Pod Insights Modern Wisdom How The Partner You Choose Reveals Your Self-Worth - Quinlan Walther About this episode Quinlan Walther is a writer and a relationship coach.
Why do we keep choosing the wrong partners? We meet someone new and think, “Maybe this is finally the one.” But then the pattern starts to feel familiar. Different face, same pain. Different relationship, same lesson. So why do we keep dating our trauma, and what does it actually take to break the cycle?
Expect to learn how to build self-worth and have a better relationship with your partner, why you often choose a “wound” other than a partner, how to stop mistaking anxiety for chemistry, how to set good standards versus unrealistic expectations, the internet's big problem when dolling out relationship advice and much more…
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0:00 What Your Partner Says About Your Self-Worth
2:31 Where Does Self-Trust Come From?
5:18 Why Curiosity and Capacity Feel So Difficult
8:53 Are Our ‘Types’ Just Unresolved Trauma?
19:17 Who Do You Need to Be to Feel Loved?
23:31 Are You Choosing a Partner Or a Wound?
34:41 Are Avoidant People the Most Attractive?
38:21 Why Healing the Past Changes Everything
41:07 Is Too Much Empathy a Bad Thing?
45:43 The Boundary Lessons Everyone Needs
52:04 Is Ego Getting in the Way?
56:43 The Most Common Misconceptions Between the Sexes
01:00:39 The Mistake Many Women Make When Men Open Up
01:02:01 Have Dating Standards Become Unrealistic?
01:07:16 The Hardest Relationship Cycles to Break
01:08:33 How to Repair Ruptures in Your Relationship
01:15:01 Balancing Impulse and Overthinking
01:18:03 Why You Need Self-Trust in a Relationship
01:23:36 What AI Relationships Reveal About Modern Love
01:32:40 Where to Find Quinlan
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Transcript 16,498 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Chris Williamson? How much does the partner that someone chooses reveal about their level of self-worth? Do you think?
0:06 Speaker 01 I like this, starting with a strong one.
0:09 Speaker 01 Well, I want to add a little bit of context to that. How does the partner that someone chooses reveal how much they love themselves, how they see themselves? It can tell a lot, but I think more importantly is the way that they feel about someone's judgment of that. So the way that I frame it is if someone told you that they could tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen, how would you feel about that? It's kind of like if I say, oh, is that a new shirt? And you're a little insecure about it, or like, what does it make me? Do I look a little heavy? Do I look a little, can my muscles look small? Right, you're like, there's an insecurity there. Versus, thank you, it is a new shirt. Doesn't it look great? You know, this color, the new cut, you're like, right? You're secure in it.
0:50 Speaker 01 So when someone says, I can tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen. There's a bit of intuition in that, in your reaction to that.
1:00 Chris Williamson? It's an interesting prompt to give somebody.
1:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:03 Chris Williamson? And the sense of, oh, or.
1:06 Speaker 01 Yes, and I always try, I frame it up that way intentionally because it's not about someone actually passing a judgment on you. It's your interpretation of that judgment.
1:16 Chris Williamson? It's like, it's like a Rorschach test for your own partner.
1:18 Speaker 01 Yes, it's like, I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what you think I am.
1:26 Chris Williamson? We did it.
1:28 Chris Williamson? It's interesting though, right? Like the, the idea that if you feel like you're being mistreated and you believe that the love that you are prepared to accept is a reflection of your level of self-worth.
1:45 Chris Williamson? That probably tells you everything that you need to know about your relationship.
1:48 Speaker 01 Yes, well, it's, does it feel like a compliment? Or does it feel like an insult? Does it make you proud of the love that you've accepted and the treatment that you've tolerated? Or does it really hit that sensitive part of you? It's like, ah, I've been treated like shit for years. This is not, or simply, this has really just never felt right. You know, it feels kind of mediocre. Maybe it's not a reflection that you totally hate yourself. It's more just like, that doesn't really live up to the way that I know love could feel. And someone who really loved themselves. Probably would have gone and found something that really aligns rather than just settling for what was there. So there's a lot in there, but it requires the introspection to really get into the meat of it, into the context.
2:31 Chris Williamson? Where does self-trust come from?
2:34 Speaker 01 Self-trust. Self-trust will be my greatest obsession for the foreseeable future.
