talking about men and women.

• 10:52Jonny?

  Works in both directions.

• 10:53Chris Williamson?

  Exactly.

• 10:53Jonny?

  So in all directions.

• 10:56Chris Williamson?

  All directions, yeah, not, it's not bi-directional.

• 10:58Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 10:59Chris Williamson?

  Don't put me in a box, Chris.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  That, that was Video Zer Dean that looked over and listened.

• 11:02Chris Williamson?

  Uh, for anyone who's listening, you will notice there is a, there is a discrepancy about whether Videoman Dean is called Videoman Dean or Videogaid Dean. So we've decided that we're now non-binary and we're name fluid, so.

• 11:14Jonny?

  No preferred pronoun, Dean.

• 11:16Chris Williamson?

  No, yes.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Video person or Video Zer. So this, this, uh, this curve of.

• 11:22Jonny?

  I feel like you're making light of it.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  I.

• 11:24Chris Williamson?

  It's a very serious.

• 11:25Jonny?

  I don't feel like it's a very serious problem.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  I'm fully serious, so.

• 11:28Jonny?

  I'll tell you all.

• 11:30Speaker 02

  So this curve.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  If you were to buy a decent car to, to begin with.

• 11:37Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Now, and your plan is to keep it for fifty years. You would spend some time looking for a good car, you wouldn't get a cheap rubbish one.

• 11:44Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  You would then invest in it, you treat it well, so that in thirty years' time or fifty years' time, it becomes a vintage car or becomes a classic car, rather than if you got a rubbish one that has no prospect of becoming a classic car in the future.

• 11:58Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Then, yeah, you're gonna have to keep hopping between cars and finding new ones.

• 12:02Jonny?

  Did I use my shoe analogy?

• 12:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:04Jonny?

  Last time, I remember reading this.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  What's the shoe analogy?

• 12:06Jonny?

  So the shoe, the shoe analogy, I'm gonna get, someone's gonna get upset again. So imagine if I said, so this is very, like, very Tim Ferriss. So imagine you're going, you're going, uh, travelling, single backpack, and you can take with you one pair of shoes. And that pair of shoes has to be comfortable to walk in, yeah, it has to be appropriate for, if you're smartly dressed, you have to be able to go to the gym in, in them. Like, you would pick a fucking good pair of shoes, like, you would spend a lot of time weighing up the pros and costs of all the different pairs of shoes. In relationships, what a lot of people do is see the flimsy high heel and think, I wanna buy them. And they're.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Cause they look nice.

• 12:42Jonny?

  They work in one specific area of your life, or they maybe match one specific situation or one side of your personality. But actually, when you wanna go for a walk on Sunday morning. They're never gonna work.

• 12:53Chris Williamson?

  Or a pair of lifters.

• 12:56Jonny?

  I saw a video the other day of a guy walking, I can't remember where it was, he was just like walking along the street in a pair of squat shoes. So like, that's the man who bought the wrong pair of shoes.

• 13:04Chris Williamson?

  He bought the wrong shoes. I bet his relationships are terrible as well. It's awful in relationships.

• 13:08Jonny?

  So like, in the same, and I like, if you.

• 13:09Chris Williamson?

  Not fit for purpose.

• 13:10Jonny?

  Yeah, you've got, you're buying these pairs, this pair of shoes, like you're investing in this situation that, like, you're gonna be with that person on holiday. Like, in the house when there's nothing to do, in all these different situations, so you better make sure that.

• 13:24Chris Williamson?

  That's buying a Volvo, isn't it, knowing that it's gonna last you. So to, to, to go on to.

• 13:28Jonny?

  Volvo with a turbo and some nice exhausts.

• 13:31Chris Williamson?

  That's tuned. It's well tuned, isn't it? So, the, the cheating side of things, why do you think people cheat? In relationships? Why do you think men cheat first?

• 13:42Jonny?

  I think it's the belief that novelty will cure the problem that they're experiencing or the feeling that they're experiencing, whether that is lack of connection, lack, lack of engagement, feeling unhappy with the person. So like, something happens in the relationship, the existing novelty by definition wears off, it's no longer novel. And we are in a society whereby um, you are constantly aware of other options in relationships. So walking down the street on Instagram, Facebook, whatever, like. Every, well, yeah, in a more direct sense. But even if you're not in like a dating market, you're still presented with.

• 14:21Chris Williamson?

  Window shopping.

• 14:22Jonny?

  Hundreds and hundreds of different people who are single, who are sort of advertising their life, as it were, on social media. And so to to try and tell yourself, whether this is in a relationship or, or anything for that matter, like the decision I've made is the best decision. And I'm happy for, I'm happy with that. And no alternative is possibly better when you are in a situation that you are feeling doubtful of and, and it's the, sort of the shine's gone off it and suddenly there's an opportunity placed in front of you and you think that novelty that is appealing. People then tend to make a short term decision.

• 14:54Chris Williamson?

  I think we're signalling again off hotness rather than beauty to a degree as well. If you remember the analogy from one or two. People are using that as a gauge of, well, this is potentially more beautiful because there's a novelty bias.

• 15:07Chris Williamson?

  And a recency bias as well and all of the other, all the other cognitive biases.

• 15:12Jonny?

  So hot is like some Jimmy Choo's, beautiful is like a nice pair of nanos. Or like that could be worn in loads of different situations.

• 15:22Chris Williamson?

  I get that.

• 15:23Jonny?

  Like they're really nice, but they're not quite as glitzy.

• 15:27Chris Williamson?

  Yep, I get that. Why do you think?

• 15:29Speaker 02

  A pair of Merrells.

• 15:31Chris Williamson?

  There probably would be some cat boots. Why do you think women cheat, Yosef?

• 15:35Speaker 02

  So there's, there's a few psychologists that have formalised what Johnny's just said there, which is the, the stereotype that men will treat for, cheat for physical, sexual novelty and women cheat because they feel unloved. And that the primary driver of men's motivation in a relationship is respect. And for women, it's love. And if they don't feel like they're receiving that respective thing, then they'll start to be unhappy in the relationship and want to leave. There's an interesting study which looks at asking people who are in partnerships, what would be worse for you if your partner was having great sex with someone else? Or if your partner was deeply in love with someone else?

• 16:21Chris Williamson?

  It's like, on one side, it was they didn't care about them, but were having good sex. And on the other side, didn't ever touch them, but sent very meaningful messages and cared about them deeply.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So there's two kind of opposites on the spectrum. And men would always say, or in general would say, I prefer if my partner was deeply in love with someone else, but didn't touch them. And women would prefer the opposite. So I think that's quite interesting with the way that we're wired.

• 16:48Jonny?

  Sorry, say that again. What do they prefer?

• 16:50Speaker 02

  So men would prefer if their partner was in love with someone else, rather than if they were having great sex with someone else, but it was meaningless.

• 16:57Chris Williamson?

  I think that just.

• 16:59Jonny?

  I really can't decide.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  Really, I think I would, I I'm probably part of that stereotype.

• 17:05Jonny?

  You'd prefer that they were in love.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, even though it's illogical, because that's harder to.

• 17:11Jonny?

  Remedy.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:12Chris Williamson?

  In this situation right now, it's easy for me to, it's easy for me to rationalize, but the um. Juvenile ego inside of me, I know how visceral. And how stomach punching it is when you don't feel like you're good enough and. It's, there's nothing that you can do to stop, to want that feeling to just fuck the fuck off.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  So visceral, like Aubrey Marcus was talking about when his wife first had sex with someone else and he started this polyamorous relationship. That he spent a lot of the time like dry retching on all fours, just like.

• 17:46Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 17:47Chris Williamson?

  Great one, Aubrey.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Insane.

• 17:48Chris Williamson?

  Great one, mate.

• 17:49Jonny?

  How about with your salt of the water?

• 17:51Chris Williamson?

  Fucking bone, bone broth on the morning, mate, yeah, enjoy that while you. Wife, wife's getting leathered all over by some twenty one year old from Austin, Texas.

• 17:59Jonny?

  While you're sniffing you. Incense candle trying to be productive.

• 18:04Chris Williamson?

  Walking on bare grass, fuck off Aubrey.

• 18:05Jonny?

  Writing a book that's really misleading. And lures you in to begin with thinking, actually, Aubrey, this might be all right. And then you get about twenty pages in your work.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 18:14Jonny?

  Bunch of bobs.

• 18:15Chris Williamson?

  He was just throwing axes at a plank of wood in the fucking garden.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  That's Aubrey solidly.

• 18:22Chris Williamson?

  Never gonna get Aubrey, am I?

• 18:23Jonny?

  It is, no, it is actually, it's okay.

• 18:26Chris Williamson?

  Please come on, Aubrey.

• 18:28Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think both of those analyses are are are very accurate. Um, let's say for me, it was kind of like a a protectionist strategy, like.

• 18:37Jonny?

  It's a hedge.

• 18:37Chris Williamson?

  If I, it is, is a hedge, but it it it wasn't because I never had, a lot of the time, I never had any intention of going off with one of the other girls.