2:42 Speaker 01 Self-trust is essentially building a relationship with yourself that allows you to know who you are, like who you are, and build a life that actually feels like yours. That's like, if we're to summarize it, that's the brief synopsis. Self-trust to me is ultimately what you have to build in order to find fulfillment, sustainable fulfillment in this life. The way that I see it, the majority of our issues, emotional anyway, issues come from uncertainty. What's going to happen to me? What are people going to think of me? What am I going to think of myself? What happens if this uncontrollable thing plays out? How am I going to handle it? But more importantly, how am I going to feel? If this person breaks up with me, if I don't get this job, if someone that I love dies, if, right?
3:26 Speaker 01 Most of it is, how am I going to feel on the other end of that? And there's no way to outrun that uncertainty. There's no means of control or no ability, no strategy that was going to apply to all of those situations, except for trusting that you will be there in, in every single one of those situations. You'll be, you'll be on the other end of that, supporting yourself. The way that I kind of break it down, there's four Cs of self-trust. Number one is curiosity. So do you know what you're feeling? Do you know why you're feeling that way? Do you know what you want in this situation, in the next situation, in life in general? Do you know what you don't want?
4:06 Speaker 01 How well do you, how much space do you give yourself to really ask yourself the hard questions or the fun questions and learn the answers? The next one is capacity. So how good are you at being emotionally flexible? When discomfort arises, do you trust yourself to stay in the disappointment, in the sadness, to support yourself through that? When things go really well, do you trust yourself to not totally self-sabotage and fuck it all up? Screw it all up.
4:36 Speaker 01 And then you're looking at compassion, that's the fourth one. So do you have compassion for your own?
4:42 Speaker 01 Not not just yourself, but also an understanding of your intentions. Like, do you trust your heart? Do you have compassion that you're well-intentioned? And that still means you're gonna screw up sometimes. Can you recognize your own humanity? And then the last one, C, last C is commitment. Which is, do I know the kind of life that I want to build? Do I know the kind of person that I want to be? And am I committed, devoted to bringing that to fruition? Am I committed to this life? Because that's what's gonna move you forward through all of that. So in short, that's what self-trust is.
5:18 Chris Williamson? Which one do people struggle with the most?
5:26 Speaker 01 Either capacity or curiosity.
5:28 Chris Williamson? Why?
5:32 Speaker 01 I think we like to pretend that we're curious, especially in today's day and age. I have a label for everything. I'll just find the label, I'll explain it all away, give me the diagnosis, and I can stick a Band-Aid on it and we can just keep pushing.
5:47 Speaker 01 You sell yourself short when you do that? You sell yourself short when you don't take the time to maybe question the label? Or look underneath the label? What's, what are you really feeling? What are you experiencing? What makes up this pattern that you don't like?
6:05 Speaker 01 Are you picking shitty partners because you have daddy issues? Slap the label on it and do away with it? Well, I've explained it, I'm done with the curiosity, what do you mean? I'm gonna move on to the next one. Rather than, there's an association that I have where love is supposed to feel like abandonment? There's this association that I have that love is supposed to hurt. So I'm supposed to expect these like high highs and then these super low lows. That's the real problem, my association with love. If I just slapped the label on it,
6:43 Chris Williamson? Yep.
6:44 Speaker 01 I'd miss the whole, the, all the important stuff, all the context.
6:47 Chris Williamson? It's a protection mechanism in some ways, a shallow level of curiosity that, oh, well, now I've pathologized it or identified it or given a term for it. That's enough. I've done the work. You go, no, that, that's actually antithetical to doing the work. It's actually pushing you away from it because it's making you feel like you've done something whilst actually stopping you from diving into the thing that would have fixed it.
7:08 Speaker 01 Bingo. Totally. Completely. And the other part is the curiosity continues on. I mean, it's kind of ever changing, the way that we feel, the things that we want, change shape, change form. So there's, there's a lot there.
7:23 Speaker 01 And then capacity, we're not really good at sitting in discomfort. We're pretty good at finding every possible way to get out of it, around it, under it, over it, all of the things. And we typically prefer what's familiar over what's unfamiliar. So if we're used to our certain few emotions, we're used to good bit of disappointment, good bit of sadness, little bit of anxiety, and then a smidge of joy, we're gonna probably stay within that ratio unless we intentionally decide to expand the capacity there. Where it's like, no, no, no, no, I'm not gonna stay in the disappointment. I'm gonna teach myself how to move through it.