• 18:45Jonny?

  Right.

• 18:45Chris Williamson?

  What I was doing was, I was using it to protect my own insecurities about not. Uh, uh, about concerns about the partner in my relationship. So it was like, if I've cheated. Then at least I've cheated, it's the um.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  I got in there first.

• 19:01Chris Williamson?

  Is it prisoner's dilemma?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:03Chris Williamson?

  Like a steal, steal or split, yeah, exactly.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  You're stolen first, so you, they can't.

• 19:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you can't, you can't steal as much as I've stolen, because I've stolen first.

• 19:10Jonny?

  It limits your worst case scenario.

• 19:12Chris Williamson?

  Which is, i- it's a huge fallacy. It's just not true. Like, you think that it's going to somehow hurt less. But the difference is, you've robbed yourself of the one thing that you could have held on to, which is the fact that you could have been virtuous. Like, there is nothing, there, there's no sympathy for anyone in a relationship if you find out that both partners have cheated on each other.

• 19:39Jonny?

  Well, then you're just in a mess, aren't you?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  The relationship's ruined once the first partner's cheated.

• 19:43Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Like, once that's done, it's, especially if it's, if it's withheld from the partner.

• 19:49Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  I, I know some people are like, oh, it's brought us closer together, because then we became honest with it, but.

• 19:53Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, anyone, anyone who says that you've managed to make a partnership work. Because one of you's cheated on the other one is chatting shit.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's rationalizing it to feel better about it.

• 20:08Chris Williamson?

  Honestly, like, it's, yeah, you, you're trying to, you, you're kidding yourself. You're absolutely kidding yourself.

• 20:14Jonny?

  You cannot, you could get into, to with the Ma- uh, Ma- Marque- Marqueurius? Or Remarque, um, so Sex at Dawn, that book, I haven't read it.

• 20:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Jonny?

  But that's, he, he's a big believer in like polyamory and that monogamy is.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Anyone I've read who's read Sex at Dawn has completely shifted their perspective on polyamory.

• 20:31Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 20:32Speaker 02

  Like, oh my god, like, I'm never getting married now, honestly. I'm almost scared to read it.

• 20:35Chris Williamson?

  Bollocks. Let's look at it from, very, very briefly. I've done two podcasts with evolutionary psychologists recently. I'll lay a couple of, a couple of points on you two guys.

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Lay them on us.

• 20:46Chris Williamson?

  Female women. Female, female women.

• 20:49Jonny?

  Female women.

• 20:49Chris Williamson?

  Female, female women. That's a joke from Relationships 101. If you haven't.

• 20:53Jonny?

  A joke, a joke that I can't even remember. So don't feel bad if you're thinking.

• 20:57Chris Williamson?

  Oh my god.

• 20:58Jonny?

  I listened to Relationships 101.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  You were in.

• 21:01Chris Williamson?

  You were here.

• 21:01Jonny?

  I was here.

• 21:02Chris Williamson?

  You existed. Anyway.

• 21:03Jonny?

  I might be even such a joke.

• 21:04Chris Williamson?

  Um, female, female humans, they don't have, um, visual, um, ovulation. They, visual ovulation, is that right? What would it be if, like, you can't see when a woman's on heat?

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. You, there's subtle signs, right? We pick up on it.

• 21:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but mostly you can't, it's not the same as like a dog. But I mean, it gives off pheromones.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:26Chris Williamson?

  Um, so anyway, um, then there is the fact that.

• 21:33Chris Williamson?

  Sex is a very long process for humans compared with other animals.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Not for me.

• 21:41Chris Williamson?

  Um, it's a very long, a very long process. Um, and basically all of the things, it would appear that human sex has evolved to encourage his pair bonding. That it requires the man to, it, it's not that easy to get pregnant. Like you don't know what time of the month it is for her, so you need to continue to have sex. Sex lasts for a while and feels relatively good compared with some other animals as well. And what this leads to is consistent sex, consistent, long, pleasurable sex. And what's the outcome of that? Pair bonding.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Hmm, okay.

• 22:13Chris Williamson?

  You have a greater sense of a bond between the male and the female.

• 22:19Chris Williamson?

  Okay. There's a couple of things about the size of testicles are supposed to relate to how promiscuous the females are. Because the bigger the testicles, the more semen there is to wash out the man before you. And that's straight from the mouth of Professor William Von Hippel.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  I've heard, I'm guessing you might, you might have been hearing this, that's something similar where like the, the glands.

• 22:43Chris Williamson?

  Shape of the penis.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, so the glands of the penis is shaped, has that, the corona, the ridge, so that it can.

• 22:49Chris Williamson?

  It's a vacuum. Yeah, so he's, he's seen the penis, there's a penis plunger video, which Video Man Dean, if he can make it work, will be here.

• 22:58Chris Williamson?

  And we're back.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 23:01Chris Williamson?

  Every time.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  He'll even come back, go to a different damage.

• 23:05Chris Williamson?

  Shit, the bed. Anyway.

• 23:06Speaker 02

  You're putting that YouTube holding bay, don't we? Where all the other people, we've got.

• 23:11Chris Williamson?

  PewDiePie's over there, yeah, exactly.

• 23:14Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  So a corona exists to scoop other men's sperm.

• 23:17Chris Williamson?

  It creates a vacuum that pulls other semen.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Assuming you've, you're having sex with a woman who's just had sex with someone else.

• 23:24Chris Williamson?

  Assuming you are, I think the, the technical term for that is, um, porridge stirring.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Porridge, uh, okay, porridge stirring is the, yeah, the, the, the technical term apparently, so, um.

• 23:35Jonny?

  Great.

• 23:35Chris Williamson?

  That's how it goes.

• 23:36Jonny?

  Lovely image.

• 23:37Chris Williamson?

  Um.

• 23:38Jonny?

  I've been doing it wrong then, if that's what you're supposed to do.

• 23:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, man, you gotta use a big.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Two hands.

• 23:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Jonny?

  Big stirrup.

• 23:43Chris Williamson?

  Get in there. So, yeah, I think the evolutionary justification for cheating aside.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  The orgasm as well, the contractions push the semen up into the uterus.

• 23:56Chris Williamson?

  Is that right?

• 23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, uh, well, up into the ovaries, so like the, the contractions. So if you, if you make a woman orgasm during sex, supposedly that is to, is a strategy to improve fertility to.

• 24:09Jonny?

  So if you're good, you've won.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:11Jonny?

  So the minds of Corona's.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  And if you have a more symmetrical face, as a man, you're more likely for your partner to orgasm during sex.

• 24:20Chris Williamson?

  Is that true?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Apparently that wo- women.

• 24:22Chris Williamson?

  Is that cause or effect?

• 24:23Speaker 02

  I don't know how they studied that though, but yeah.

• 24:25Chris Williamson?

  Fair enough. So, yeah, I think, I think you're fairly symmetrical, Johnny.

• 24:30Jonny?

  I'm just checking.

• 24:31Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you are. You're the same on both sides.

• 24:32Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Chris Williamson?

  Um. So, yeah, it was an insurance, it was an insurance policy for me. It was trying to make.

• 24:38Jonny?

  Hold on, hold on. I, I brought up monogamy. You started talking about coronas and glands and coming. And I don't feel like we made any progress with that.

• 24:46Chris Williamson?

  No, I mean, I think.

• 24:48Jonny?

  You said, I'm going to talk about what Mr. Von Hippel said.

• 24:51Chris Williamson?

  That was it. You spoke about it. The different, the different elements of sex.

• 24:54Jonny?

  Sex is long and pleasurable and it's happening all the time.

• 24:57Chris Williamson?

  Encourages pair bonding, yeah.

• 24:58Jonny?

  So, okay, so, so therefore monogamy isn't the option or isn't the solution, isn't or is.

• 25:04Chris Williamson?

  Is.

• 25:05Jonny?

  Is the solution.

• 25:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  As far from evolution, from evolutionary reason, right.

• 25:09Jonny?

  I think it's, like, polyamory to me is one of those things. It's like, um, it's like at the start of this year, I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do an hour of meditation every day. That'll be fun. Three days in.

• 25:24Chris Williamson?

  Fuck hell. Dry retching on the floor.

• 25:27Jonny?

  Yeah, like.

• 25:28Chris Williamson?

  While your wife's been nailed by someone.

• 25:29Jonny?

  The idea that's presented in this book that's convincing everyone, like, I'm sure that it's very convincing. But at some point, you've just got to get down to brass tacks and, and be in a relationship where you're both sleeping with other people.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Well, we, yeah.

• 25:42Jonny?

  And be okay with that.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  And the, when we spoke to John Romagnolo, he lives with two women, the, and he's in a triad of a relationship.

• 25:48Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And the way he described it, it just sounds like a, a real.

• 25:52Jonny?

  That's a good podcast to listen to because he he is a man who is

• 25:56Speaker 02

  He's fully doing it.

• 25:57Jonny?

  He is in a polyamorous relationship with a lesbian couple. And he was like, I understand that this sounds like most straight men's dreams, but trust me, administratively, there's a lot going on.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Because you've instantly, like, with a relationship, there is one thread, one rope.

• 26:12Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  Instantly.

• 26:13Jonny?

  He's just, he's like a man taking twelve dogs for a walk. He's like, I've got so much, so many intricacies in each of those relationships to manage all the time.

• 26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:22Jonny?

  And like, by spending one time, more time with one of them, you're by definition spending less time with the other. So like, if you're in a relationship now, you're already having those feelings of like, I'm working too much on, like I'm at the gym, I should be, I'm with partner one, I should be partner two.

• 26:36Chris Williamson?

  He must be so productive to even just be able to put the time in.

• 26:39Jonny?

  I think he's a very effective man.

• 26:40Chris Williamson?

  Fine, fair enough. So.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  What was the response to your video, the Why Men Cheat, As Explained by Family Guy? Did you get many comments?

• 26:48Chris Williamson?

  A lot, a lot of people, a lot of people replied, and I think there was one woman who said, no, it's because they're cheating, they're just cheating assholes. And I I mentioned, I mentioned that the word cheat was was in the, was in the video, was in the actual text of the video. It was almost impossible to see the video without reading the word cheat.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 27:06Chris Williamson?

  But I think Why Men Cheat, As Explained by Family Guy is the just novelty bias, isn't it? It's that it doesn't have to be better, it just has to be different. And I think a lot of men and women can kind of agree, like, it makes sense both logically and it's been reflected in experience.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I think like, although these are stereotypes and they're always kind of easy for mental um heuristics to, you know, to to jump to quick conclusions. Certainly, I've seen women cheat for that reason as well. And, you know, the the the things with the trends that we talked about with love versus respect and sexual novelty and all this stuff, like, certainly works the other way. And I think the way that the female sexual behaviour in the last twenty years has become progressively more masculine, or how stereotypically masculine, in that women now become protagonists and um.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  The the the sort of the the pushes of uh of sex now in the because there's less less of a clear gender role, there's less shame and so on around the whole thing, that now cheating behaviour is almost matched as well.

• 28:19Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  So.

• 28:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I I I agree. Um. So, yeah, moving forward from cheating, I suppose, is how do you end a relationship?

• 28:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 28:32Chris Williamson?

  Or if that's me, I'm gonna feel.

• 28:34Jonny?

  No, it's Dean.

• 28:35Chris Williamson?

  Like a big poo.

• 28:36Jonny?

  It's definitely Dean.

• 28:36Chris Williamson?

  Do you feel like a big poo, Dean? Dean doesn't speak.

• 28:39Jonny?

  No.

• 28:40Chris Williamson?

  Dean doesn't speak, does he?

• 28:41Jonny?

  Um.

• 28:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I'm talking to myself. How how do you end a relationship and ending a relationship generally?

• 28:45Jonny?

  Or should you, when should you end a relationship?

• 28:47Chris Williamson?

  That's a great question.

• 28:48Speaker 02

  So, question one, when you're cheated on or when you cheat, should you end a relationship?

• 28:54Chris Williamson?

  I mean.

• 28:54Jonny?

  So you're gonna sell that seven quid on that?

• 28:56Chris Williamson?

  Seven twenty now. I think the the thing that we brought up before about if you if anybody claims that someone cheating on them brought them closer together in a relationship, they're chatting shit.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 29:11Chris Williamson?

  It can only make things worse. I I do agree. I do agree that there's probably a couple of people out there. There's some people out there for whom they may be able to continue as the same, but it's not making your relationship better. That is fucking chat bollocks.

• 29:25Jonny?

  Well, it's it's removing trust.

• 29:27Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, just destroying.

• 29:29Jonny?

  There is a there is an agreement that neither of you are going to do that, and one of them people has done it.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Unless, so we spoke to James Bailey on the podcast, very interesting guy, polyamorous person, recently in a monogamous relationship, but just said at the start, look, I'm tempted by other women and this is the case, so if we're gonna, if I'm gonna have sex with someone, I'll let you know, but this is this is it and you you can as well, but let's just discuss.

• 29:54Jonny?

  Is that cheating?

• 29:55Speaker 02

  I suppose it's not because they've set out the terms to begin with, haven't they?

• 29:58Jonny?

  Because cheating is is really just defined as not adhering to the terms of the arrangement.

• 30:05Chris Williamson?

  The terms need to be put in advance, and this is, that's a great point that we've missed off there. The fact that where do you draw the line with what is and isn't cheating?

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 30:13Chris Williamson?

  And I recently had a discussion with someone who is regularly on a morning TV show, and she had been on saying that a man liking other women's photos on Instagram counts as cheating. And I was like, fair enough, I don't agree. Because you are implying um a goal out of that, you're implying a particular desire that he's trying to achieve. By that same argument.

• 30:41Speaker 02

  Says more about her than it does about the man.

• 30:44Chris Williamson?

  To a degree, but I the the same argument would be that. A man, your man who's looking at another woman in a bar is exactly the same because that's pretty much the same thing.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Um.

• 30:54Chris Williamson?

  Um, and but the the very furry grey line of exactly what is and isn't cheating, like is holding hands cheating? Is having a meaningful conversation with someone cheating, don't hold hands.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  But we're cheating.

• 31:07Chris Williamson?

  You are cheating.

• 31:08Jonny?

  On Chris, because he told us not to.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:11Chris Williamson?

  You've broken the terms. Um. Yeah, like where does the line get drawn for cheating? But I think definitely. Should you split up with someone when you find out that you've been cheated on? I guess that's a very individual. Uh, individual question.

• 31:26Jonny?

  Depends how much it matters to you, I suppose.

• 31:29Chris Williamson?

  Well, if the relationship matters more, should you? As as in like, it depends how much the specific instance of cheating matters.

• 31:36Jonny?

  Okay.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  We we read the comments of this stuff and I'd be really interested if someone could comment if you've ever been in a relationship. Where someone's cheated and you've stayed together and you were glad that you did compared to.

• 31:47Chris Williamson?

  And it's improved things.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:49Chris Williamson?

  That would be, I mean, that would be very surprising.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Because I did, I I stayed with a girlfriend after she cheated on me. And it was such a mistake. I was just like, why did I do that in the first place? But it's just because I I was too. Like too clingy, I suppose. And looking back, it was like, if I'd just taken that as the. Because because it's already late stage. By the time someone cheats, the relationship's already broken. By the time.

• 32:14Chris Williamson?

  It's an alarm going off, isn't it? It's not the problem.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  It's a lagging alarm as well, isn't it? It's like, it's so far.

• 32:19Chris Williamson?

  How much life did you lose?

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Like six months.

• 32:24Chris Williamson?

  So it's significant proportion of your existence so far.

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I mean, it wasn't life lost, but yeah, like.

• 32:29Chris Williamson?

  No, it could have been life spent doing other things, right? Not investing your time in someone else who didn't deserve it.

• 32:34Jonny?

  Could have spent more time in Jasmine Pool than your breath.

• 32:37Chris Williamson?

  You could have done exactly, you could have got thrown out, could have got thrown out six months earlier.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  Imagine the size of my carotid arteries there.

• 32:43Chris Williamson?

  So I I think. Uh, certainly one thing in terms of like how to, when to finish a relationship, the.

• 32:52Chris Williamson?

  Presiding rule that I've realised over the last few years is that if you are unhappy in a relationship and you want to finish it and you're certain that you want to finish it, you should finish it right now. And the reason for that is that not only are you wasting your own life, but you're wasting someone else's as well.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  Hmm. It's respect for yourself and for the other person, isn't it?

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  Like, if you know that it's not going anywhere and you can't pluck up the courage to do it yourself.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:22Chris Williamson?

  Think about the fact that you're wasting the other person's life too. And I mean, if you, if you need more motivation than that, I'm afraid I can't give it to you.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  What are the big objections to doing that? So.

• 33:33Chris Williamson?

  Fear.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Fear.

• 33:34Chris Williamson?

  Difficult conversation, fe- fear of making the wrong decision.

• 33:37Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 33:38Chris Williamson?

  Fear that you'll only realise that you're making the wrong decision. Yeah, that you're, you're only realising that you, that you made the wrong decision later down the line. Cause I, I think like, any big decision, the fear is, I'm going to do this and I regret it. Cause if you, if you knew you were right, it wouldn't be difficult. It'd be like, oh, this is a shit conversation.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  I see.

• 33:57Chris Williamson?

  But I need to do it. It's, it's how do I know? Cause I, I, it's, it's bad now. I've had some bad experiences. I'm not sure it's going anywhere. I'm going to have this awful conversation. But I might see him or her with someone else in six months' time and think.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  Ah, yeah.

• 34:13Chris Williamson?

  So it's like, how do you?

• 34:14Speaker 02

  That's just prolonging the.

• 34:15Chris Williamson?

  It is, it is. So it's like, I'm going to hold on to something to avoid that potential feature, pain or discomfort.

• 34:23Speaker 02

  I'm going to cause myself six months of mild discomfort and pain rather than a short shot.

• 34:27Chris Williamson?