8:05 Speaker 01 I'm gonna support myself in whatever I need to do to move through this, rather than just staying in it and drowning in it, whether that be
8:13 Chris Williamson? Or fleeing from it.
8:14 Speaker 01 Or fleeing from it. Yes, exactly. And the, the positive quote unquote emotions, it's the same thing. We, we like to think, well, if I can just get rid of my anger and my sadness and my disappointment and all of that, I can just relish in all of these good emotions. And the reality is 99% of us, if we took a good, hard look at it, when the good stuff comes up, we're either waiting for the shoe to drop. Well, it's not gonna last long. So what's it gonna be? What's gonna hurt me? Right? We're all, we've already checked out of the happy moment because we're expecting something to come around and, and kick us over. Or it's self-inflicted and we self-sabotage anyway, because we don't trust it.
8:52 Chris Williamson? Hmm. You mentioned there about people feeling unusually familiar with negative patterns in the present related to something that they're probably They become acclimatized to from their past. How much of having a type do you think is just unresolved trauma showing up in adulthood?
9:17 Speaker 01 Oh, this is a good one. Can I open my new tonic for this one?
9:20 Chris Williamson? Get that in you. Yeah, yeah, you need it. Watch the nails.
9:23 Speaker 01 Thank you.
9:25 Chris Williamson? Yeah, look, I.
9:28 Speaker 01 What do you think? What's your opinion on that?
9:31 Chris Williamson? I think an awful lot of the things that feel exciting and activating to people in adulthood are absolutely familiarity masquerading as resonance. It's just something from your past.
9:46 Chris Williamson? There's this line from Cathy Overman where she says, your nervous system will always choose a familiar hell over an unfamiliar heaven. And Jesus, fuck, if that's not true, right? Like, how many people had the distant and difficult to please father that they had to perform for? And then if love is easily given to them in adulthood, they feel like they should run away. Or it's not worthy of something. There's something wrong with people who show them love too easily. And there's something alluring about people that make them work for it. Even though by definition, that probably the people who aren't showing up ready for a relationship and are going to turn your life upside down.
10:26 Chris Williamson? Or somebody's mother was unusually fragile or explosive. And they had to walk on eggshells. And they get into a relationship with somebody who seems to be slightly unpredictable and explode when you might not anticipate it. And that is felt by the nervous system as I've been here before. There is a, there is kind of an iron law, I think, of attachment that.
11:01 Chris Williamson? If you have something that's unresolved from your childhood, you will continue to repeat that pattern until you finally resolve it in adulthood or never do. And I think a lot of people end up in the never do. Right, but just it's like a book that you started when you were three years old, never finished, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to find a couple of chapters to finish it off.
11:26 Speaker 01 I like that. You're speaking to the uncertainty that I was mentioning earlier, where it seems like most of the issues come down to uncertainty. Or what would happen if I didn't repeat that pattern? What would happen if I sought out love that wasn't similar to what I've always known love to be? That's somehow scarier to our brains, whether it's conscious or unconscious, often unconscious. That's somehow scarier than the shitty, often destructive relationships that this familiar love brings. But there's certainty in it. So if I can rely on the certainty, at least I know, at least I can choose the devil that I know rather than the potential devil or the potential heaven that I don't know.
12:11 Speaker 01 But I think the only way, the only way that we get around that is by being intentional, by trusting ourselves to go figure out what we really want and lean in to the uncertainty and the lack of familiarity.
12:27 Chris Williamson? Why is it the case, do you think, that so many people mistake anxiety for chemistry? That it's, again, it's another iron law. Am I wrong?
12:35 Speaker 01 Well, I mean, the funny thing about it is you're, you're just talking about a bunch of bodily sensations. They're affective feelings. And so it's kind of funny because you asked that and my first thought is, well, it doesn't have to be anxiety and it doesn't have to be, it could be. Simply excitement versus to other people, it's the red flag. So it's really just your understanding of those bodily sensations. So if you're talking to someone who grew up with really steady caregivers, really attuned caregivers, pretty much everything you just said. If you're looking at that person and their association with love is going to be calm and steady and consistent versus someone else who's really used to inconsistent caregivers, not feeling like
13:18 Speaker 01 a priority, love being hot and cold or hurtful, then that sense of adrenaline that kicks in when you meet someone who mimics the same, you're gonna say, oh, that's love. That's love.
13:29 Chris Williamson? Yep.
13:29 Speaker 01 Because I'm so used to these highs and these lows. And so the adrenaline in the body is essentially either a red flag or you've learned that that sensation is love.