  I've made it last a long time. I've made it.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  Dragged out the.

• 34:32Chris Williamson?

  I've made, I've made, I've known that a relationship has been over for a very, very long time. And then the relationship being over, period, has lasted longer than the relationship not being over, period.

• 34:45Chris Williamson?

  And I mean, like, it's just.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  Then my force of momentum and you're just like, oh.

• 34:50Chris Williamson?

  Well, this is the new, this is the new re-regulated relationship, which is constant kind of unhappiness and disagreements and arguments and resentment from you, which destroys anything beautiful that you did once have with that person as well. Like, the way that it works with club nights, if we have a licence that goes until five in the morning, but the club night's waning at three, we close at three.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 35:12Chris Williamson?

  Like, we don't let it fizzle out until five in the morning, because if that happens, the few people that are left at five in the morning say, oh yeah, were you at Voodoo the other night? It was when we left, it was really shit and dead.

• 35:24Speaker 02

  That's so interesting. You do it with club nights as well. So it's a fluid endpoint. You just say, right, everyone, like, it's getting a bit rubbish now.

• 35:31Chris Williamson?

  Finish on a high?

• 35:32Jonny?

  Well, no, it's getting a bit rubbish. It's, I think it'll probably get a bit rubbish in twenty minutes, so I'm gonna preempt it.

• 35:37Speaker 02

  They say you should do that. Well, like, Juju Muffy does that with training, with, with like tumbling specific training, where he's like, when you start to feel good, stop the session.

• 35:45Jonny?

  To be honest, I've had it with training of like, I hit PB, PB, PB, and I'm like, this, it's unstoppable. And then I fall off a cliff.

• 35:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:53Jonny?

  And it's like, if only I just thought, you know what?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  End on a high.

• 35:56Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  People are starting to leave the club, let's just.

• 35:59Chris Williamson?

  I think one of the reasons why, so I, um, I'm only just realised this recently, I'm a very empathetic person. And I think that plays into, the fact that I'm empathetic is also played on top of the fact that I don't like upsetting people. And I think one of the other reasons why I in the past struggled to break up with people was potentially a lack of self-worth. That I was like, well, fucking hell, even though I might not be happy with this person, at least I've got someone.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:29Chris Williamson?

  And I'm maybe not worthy of someone else, or maybe I'm not gonna get someone who's as good, or, and then there's, there's definitely, there's so much momentum and familiarity and, and, and just level of comfort.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:41Chris Williamson?

  Like, all of these things, it's no surprise that finishing relationships are messy.

• 36:47Jonny?

  Especially once you're in a, once you're in a point where like the relationship maybe has other things associated with it, like where you live or shared possessions or pets, family, pets, whatever, kids, like the, you're not just ending your relationship, you're completely changing your life.

• 37:04Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 02

  And the cost of

• 37:05Chris Williamson?

  Massive.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Moving things around is massive. And actually, that's one of the biggest determinants of a depressive episode is a shift in your social um, in your, your life, in your circumstance, not necessarily a positive or a negative one. So even if the ending of the relationship is classed as a positive shift in your life, because it's a big move, something like getting married, moving house, any of those things. If you have two or three of those in one go, your likelihood of depression goes up by quite a lot for that episode. So it's you know, the, and you, I suppose your brain knows that that's a big knock. And so you end up holding it off and just thinking, let's just keep the status quo.

• 37:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, better than, better than devil you know.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, so I mean, in terms of advice for if you need, I mean, we haven't even got on to this before and a girl on Twitter's already ended a relationship, which should fucking bravo.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:58Chris Williamson?

  But, um, the, the main thing I want people to take away from this section is like, if you know that it's not going anywhere and you're certain of it, then firmly and compassionately tell the person that you're with that it's over. Sit them down. Don't do over text. Like if it's serious, like if you've been together two months, then fucking like do a Snapchat then like it doesn't matter. Like, I mean, send a

• 38:22Jonny?

  Insta story.

• 38:23Chris Williamson?

  Flare.

• 38:23Jonny?

  This was a swipe up.

• 38:24Chris Williamson?

  Insta story, yeah, swipe up, swipe up to end this relationship.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Link tree.

• 38:28Jonny?

  I've got a message for you. Find out the swipe up, what it is.

• 38:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so, um.

• 38:31Jonny?

  Link tree.

• 38:32Chris Williamson?

  But yeah, definitely i- if you know that it's over, then firmly and compassionately tell the person that this can't go on anymore and they'll want the reasons and they'll want all the rest of it. In that scenario, I think it's best again to tell them the truth. I'm on this kind of truth vibe at the moment and we will do an episode on why truth is a superpower at some point in the future, but. The least that you can do for someone when you're about to end a relationship with them is give them the metrics by which they can improve themselves for the next relationship.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  I like that a lot. So, so you, when, when you're giving them that truth, it's, it's because it's doing them a favour. But I think the temptation is either to not think through the delivery, and I've got a story to associate with that. Or if you're so bitter about it, that it ends up just coming across as like, like a pressure cooker and you just unload onto them. When I was seventeen, eighteen, I broke up with a girl who I ended up in like a six to seven month relationship with just because I was basically too passive just in general in my life. And so it was the equivalent of someone like grabbing me and putting me in the sack. And then it's like, right, that's it.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  You're in a relationship. You're my boyfriend now for seven months. And then slowly I was like, hang on, like, I've had no choice in this.

• 40:00Speaker 02

  I'm actually not really interested in this girl. And, and, um, yeah, so.

• 40:04Chris Williamson?

  This sounds like one of those cold call people that knock on the door of OAPs and before they know it, they've got three hundred pounds a month direct debit.

• 40:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I had all my double glazing done. I've signed up for three insurances.

• 40:15Chris Williamson?

  Solar panels.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Solar panel. I had a Google Home. I don't know. I didn't know how to use it. So eventually I was like, right, I'm gonna have to just in my much further along this, the autism spectrum that I have now, brain, I thought, what's the best way to, to, I know. Okay, this sounds good. Right. Took her aside just before she got on her bus and I said.

• 40:37Chris Williamson?

  At the bus stop.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  At the bus stop.

• 40:41Chris Williamson?

  I'm not gonna have this story. Can you look straight down the pipe for me, please, and do it?

• 40:48Chris Williamson?

  A big fluffy one.

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I said, Rosie, I'm not attracted to you. And I thought, it's not clear enough at all.

• 41:01Speaker 02

  And then I just left it and she kind of looked at me and started crying and I was like. Okay, bye. And then that's why I left. Because of that pulling aside, she missed her bus. She had to wait forty minutes and I walked away thinking, I think I did that smoothly, think I let her down gently there. And then realised later on that absolutely not. Saw her three years later, she was still very upset about it. Um, and rightfully so. That was, that was a terrible delivery on all counts, but like.

• 41:32Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  The, the point was like, there was a, exactly as you said, like the, during the whole six months. Too passive, not respecting myself or my time or, uh, or her time. Especially her time, because she's the one who's putting herself on the line. She's the one making herself vulnerable in that situation, really. Um, because it, it's, it's up to me to be, to reject her or not. If someone pursues somebody.

• 41:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 02

  The, it's not a normal thing to, for the, for that, just to be like, oh, okay.

• 42:00Chris Williamson?

  You're not doing it on a whim.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, um, e- exactly as you said, it's.

• 42:05Chris Williamson?

  Bizarrely, it's, it's so compassionate to tell someone who likes you more than you like them, that the relationship's over. Because you, you know, that as the relationship continues, all that you're suffering with. Is an increase in irritation and perhaps a waste of time. Whereas what that person is doing is entrenching themselves further into an investment in another person who doesn't care about them. And the longer that you allow that to go on, the more painful it's going to be when they decide, when, when it finally ends. And another thing as well is that I think a lot of cheating probably occurs, it certainly has done for me i- in the past.

• 42:48Chris Williamson?

  Due to me not pulling the trigger on that. So it's like, if I decided to say that the relationship was over. When I was prepared, when, when I knew it was over, I would have cheated less than half the number of times that I have done. So much of it has occurred after then. So that, I mean, how many different ways do I want to be disingenuous? To someone who's putting that, like, giving me their time.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  The trouble is though, how do you know? Ooh, yeah, that was my back cracking. That's never happened before. Um, how do you know when you're in that situation?

• 43:23Jonny?

  Because you you arrive at this point, like you're not you're not sat there with your warm up out thinking like, I'm gonna do this next.

• 43:31Chris Williamson?

  We'll take Russia tomorrow.

• 43:32Jonny?

  It's, you know, you're, you've got this sort of constant feeling building up of of, I'm not necessarily that happy. Um, but like, you know, maybe things will recover. Um, I don't want them to be in a relationship with someone else. I'll just keep thinking about a process.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  Everything looks very deliberate and thought through with hindsight, doesn't it? But actually at the time, you're just like.

• 43:52Chris Williamson?

  Well, I mean, it's the same question is when do you stop being young and start being old?

• 43:58Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 43:59Chris Williamson?