13:41 Chris Williamson? Isn't it interesting the way that this stuff gets modeled? So let's say that somebody's grown up in a two-parent household and it's been the same parents from when they were born. You're getting to not only have your relationship with both attachment figures and you're getting to learn what care and regulation. And this is what happens when I need someone to look after me. And this is what happens when I've got a problem. And this is what happens when I've done something wrong. Like, am I safe in realizing that I'm going to be loved on the other side of this? That I can do something wrong and it doesn't make me worried about abandonment? But you're also getting to model the example, the first romantic relationship example
14:25 Chris Williamson? that you've ever seen, which is the two caregivers between themselves. So it's kind of this weird reinforcement loop, right? You've got, it's almost weird to call it environmental because it's so pre-verbal. And it's just beyond what your mom did during pregnancy, you know? It's like, it's almost the same as your mom smoking during pregnancy or drinking or doing whatever, or like being real calm and looking after her choline levels and eating loads of eggs, whatever. I don't know what women do. I need to do research on that. It is just outside of that window, but you're so permeable. Like kids are so absorbent to this stuff that it's kind of almost there. Anyway. And then you grow up and you get to have this reinforcement, but you've already got
15:10 Chris Williamson? the predisposition. There's already a genetic predisposition for attachment style, right? And then that's got reinforced pre-verbal with the extended pregnancy thing of you naught to three, naught to four years old or whatever. And then you come online at some point as like a conscious being. And then you're seeing proper environmental, well, that's how mum and dad relate to each other. That's what an argument is. That's what, that's what a slow Sunday looks like. That's what happens when we get stuck in traffic. That's what happens when somebody messes up. That's how long it takes to come back together after someone's become dysregulated. All of these things. And it feels like a real double, triple, quadruple whammy.
15:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:54 Chris Williamson? Of, you had this predisposition genetically. It was reinforced pre-verbally, directly to you. And then you got to see it between your parents, environmentally, culturally reinforced too. It is really no surprise that sort of people become who they are.
16:14 Speaker 01 I would love, I would love to see how long it would take to, to see if there's any change in that predisposition. Like, how many generations would it take?
16:27 Chris Williamson? How much therapy does it take to unwind this?
16:31 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. And obviously, genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. But at the core of all of that, the first question that we have is, am I safe? Am I safe? Do I belong? Does any, or is anyone paying attention to me? Because if they are, and I'm safe, then I can look at all these other things, how I relate to other people, and how, do I get to have creative freedom to be my own individual person? Do, you know, what do I want to do? Those questions come second to, am I safe? And the question that comes right after that is, and do I belong? Do people love me enough to pay attention? If we don't get those needs satisfied, if we don't. And sometimes it happens later than it should. A lot of the times it happens later than it should.
17:17 Speaker 01 It's really difficult to try and figure out how to have a super healthy, secure relationship on top of that. How to chase your dreams and be super ambitious and still have a good balance and feel good about yourself. And that's really difficult if your fundamental needs of do I belong enough? Me at my core, do I belong enough for people to care and want me around? Like, am I physically and psychologically, emotionally safe? That's gonna follow you around like a ghost. If you don't figure out.
17:55 Speaker 01 If you don't figure out the answer to that question, you know, it like, do you feel safe? Yes or no, but even more so than the defense mechanisms or coping mechanisms that you have to try and meet that need, because we all have them. So if we're talking about self-actualization, which we kind of are in that whole thing, you have to start at the bottom, which is safety and belonging.
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19:00 Chris Williamson? So you can try it every single day for three months. And if you do not like it, they will give you your money back. Right now, you can get a free AG1 welcome kit that includes a bottle of D3K2, an AG1 flavor sampler, and that 90 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below, heading to drinkag1.com/whatamwisdom. How does somebody build safety as an adult?
19:21 Speaker 01 I think it's, I would start with the question of who do you have to be to be loved? That's a pretty good place to start because ideally the answer is, well, myself. And it feels, it feels quite easy to say that. Like, well, that's just, you know, I'm me and my mom loves me because of this. My best friends love me because I'm just myself. Yeah, I don't, I don't feel like I have to be all that much. Versus if that question causes you to really tense and you're thinking, oh, my God, well, I have to be the guy with this job title because status, I have to be the guy with this much money because power and importance, I have to be the guy that never shows his emotions. I'm supposed to be strong and sturdy and everyone relies. It's like that, there's a problem there. There's a problem there because you belong just for existing.
20:05 Speaker 01 I think it's Brene Brown that says the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Maybe?
20:11 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
20:13 Speaker 01 So to that, the opposite of belonging, the opposite of safety is fitting in. Because you have to be someone that you fundamentally aren't.
20:21 Chris Williamson? Performance.
20:22 Speaker 01 Performing, yeah. So I would start with that question.
20:27 Chris Williamson? Yeah, it's an interesting one. I, I feel like the sort of hypervigilance that a lot of people are dealing with at the moment, this need to, it is about uncertainty. I think anxiety is, is almost exclusively about uncertainty. That if I can imagine every different potential path that the future might take
20:48 Chris Williamson? and imagine it, if it happens, I'll be ready.
20:52 Speaker 01 Yep.
20:53 Chris Williamson? I'll be ready, I'll be ready to take on whatever catastrophe. Cause I've imagined catastrophes that the physics of reality couldn't even deliver to me. My grandma's come back from the dead and she's, she's shouting at me because I did that thing wrong. And if I can imagine all of the different ways that the future might unfold, especially in horrible ways, I don't need to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing. So I've collapsed down the uncertainty of the world into a, albeit tragic, but certain nightmare.
21:22 Speaker 01 Well, and run that through, grandma comes back, grandma's here yelling at you. Why is that bad?
21:32 Chris Williamson? Because I don't belong, because I'm wrong.
21:34 Speaker 01 Well, she would probably say something that would hurt your feelings.
21:36 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
21:37 Speaker 01 So you're essentially running away from a bad feeling.
21:40 Chris Williamson? Hmm, by imagining it was one.
21:42 Speaker 01 Spend days and weeks and months and years trying to avoid a bad feeling. A bad feeling, like you're letting emotions of feeling run your life and not just run your life, but exhaust you in the process. When if you, I mean, I'll go extreme here, when, when my mom died. And I was in my early twenties, I was relatively young, had younger siblings too. So there was a lot in that. But I remember when my mom died, I was like, well, you, you have a lot of options here, Quinlan. You can throw your hands up and, you know, stay in a ball on the living room floor for the next three to five years and pick your head up then and see what's going on.
22:26 Speaker 01 Or you can, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps lovingly and just venture out little by little with the grief, with the sadness, with all of the stuff, you know, on my shoulders, just like venture out little by little every day. And the other, the first option really included like, okay, but what happens if I start crying in public? What happens if I get a call that my brother's having a breakdown? What happens if, you know, X, Y, or Z? What happens if I'm in school and I can't remember? I was in college at the time. What happens if I'm in school and I can't remember anything on the exam that I was just studying for? Right? All of these things were essentially what happens if I get sad?
23:05 Chris Williamson? Mm hmm, mm hmm.
23:06 Speaker 01 What happens if I have to deal with an emotion that I don't want to deal with? And there's no way to control that other than to prep yourself, support yourself, building the capacity to feel these feelings. And then you aren't so concerned about what the world's going to throw at you because you know that these big uncomfortable feelings, though uncomfortable, you can manage them, you can feel them and it won't kill you.
23:31 Chris Williamson? Hmm. How do you think people know when they're choosing a partner versus choosing a wound? Like you have this old ancient script that's running inside of you.
23:45 Chris Williamson? These patterns are laid down. This is what love is. This is how people relate. And then someone comes along, the difference between chemistry and chaos are usually kind of hard to discern.
23:59 Speaker 01 I think the question there, I would tailor it a little bit to, do you like the way the relationship feels?
24:08 Speaker 01 Because we can, if it's really all conditioning, right? If the wound is essentially bad conditioning, meaning it brings out a destructive relationship versus positive conditioning, if you will, positive associations with love bring you a happy, healthy, stable, loving.
24:24 Chris Williamson? Of course.
24:24 Speaker 01 Relationship.
24:25 Chris Williamson? It could be my patterns from my past make me only choose people who respect me and are there for me and show up for me.
24:30 Speaker 01 Right, we love that.
24:31 Chris Williamson? Make me feel like more of myself. I should get rid of those things. No, no, no, no, no, keep those ones. You need those ones.
24:35 Speaker 01 So I think the real question is, how do you know if you're choosing from, from a wounded place? It's, well, do you like the way the relationship feels? And if not, there's probably something in your conditioning that has taught you to associate this subpar behavior with love.