  Like, it's not, it's a gradual process. And at one point, you wake up and you're old. And at one point, you wake up and you're unhappy. The same thing occurs for that.

• 44:06Jonny?

  Um, cause there is also this potentially insidious situation where you are twenty and you're in a relationship with someone. And because of these beliefs that you have where you think like, I should be like, my sex life should be like this. My personal life should be like this. Our social life should be like that. You end the relationship. And then seven, eight, ten relationships down the line, you're like, shit, like, should have kept on, should have kept a hold of that on that relationship. So like.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  Because of your ideals of what you think a relationship should be.

• 44:42Jonny?

  So it's like, you're in this, you're in this position with someone. And actually, they match a lot of what you would really like about someone for a long term partner, but you can't see that at the time because you're searching for these ideals that you eventually realise when you're forty, you don't exist, for example.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Which is from Insta couples that seem like that.

• 44:59Jonny?

  Yeah, yeah. So.

• 45:01Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's, that's doing the work on yourself before you try to make a relationship work. This is why introspective work and self inquiry and all these sort of things uncovering your own cognitive biases are so important. If you don't know what you want, you can't, how the fuck do you expect the other person to know? Um. But yeah, I I I unfortunately for most of the stuff that we've had so far, we've been able to give a semi autistic framework to things that's like a set of guidelines. This area of breaking up with someone, the devil's in the details and the grey area of when is enough enough is a a choice which can only be made by you and the other person.

• 45:42Chris Williamson?

  And I think that the only thing that you can do is, once you've made the commitment, stick to it. Don't leave the other person with any lingering sense of hope or potential that it's going to continue or that things may get better in the future, or that you just want a break or whatever it is.

• 46:01Speaker 02

  We all know that the the we've all got a mate who's like been on and off with their girlfriend for the last ten years and they're both just cut up about it and it's, yeah.

• 46:11Jonny?

  I think I I think I do have a framework.

• 46:13Chris Williamson?

  Is it a spreadsheet?

• 46:15Jonny?

  It's not. I can make it a spreadsheet.

• 46:16Chris Williamson?

  Brilliant. Subscription.

• 46:20Jonny?

  So, um, I think you first have to think, so it's it's in exactly the same way as like, um, how you would approach low carb dieting. So like.

• 46:31Chris Williamson?

  I I can't wait to hear you compare how to break up with someone to how to approach a low carb diet.

• 46:37Jonny?

  So it's it's it's it's exactly the same. So there are people who um are fine, never having carbohydrate again in their life. Okay, I'm not one of those people. So when I choose a diet approach and when I give my clients diet approaches, one of the first questions is, like, can you honestly see yourself sticking to this in a year, five years, ten years? Because if it isn't sustainable at the moment, it won't, it's not going to get better, it's going to get probably more difficult and encounter all these things. So like, if you take the standard relationship. Probably taken to the nth degree, like you'll move in together. And that comes with lots of complications. You might get married, that comes with complications, you might have children, family, whatever. All those things are complexities and like a level up, like an extra thing to manage.

• 47:21Jonny?

  So you have to right now think, can I imagine this getting to that point? Like, do I want this to get to that point? Is this person actually an enhancement? Do I like spending time with them? Cause it it definitely should be. Like a level up enhancement to your life, like you should feel like a better person. I think that's for me fundamental. But then, so if you if you think there are those things in place and you're unhappy, I would. And I've never done this personally, but like having been in failed relationships and now in a successful one, I think.

• 47:56Jonny?

  Collate what it is that bothers you about the person. Sit down with them and say, these are the things that are getting to me. What about me do you not like? Honestly, take their list and and really, really work on it yourself. And if they aren't receptive to that conversation, then they aren't receptive to making it work anyway, more than likely. So like, if you're experiencing problems, chances are they are too. Cause I I think everyone, I'm, I was terrible at this when I was younger of like. Uh, this relationship's not going very well. It's all what this person's doing. Like thi- this is annoying, this is annoying. And you like moan about it with your friends, but you never consider like. I'm likely just as annoying if I'm more.

• 48:34Chris Williamson?

  Just as much of a bastard, yeah.

• 48:35Jonny?

  So like.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  We're much more blind to our own.

• 48:37Jonny?

  Of course.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Behaviors as well.

• 48:38Jonny?

  Of course you are. It's too automatic and ingrained. Yeah, so I think just having, in the same way that, you know, I likened the relationship to like a big business of. You know, like, um, it like the board of Facebook when it was like the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Like, do they sit and panic and and just all cry and make really rash decisions and like?

• 48:59Chris Williamson?

  Storm up.

• 48:59Jonny?

  Does one of them go over to Snapchat and and, you know, start trying work at Snapchat? I know, they sit down and think like. Let's solve this problem. Like, we all want this to to continue being Facebook. Let's solve this problem. And you've got to have the same. Approach. And if Mark Zuckerberg goes, this is all too much for me. I'm in here working Snapchat, then like Facebook's never gonna work.

• 49:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's fucked.

• 49:20Jonny?

  So.

• 49:20Chris Williamson?

  I think that's a good way, that's a good way to look at it. Um, and I, I. Wonder, I wonder how many people would be prepared to write down the list and then take a list.

• 49:34Jonny?

  You don't have to write it down.

• 49:35Chris Williamson?

  Well, okay.

• 49:35Jonny?

  But to, to, to, to.

• 49:37Chris Williamson?

  Present it to them.

• 49:37Jonny?

  To present, present a list of the things that are causing problems.

• 49:40Chris Williamson?

  So if you aren't willing to do that, get out of the right, like, there's no, there is no point being in a relationship. If you're not prepared to do what you need to do to make it work.

• 49:48Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 49:48Chris Williamson?

  Then pull the trigger.

• 49:49Jonny?

  And that, that advice is the same for like, I want to start my own business. I want to get in the shape, like, all of those things have an associated level of work and it's not, do I want the outcome? Like, do I want a really nice relationship? I'm sure you do. Are you willing to do the work required?

• 50:06Chris Williamson?

  Can I tolerate the impact? I like, I like the idea that you came up with about projecting forward, like this person that I'm with now.

• 50:14Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 50:15Chris Williamson?

  Where am I at in six months, one year, five years, ten years, twenty years? And can I imagine it working with them like that?

• 50:22Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 50:23Chris Williamson?

  Because from there, if the answer is yes, sweet, you can do some refining or whatever.

• 50:28Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. If the answer's no, you have two choices.

• 50:31Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:32Chris Williamson?

  Well, you have three, but the third one shied. The first choice is that you try and improve whatever the situation is, to go back to the rocket trajectory analysis.

• 50:44Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:44Chris Williamson?

  Like, you and this person are on slightly different courses and you're beginning to diverge. As time continues, that divergence is going to get worse. You can try and course correct.

• 50:53Jonny?

  Yep.

• 50:54Chris Williamson?

  That's one thing.

• 50:55Jonny?

  Yep.

• 50:56Chris Williamson?

  You can pull your jecty seat.

• 50:58Jonny?

  Mm hmm.

• 50:59Chris Williamson?

  And get out of it.

• 51:00Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 51:00Chris Williamson?

  Or the third one is to allow the courses to continue to diverge. And over time, the small issues will become bigger. And by the time that you've reached the moon, you're a hundred thousand miles apart.

• 51:11Jonny?

  So I would say in that situation, because that it's just like a secondhand car market, unfortunately.

• 51:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:17Jonny?

  You should.

• 51:18Chris Williamson?

  Oh, God, Johnny.

• 51:18Jonny?

  Pull your jecty.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  There's people, there's people that keep sending me messages saying, do you think that Winston Churchill was a fascist? And I don't know what they mean.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  You must have mentioned.

• 51:28Chris Williamson?

  I didn't mention Winston Minson. I think it's some, I think it's a reference to Jordan Peterson. I don't know. However, if you are one of those people who's sending me a message saying that Winston Churchill's a fascist, you are fifty four minutes and thirty seconds into my YouTube watch time. So thank you very much for your money through YouTube monetization.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  It's true, actually. You're one of these people that goes on the internet and looks for things to be offended by and then gets outraged about it. I'm gonna subscribe and watch more of it so I can be more offended. It's like, no one's forcing you to watch this.

• 51:56Chris Williamson?

  Bring it on, bring it on, buddy. I just want your watch time.

• 51:58Jonny?

  We had a comment on a video of the day of a guy saying the video was boring. I was like, mate.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  We had someone saying, I was so upset by this that I watched it again.

• 52:06Jonny?

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 52:06Speaker 02

  It was my sleeping on the floor video had someone outraged saying, forget sleeping on the floor. It's putting meat into your body and animals, the, you know, animal products.

• 52:16Chris Williamson?

  Very unwelcome. And then he did another comment which said, I was so outraged by this, I had to watch it twice.

• 52:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're like, there was no mention of animal products or meat.

• 52:25Jonny?

  Where are your videos on?

• 52:27Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah, you don't have any. I mean, the worst thing, yes, the worst thing that could happen would be for you to share your opinion with the thirteen people that follow you on Instagram.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  To make yourself vulnerable to thirteen people.