24:53 Chris Williamson? Interesting. That's, it's a great, it's a great answer. But how many people are surprised by, well, yeah, my relationship probably should make me feel good all the time. Most of the time.
25:08 Chris Williamson? Revolutionary.
25:09 Speaker 01 Show me where.
25:10 Chris Williamson? You know what I mean?
25:11 Speaker 01 Show me.
25:11 Chris Williamson? Yeah. Like that, that, that is, well, no, because, because you know, it's, life's hard and life's supposed to be hard. And sometimes they go, yeah, okay, but up to a point.
25:22 Speaker 01 Yes.
25:22 Chris Williamson? And life is hard in a lot of other areas. I don't think that your relationship is supposed to be one of them.
25:29 Speaker 01 I agree.
25:29 Chris Williamson? I came across this line.
25:32 Chris Williamson? If you're working this hard to make it work, it isn't working.
25:36 Speaker 01 You had a conversation with someone, I can't remember who. Hopefully you do. Basically saying of all of the late night journaling sessions and all of these tough, difficult conversations, like if it's really not quite moving the needle, you probably need to leave.
25:53 Chris Williamson? Yeah, well, that's, I think, a pattern that a lot of people that are big into personal growth and working hard on themselves feel, which is.
26:05 Chris Williamson? I've been rewarded throughout my entire life. If I work harder, things get better.
26:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:12 Chris Williamson? Which means that if this isn't working, I just need to work harder. It's a challenge. And guess what? To the people that listen to Modern Wisdom, challenges are their fucking thing.
26:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, is it ever.
26:24 Chris Williamson? They're the sort of people that eat challenges for breakfast. Unfortunately, they are applying a noble mindset to the wrong environment.
26:32 Speaker 01 Well, and you're looking at, I mean, think about like the hedonic treadmill. Where things get great and you get the promotion or you get the great new girlfriend and you love her somewhere. You get the great new boyfriend, whatever, whatever. You're naturally going to come back down to baseline and the novelty wears off. So I agree with everything you just said with the caveat that you shouldn't be looking to your relationship for something that your relationship isn't supposed to supply all the time. Peace, most of the time, absolutely. Love, support, most of the time, absolutely. But novelty, excitement, dread, disappointment.
27:16 Speaker 01 I mean, right, both sides of the spectrum here is what I'm trying to paint.
27:19 Chris Williamson? Activation.
27:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's, that's not where your relationship is supposed to bring you. I just think nowadays we aren't comfortable with just being really, really, really not good at just being. Cause like, feeling content is something I don't hear anyone speak on much these days. As in people our age just in conversation, like I'm content. It's usually, oh, I'm awful or oh, I'm so fantastic.
27:49 Chris Williamson? Yeah, or I'm grinding, I'm driving very hard. It's unbelievably radical to say that you're satisfied. Right? Because it sounds like leaving a lot on the table. If we live, and I'm, you know, big fan, big beneficiary of capitalism. I think it's, what's that, what's that line? Capitalism's the worst system apart from all of the others.
28:09 Chris Williamson? And, but the problem is if you've got meritocracy, if people from, what? When do people go to preschool, like four years old or something? There's already this beginning of a ranking that's going on. There's assessments. When's the first homework that you get as a kid? Maybe six years old, seven years old, something like that. You should take this home and bring it back with macaroni drawings or whatever.
28:29 Speaker 01 Your name spelled out.
28:30 Chris Williamson? Yeah, exactly.
28:33 Chris Williamson? Like that is already beginning to create a if you work hard, then you will get rewarded. If you work hard, then you will get rewarded. And that just continues to spin up. Problem is that creates a situation where you kind of look lazy. Or like you don't have big dreams for yourself or a lack of self-respect or you're not maximizing your time on this planet. If you just say, I'm good. I really, I just like, I like what I'm doing. I like what I'm doing. I don't have any desire to 10x it. I don't have any desire to recruit other people to do what I'm doing and coach them to do it better than me. Now, I was in Bali on this live tour thing and it was so much fun.