• 52:40Chris Williamson?

  I would be, I would be really.

• 52:41Jonny?

  The level beyond that is when people see an ad on Facebook and share it and then say something aggressively, like aggressive to their like.

• 52:48Speaker 02

  Johnny's just like.

• 52:49Jonny?

  Thirty friends and like, tick, thank you.

• 52:52Chris Williamson?

  Yep. So moving.

• 52:53Jonny?

  Saying, I had a, I had a point I was gonna make.

• 52:55Chris Williamson?

  Uh, the rocket diverging, um.

• 52:59Jonny?

  Oh, second I can't mark, I pull the ejector seat because like, unless, unless, of course, you're getting something out of that relationship outside. Like, maybe you don't wanna be in a relationship with someone long term, in which case, fine.

• 53:09Chris Williamson?

  You should, several short term companionships.

• 53:11Jonny?

  Like, let's say, to keep it, to make it very crude, let's say the person that, one of the fifty people who maybe would be perfect for you is gonna meet someone in three weeks' time and you never meet them because you're in this relationship that you're kind of holding on to, even though you know it's not working. So.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  And the same. You shake yourself off to.

• 53:31Chris Williamson?

  The crazy thing is, what we're talking about here, we keep coming back to it, the, um, the effects are to the power of two with everything. Everything is squared. So it's like, you are in a relationship which you are currently unhappy in. You could meet someone in three weeks' time that would be perfect for you, but you can't commit to them because you're in a relationship. And the same is true of the other person as well.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  And if you don't want them to meet someone else, then that be- because of some kind of bitterness or resentment, then that's a toxic.

• 54:03Chris Williamson?

  That's just a fucking juvenile like.

• 54:07Speaker 02

  Like not only are you ruining your situation, but you're just being selfish to the other person for the sake of it.

• 54:11Chris Williamson?

  You can fuck up, it's up to you. Like you can fuck up your life, you can happily fuck up your life, but messing up someone else's and this is. So for me, like I'm, I'm perfectly happy, ha- suffering the consequences of my own actions and my, my own mistakes within relationships, which have been numerous in the past. But one of the things that I really struggled to deal with was the upset that I'd caused my partner. Like that, that is a.

• 54:36Speaker 02

  That sits with you for a long time.

• 54:37Chris Williamson?

  Man, it's a tough, it's a tough pill. So I had to do an awful lot of reflection and mindfulness to get over some of the things that I've done. And it's like, it sounds like I've fucking killed someone. I haven't. But again, if you are someone who's empathetic, you're in this slightly vicious circle of.

• 54:55Chris Williamson?

  Not wanting to hurt the other person because you don't want to hurt them. So you don't pull the trigger on it. And then when you do end up doing it and hurting them, then you've got all of the, this extra baggage of the fact that you dragged it out.

• 55:04Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely. And I've, I've, I've done that myself as well. And, you know, after I was cheated on, I didn't, I mean, I wasn't consciously aware of it at the time that I wasn't able to fully be present with them. And I was in this kind of really begrudging six months with them afterwards. And I thought, well, why have I done this? Like, why didn't I just? She would have been happier. Obviously she wouldn't have been happy in the short term. She would have been very upset if I, because she'd feel like, oh, I've, I've done this and I've caused this to happen.

• 55:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  After a month or so, you'd, you'd calibrate.

• 55:32Chris Williamson?

  You level up and that, I mean, that's an, that's another thing.

• 55:34Speaker 02

  Nintendo DS.

• 55:35Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Here's, here's another, here's another absolute.

• 55:38Speaker 02

  I'll tell you the story in a second.

• 55:40Chris Williamson?

  Absolute truism of breaking up with someone. I know that it feels like either your world or their world are going to collapse. If the other person's dependent on you, you're going to think, fuck, I'm going to destroy them. They're never going to get over it. Or if you feel like you are somehow dependent on them, but you're unhappy or the relationship's abusive, or you know, it's not going anywhere, you feel like. The microcosm of time that you're in right now is all that there will ever be. And you can't imagine ever being happy outside of it. But we are built to adapt as human beings. We literally adapt for that's the only reason that we've been good. We're not as strong or as fast or as anything else. We're a bit cleverer. We can work together and we can adapt to changing situations like.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  You've seen that thing about the six month, if someone wins the lottery or becomes disabled, um like paralyzed from the legs down or something. After six months, their subjective ratings of happiness are.

• 56:37Chris Williamson?

  The same.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Roughly the same, yeah, which is absolutely insane. I find that so hard to believe.

• 56:41Chris Williamson?

  Breaking up thing, like if every everyone's just trying to be happy and an ending relationship. Is actually like a step in the right direction towards that ultimate goal. Cause it was more than likely it was never gonna happen in that situation anyway.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  You were unhappy.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  And you should view it as an opportunity. I know it doesn't feel like one.

• 56:58Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  But you should view it as an opportunity. Um. So the.

• 57:02Chris Williamson?

  The final bit, which is probably the most difficult, we've left the the big boss for last is how do you get over someone?

• 57:10Speaker 02

  Okay, so first thing is realise that no matter how. Tactfully you do it, even if you're really, really good about it, you take them to the side at the bus stop and you you deliver a perfectly crafted line about the fact that you're not attracted to them.

• 57:24Chris Williamson?

  At all.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  At all. You will still. Get, you will still be the villain among their friends, among their family. And there's no way around that. I think even if you were well liked, and that's not. Necessarily personal, obviously, the the the friends of of the ex are wanting, are gonna want to. Support them and as a result demonize you in in the in the stories and everything else. And I think just not to get involved and just to let them do that and thrash it out themselves.

• 57:54Chris Williamson?

  That's that's the presumption that you are the breakup protagonist.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Breaker upper, yeah.

• 58:00Chris Williamson?

  Breaker upper, yeah. What if you, what if you are the broken?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  If you're the broken.

• 58:06Chris Williamson?

  Because this is, this is the scenario, I think, that most people fear, which is that they care for someone and that one day they wake up and that this person says, I don't feel the same about you anymore. There's someone else, this needs to finish. And Because in some cases, oh, thank God. I mean, like, oh, I'm so excited. I mean, so here's, again, this is my, kind of the, the main point that I think guides my particular emotions in these situations. And that pride in a relationship is such an overriding, overbearing, visceral, stomach punching feeling. And it, for me, Loss of pride.

• 58:48Chris Williamson?

  It's, yeah, that, that, that, that you have this ego and, and it's so fucking fragile. And that there's been situations that I've been in with girls where I haven't wanted them anymore. I don't want them. I'm not bothered about them. And I don't even mind if they're with someone else. Like, I, I, I'm not attracted to them. It doesn't matter. At all. But I still don't want them to say to me that they don't want me. It's like, I don't want you, but I don't want you to not want me. Like, you're the dirty penny that's at the bottom of my bag, but you've still got to fucking stay in my bag. And it's such a

• 59:25Chris Williamson?

  juvenile, ridiculous way to feel. And I think that the flipping of that power, like, whether or not you don't care, or whether you do care, the fact that someone is, it's a comment on you're not enough. It's, when someone splits up with you, you're not enough for me. You're not worthy of my time as much as someone else is. You're potentially not even as worthy of my time as no one is.

• 59:57Jonny?

  Like i- it's it's unsurprising that breakups hurt as much as badly as they do. Cause it's it's taken, we take it personally when in reality, it probably isn't. It's probably like, cause when you break up with someone, you think it's because of the other person, but it's because of your feelings and thoughts and.

• 1:00:16Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:16Jonny?

  It may even be like stuff with you rather than the stuff with the other person.

• 1:00:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's obviously the other person has a big impact.

• 1:00:23Jonny?

  Of course.

• 1:00:23Chris Williamson?

  But there are the hundred percent, there will be numerous relationships that are ended because. Someone says, uh, but someone feels that they've got some stuff to work on.

• 1:00:34Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:34Chris Williamson?

  They're like, look, like, fuck, man, I I I'm just not in the right place for it at the moment. And they may be being so virtuous as to say. I can't give you what you need. I'm going to allow you to be happy with someone else. And that really is a a very compassionate thing to say, but fuck, like, if you hear that get delivered to you, you're just like.

• 1:00:55Jonny?

  Hmm, it's it's dealing with difficult news, isn't it? It's how how do you take something? And that that is that is shifting the rest of your life that you didn't want and try and make the best of it.

• 1:01:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:08Jonny?

  And like, it's um, like, it's it's it's not that different to, although there is an end point in sight, I suppose. Like, if you're told that you have a a disease, cancer, or something that is like, this is, you know, immediately like, this is going to affect my life. I didn't want this to happen. You immediately catastrophize and think it's the worst thing possible. If all you can do is control, like, what I'm going to do about it and how I perceive it, then trying to frame this as like. This relationship has ended, but it's the start of something new. I can go find someone else.

• 1:01:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Jonny?

  Actions of like, this, this is the end of this chapter in my life. I'm gonna make myself even better. I'm gonna work on this aspect of my life, whatever. Like, if there are two people and both people are in a relationship or they're dumped or they're cheated on, and one person. Frames it really positively and just really doubles down on them the rest of their life. And the other person spends six months. Grieving over the loss of the relationship.

• 1:02:07Chris Williamson?

  Wisely thinking.

• 1:02:08Jonny?

  Both of them are in the same scenario, like neither of their actions have changed the outcome.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:02:13Jonny?

  But one person's.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  It's a good point.

• 1:02:15Jonny?

  Really good.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  One person treats it as a crisis and the other opportunity.

• 1:02:18Jonny?

  And you and you can, it's the stoicism thing of like, that's all you can control is thoughts and actions. So the breakup's the breakup.

• 1:02:24Speaker 02

  One of those ways to respond is the kind of instant grasping for looking for someone else. Um, often someone that's not really well suited, but they're just there.

• 1:02:34Jonny?

  The next thing.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Available.

• 1:02:35Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  And that is the mo- is the probably the biggest insult that you can give to that person because without them knowing, they're just a filler, like a spare.

• 1:02:48Chris Williamson?

  You're a substitute that's come off the bench because the goalie's injured himself.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:51Chris Williamson?

  Um, so in terms of effective strategies for getting over people, I've got some fairly, I guess, staunch rules with regards to the way that I have done it in the past. Um, I think that trying to remain friends with your ex within, if it's been a significantly long relationship, i.e. one that's probably over a year, I think that you should aim to cut contact with them. That is everything. That is delete the number, delete the photos, remove them, block them on all social media, remove their phone number for six months. And I think that the reason for that is that the, the, we love her.

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  I know someone that did that and they ended up receiving an email to their like work account or something. That was like the final.

• 1:03:34Chris Williamson?

  The last bastion of getting through. Man, there's a, this hilarious photo, Dean may be able to find it, of um, a girlfriend had split up with a boyfriend at university and the only way that he'd been able to contact her had been by depositing money into a bank account with a payment reference.

• 1:03:50Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:03:51Jonny?

  Nice.

• 1:03:51Chris Williamson?

  That had the ref- that had a message in it.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  How, what, what should you put as the amount value though?

• 1:03:56Chris Williamson?

  Well, he put like one P, but he did like 10.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:03:59Chris Williamson?

  So it was like a word, a word per one.

• 1:04:01Jonny?

  But like point of creativity.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Chris Williamson?

  Fucking clever that. I take it back.

• 1:04:05Jonny?

  That guy's gonna do well.

• 1:04:06Chris Williamson?

  I'd take him back. Yeah, no, maybe not in relationships, but in Silicon Valley.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  I still love 4P. Yes.

• 1:04:12Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:04:12Jonny?

  He's presented with a problem, wasn't he? He's sat there like, how can I contact?

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Oh, minimum transfer is five pounds.

• 1:04:18Chris Williamson?

  You know, oh, fuck, this is twenty quid now, yeah. Um, so, yeah, block, block and delete everything. Uh, you don't want to be reminded of them, all of the stuff that they've got you, give it back to them, give it to the charity shop, put it in the bin, put it in the attic, do whatever you need to. And then.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  Marketplace.

• 1:04:34Chris Williamson?

  Facebook Marketplace, oh, it's a nightmare. Um, and then I think you need to spend time with friends.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Chris Williamson?

  W- Alan de Botten, I will put a link to how to get, a lot of this is derived from Alan de Botten from the School of Life's work. Um, how to get over someone, the video is fantastic. And I think first and foremost, you need to accept the fact that the relationship is over. You need to draw a very, very strong line under it. And once you've accepted the fact that it's over, you can then begin to look forward as opposed to reminiscing and looking back. Um, we need something, something to fill the time that our thoughts have to manifest. And uh, if you can block off the fact of looking that way, you can start to look that way. You need to spend some time around friends, I think being on your own. There's some time on your own that maybe for reflection and such like, but like, call on your friends.

• 1:05:24Chris Williamson?

  If you message your friends, a lot of people feel like, I've got no one to turn to, I don't have any friends, this, that and the other. Like, if there's ever been times where I've been feeling like down or whatever, and I've messaged you guys, I'd be like, man, having a little bit of a down day, within half an hour, like, I've got a response. It's like, if you call for help.

• 1:05:38Speaker 02

  And we're terrible with texts.

• 1:05:40Chris Williamson?

  And you're shite, yeah, like.

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  It's like you get an email, the subject line, urgent, like, you'll open the email, won't you?

• 1:05:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, doesn't matter what's happening, if a fire's happening, but you still open the email. Yeah, exactly, urgent, there is a fire in your, but yeah, fucking no.

• 1:05:51Speaker 02

  Yes, but this is an urgent email.

• 1:05:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Speaker 02

  That's why I'm checking my emails.

• 1:05:55Chris Williamson?

  Blimey, hell. So, um, yeah, like, spend some time with your friends, I think. Like, go and do something which distracts you from the situation. You only have so much cognitive capacity. Like, if you have to go and play fucking darts, or go crazy golf, or go to the cinema or something, there will be brief periods where you're not thinking about the breakup, there has to be. Like, as the person at the counter says, oh, have you got ten pound fifty? Like, as you're counting the ten pounds fifty out, I know this sounds very granular, but. In some of these.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  I bought her a teddy bear that was ten pound fifty.

• 1:06:30Speaker 02

  The cashier's mum was called that and yeah.

• 1:06:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I get that, but you know, the the small, um, small periods, little oases of a cognitive break from wh- what you have been feeling and what you're now feeling.

• 1:06:45Speaker 02

  Rather than sat in the house just letting it completely.

• 1:06:47Chris Williamson?

  Overwhelmed.

• 1:06:48Jonny?

  It'll be the same.

• 1:06:49Chris Williamson?

  Where's the overwhelm?

• 1:06:51Jonny?

  The same list of things that make you forget to check your emails or check your phone.

• 1:06:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Jonny?

  Like go do this, like go like, go drive a Lamborghini round a track.

• 1:07:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Jonny?

  Like, I guarantee you'll not be thinking about.

• 1:07:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:03Jonny?

  You're.

• 1:07:03Speaker 02

  You're sat there just crying.

• 1:07:05Chris Williamson?

  Terrified, yeah, exactly.

• 1:07:06Jonny?

  Like trying not spin a hundred grand car round a corner.

• 1:07:09Chris Williamson?

  You're like.

• 1:07:09Jonny?

  You'd be thinking about just that.

• 1:07:11Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, and I think as well, Alan de Botten's got this thing, I'm not too sure.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  Go jump in the North Sea.

• 1:07:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, oh god, yeah, well, I mean, what if you drown?

• 1:07:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Chris Williamson?

  Actually, we cannot say to people who've just been in a terrible breakup, do not jump in the North Sea.

• 1:07:23Speaker 02

  Scrap that, do not jump in the North Sea. Have a cold shower.

• 1:07:27Chris Williamson?

  Have a cold shower, yeah, go to Eusset's house.

• 1:07:29Jonny?

  Just go see Eusset.

• 1:07:30Chris Williamson?

  Can't have, can't have warm showers in his house. Um, I think.

• 1:07:34Jonny?

  Hot toilets.

• 1:07:35Chris Williamson?

  Hot toilet, I've got a hot toilet. Someone plum boiling hot water into the toilet.

• 1:07:39Jonny?

  Uses a kettle for a toilet.

• 1:07:40Chris Williamson?

  Oh, do you? Just sit on a kettle.

• 1:07:42Jonny?

  Literally.

• 1:07:42Chris Williamson?

  Um, so, yeah, I think Alan de Botten's got this idea where he says that, um, you should bore yourself. But one of the opportunities is to bore yourself back into doing things, so he'll allow, he says, allow yourself as many nights as you want that you cry into a tub of ice cream and watch as many romantic comedies with your, with your friend, until you're literally like, I am fucking sick of myself, and you're like, okay, I'll motivate myself out of that. I think personally for me, I'm a lot more idiosyncratic than that. So for me, what I would try and do is instantiate some things that I know are good for me. Like, I still think that I allow myself to, um, I allow the thought loops to bore themselves out of, out of existence and like, I have been in this particular loop

• 1:08:27Chris Williamson?

  five thousand times before, I do not need to replay it again.

• 1:08:31Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:32Chris Williamson?

  I'm, uh, less because there's a lot of, uh.

• 1:08:36Jonny?

  Psycho-social um factors on crying into a tub of ice cream whilst watching a dark screen.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about that advice, because you see people, especially if they've got a slightly anoncastic personality and they'll just absolutely.

• 1:08:48Jonny?

  What's that word, sorry?

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Slightly obsessional personality and they're.

• 1:08:50Jonny?

  And anoncastic.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like if they they're just like, they start getting some enjoyment from doing the the the ice cream and watch it. And then that becomes.

• 1:08:59Jonny?

  That's their life now.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  And then, yeah, you know, they say like, you break a habit once and that's a mistake. Break a habit twice and that's a new habit. You've created something new and suddenly.

• 1:09:08Jonny?

  Great.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  You're just going down.

• 1:09:10Jonny?

  I hate that that's the case.

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  I know, it's such a like, oh.

• 1:09:12Jonny?

  Well, I did a I did a podcast earlier on today where I talked about how it after a while of instantiating. Daily routines and habits, it's a lot, and this is both good and bad, unfortunately. After a while, it's a lot. Easier to do them than to not do them, and that works on both sides.

• 1:09:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Jonny?

  Like for me to not meditate and not journal now, I'd be like, I'd feel like I was walking with one shoe on and one shoe off for the rest of the day.

• 1:09:39Speaker 02

  Horrible.

• 1:09:39Jonny?

  You know what I mean? But the fact it's the fact that it's for the rest of the day, that's the real stinker.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 1:09:44Jonny?

  Yeah, it's it's fucked. Then you miss your morning routine and before you know it, it's three months later and you you forgot to dress that morning again.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Oh, it does. I still feel off for most of the day if I've not meditated. I haven't today and like, there's a constant feeling.

• 1:09:56Jonny?

  You walked in backwards through the door earlier on, didn't you?

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  With one shoe on.

• 1:09:59Jonny?

  Yeah, with one shoe on.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Terrible.

• 1:10:00Jonny?

  Um, there's advice in Wave as a Period Man that currently reading, thanks to you two.

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  Oh, great. You're reading it as well?

• 1:10:07Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  It's a audio book.

• 1:10:09Jonny?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, great book. David Dada.

• 1:10:12Jonny?

  He talks about um like when you're in pain or when you're experiencing something to like. Stand with your shoulders back and like just feel it and really like focus on just that.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:26Jonny?

  Um, so like there is an argument to say that it's really painful, it's really shit, but just like.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  Take it head on.

• 1:10:33Jonny?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:34Speaker 02

  Man, it's.

• 1:10:34Jonny?

  Just sit with it. Here's here's here's something to meditate on, like.

• 1:10:39Chris Williamson?

  Your life is not lived from the comfort of your couch. Like, when you look back on your life in sixty, seventy years' time, hopefully, you you don't want to think that you didn't have any experiences.

• 1:10:52Jonny?

  I wish I watched more Netflix.

• 1:10:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, like, another thing to consider is that whatever you're feeling right now, it could be ten out of ten pain across globally across your entire body and you could have lost everything. But in six months' time, that will just be a memory.

• 1:11:08Chris Williamson?

  Like, nothing, nothing is going to last forever, and that's one of the few things that you know. So you're like, right, okay, I'm feeling something now. I recently did a podcast, an amazing podcast, with Alex Hutchinson, who wrote a book called Endure. And in this, what he does is he discusses the different contributing factors to what makes an endurance athlete successful. And what he says is that very, very good endurance athletes are able to mindfully distinguish between the different elements of discomfort within the body. So it's not just overwhelm. It's not pain and discomfort. It's, he talks about it like a glass of wine. So he says, well, there's an undertone of lactic burn.

• 1:11:54Chris Williamson?

  I can, I'm getting some notes of breathlessness and a high heart rate. There's a scent of heat and and discomfort in my head. There's a ringing in my ear. There's a a blindness on the side of my eyes. And as opposed to seeing the emotions or feeling the emotions as a single nebulous insurmountable problem, what you actually feel them for are their component parts. And I think that's what you're talking about there, sitting with the discomfort. It's like, what am I feeling? Okay, so I've got the the stomach. I I can feel the heat rising in my chest. Like, break it down and and you can break open what it is that you sensation.

• 1:12:37Jonny?

  And Sam Harris's, like, lessons talks about, um, like, there's a, we all have this feeling that at some point that like pain or a sensation or something is absolutely unbearable. I'll not be able to continue. But like, logically, right now and a moment ago and two moments ago, three months ago, you were just experiencing that and it was fine. So there's nothing different about.

• 1:13:02Chris Williamson?

  It's the ah.

• 1:13:03Jonny?

  Yeah, it's about it. So go and do.

• 1:13:07Jonny?

  What's called a widow maker, which is, which is 20 reps on back squat with your 10 rep max. And that's the, the only time I could really distinctly remember, it happened every time this decoupling from like, I am in this experience, but there's a moment of like, you're always just watching yourself doing it.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  That, that, that sounds impossible. By the way, you keep it on your back until you've done 10, then you take three or five deep breaths.

• 1:13:31Jonny?

  Really.

• 1:13:31Speaker 02

  And you do another rep and you just, it is possible.

• 1:13:33Jonny?

  Horrendous.

• 1:13:34Chris Williamson?

  So the equivalent that Alex used in the podcast was, I think it's um, five by, five by 500 meter sprints. So you go as hard as you can. You run for, you run five, 500 meters, you have a one minute rest.

• 1:13:51Jonny?

  It's disgusting.

• 1:13:52Chris Williamson?

  Again, and then once you've finished, you've done your fifth rep and you're on the floor dying and panting. You'll be in a mega lactate threshold in that, that particular workout as well. Your coach comes over and says, you need to do one more.

• 1:14:03Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:04Chris Williamson?

  And you're like, I can't, I couldn't. And you've given it everything on that fifth round. You've given it absolutely everything that you've got.

• 1:14:11Jonny?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:11Chris Williamson?

  But if you need to get up and you need to go again, you find that you can go again and you could go again after that.

• 1:14:17Jonny?

  I always find it quite comforting when I'm training that like, I don't need, like not being able to do it. I don't need to worry about that. Like my body will take care of that. Like if the, the 20 rep squats, like eventually I'll just collapse. So I don't like, that's taken care of. All I need to do is.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  So relaxing. Eventually I'll just collapse with 180 kilos.

• 1:14:38Jonny?

  Because you're thinking like, because there's, there's almost this like, I decide when I give up. So well, you don't, you don't have to.

• 1:14:43Speaker 02

  Your body will take care of that.

• 1:14:44Chris Williamson?

  And you're going to be fascinated by the podcast I did with Alex. It's unbelievable.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  We'll have a listen.

• 1:14:50Chris Williamson?

  And the, the main thing, I'm not going to give too much of a spoiler away, but the key to everything, he says, in endurance and in mentality within sport is RPE.

• 1:15:01Jonny?

  Is it?

• 1:15:02Chris Williamson?

  Everything is rate of perceived exertion. Everything.

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  It's quite, it's different with things that you're actively doing to yourself, I suppose. Cause they, cause with grief, with breakups, it is grief, it's happening to you.

• 1:15:15Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:15:16Speaker 02

  But the sense of, so Shinzen Young says, suffering equals pain times resistance. And.

• 1:15:23Chris Williamson?

  So I like the holding on to this honest ball thing.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  Probably, yeah. So like you, the amount of resist, resisting it happening to you. I suppose like you're holding on to something there, but if it's something happening to you, the more you're like, ah, no, no. If you actually just, yeah, as you said, dial down on what are the specific sensations that I'm feeling. You realise that actually they're a lot smaller, they, they're just like little atoms and it's, it's, you're just seeing this big mass that you're assuming is huge. You realise that they're just like bubbles and they're vacuous inside. And Sam Harris as well talks about like the sensation in his knee while meditating for a long time and how it becomes this searing pain. But then once he kind of zones in on it, he's like, actually, I can't distinguish if it's ecstasy or pain, it's just an intense sensation.

• 1:16:05Chris Williamson?

  I know this is, I mean, this, we are, we are telling people who are heartbroken that they need to sit with their discomfort.

• 1:16:12Speaker 02

  You, you absolutely do.

• 1:16:13Chris Williamson?

  Yes, they do. It is the truth, it is the truth. It's a learning experience. And I mean.

• 1:16:16Speaker 02

  Grief will come out in some way.

• 1:16:18Chris Williamson?

  So here's, here's, here's a really nice thing to. Here's, here's a really nice thing to think about.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, just ah.

• 1:16:26Chris Williamson?

  A nice thing to think about if you are going through a breakup or have done or are going to, like, what, what better of a way to take ownership of something painful than to use it for growth?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:16:40Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what I mean? Like, this is a, a, a situation which would crush a lot of people, may even crush me. It feels the, the discomfort and somehow on the other side of this, I've drawn a profit or a, a positive. I mean, fuck, like, there you go. That's how we complete, that is how to complete getting over someone. Um, so gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time. We will be back.

• 1:17:06Speaker 02

  Anytime.

• 1:17:07Chris Williamson?

  We will be back. Well, I know we're about to do another one, but no one knows. Uh, we will be back with Relationships one oh four, which is the long awaited.

• 1:17:16Chris Williamson?

  Instagram funnel. Is it?

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  Oh, thank goodness.

• 1:17:20Chris Williamson?

  Ready thy selves. For the Instagram funnel. It's gonna be good.

• 1:17:27Chris Williamson?

  Please do not forget to press subscribe. If you've enjoyed the episode, share it with a friend. It would make us very, very happy indeed. Links to some of the further readings, some of the other articles that we've mentioned will be in the show notes below. Press the share button. Press it now. Please press it now. Okay. Bye then. Okay, bye then.