29:18 Chris Williamson? I'd done the last show and I caught up with a friend. The friend was out there doing nutrition coaching. And they'd started this business and had previously worked in London and then moved out there. And said, I'm just having the best time. Working with women who want to optimize their hormones and stuff and skin health and lose weight and do this. And I said, how are you working with them? How do you work with your clients? She said, oh, I, I, I work one-on-one over WhatsApp. And I was like, that's stupid. What you should do is you should have a lead magnet on the front end. It's going to capture all of your emails and then you need a squeeze page that gets them in on it. You need a low end on it. Yeah, exactly. And then you're going to spin them up. You're going to have the, the low end. And that's just to get the credit card information really. And then after that, you've got your mid-ticket.
30:03 Chris Williamson? And that's really where the big bulk of people go. But you want your high ticket. People are working with you one-on-one. You can't just give that away. You shouldn't, that shouldn't be your base level. That needs to be, that needs to be the people at the very, very top. Now, obviously you're going to need a sales team because you can't sell anything on the internet over about $2,000 without having a sales call first. And you don't want to be doing all the sales calls. So you're going to have to require a sales team to come in. And, you know, it is going to become a little bit more complex because you might need a sales manager, manage the sales team. And that is going to look a lot like a sales business, but I promise you, I don't like, stop myself partway through. I'm like, I'm, I am going to curse this person with the exact challenge that so many of my friends are now trying to extricate themselves from. I've overcomplicated my business. I wanted more, more, more.
30:47 Chris Williamson? I've stopped doing the thing that I wanted to be able to do in the past. I'm not, I'm no longer coaching women on how to improve their health. I'm now managing a fucking sales team.
30:58 Chris Williamson? Who sell people on how to.
31:01 Speaker 01 Have you heard the Mexican fisherman?
31:04 Chris Williamson? Fisherman's story.
31:05 Speaker 01 I was gonna.
31:05 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I basically did the Balinese nutrition coach was the equivalent of the Mexican fisherman's story.
31:12 Speaker 01 I they had out there, living life balanced, sometimes working.
31:16 Chris Williamson? Literally saying, I'm the happiest I've ever been. After the sentence of I'm happiest that I've ever been like, let me tell you how you can become miserable, but richer.
31:26 Speaker 01 And here is about well, and you're. Okay, now imagine you take that into a romantic relationship. And you're looking at someone who doesn't value ambition or hundred X ing their income or even productivity. Like efficiency doesn't really matter to them. Is that inherently bad? No, it's just not you or me. I fall in that category more than I'd like to admit. But the reality is we're more than likely to look at that person and try to change them. Try to project onto them what we value rather than looking at them as what they are, which is a whole other person.
32:03 Chris Williamson? That's an interesting pattern.
32:06 Chris Williamson? To a degree, I certainly think at least my friends, as we all hit our thirties, we increasingly valued. People around us, friends and partners that encourage us to slow down as opposed to speed up. And that's a kind of difficult realization. I think a lot of guys especially, but probably high powered women too. Will realize this toward the end of their twenties, they go, I actually don't want to be around that many more me's. I'm me enough for me. I actually could do with someone who encourages me to take my foot off the accelerator. Maybe not press the brake, but it's like, hey, man, let's just coast for a bit. We can just go and hang out and. Yeah, it's a strange, that strange realisation.
32:52 Speaker 01 Well, you have to be humble enough to take a look at the mirror in that moment. You have to be humble enough to think, oh, I think I'm so big and bad. I'm so important.
33:02 Chris Williamson? The way that I do it is the best way.
33:04 Speaker 01 Is the best way. Like, who the hell do I sit down, Gwyneth? Like, absolutely not. And you're, and a lot of people would look at that and think, well, they're just not meant for me. They're just not, I'm gonna throw away a perfectly fine relationship because I'm so caught up in myself and my own values that I'm judging someone else based on something that is a me problem. I think we end a lot of good relationships, potentially great relationships for that reason.
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34:13 Chris Williamson? Best of all, you can join for free. Pay nothing for the brand new Whoop 5.0 strap and you get your first month for free. And there's a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Whoop 5.0 and that 30 day free trial by going to the link in the description below or heading to join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. That's join.whoop.com/modernwisdom. Do you think avoidant people seem disproportionately attractive in the dating market?
34:51 Speaker 01 People who have a strong sense of self are attractive, period. Esther Perel talks a lot about this, where typically we find our partners most attractive when they're in their element, when they're self-sufficient, when there's a level of mastery or agency at play. We find people most attractive when they are doing their own thing. Avoidant people just tend to have that on the surface more readily available to be seen and admired. They have their lives, their jobs, maybe some friends, their hobbies, there's more going on. They're not so obsessed with the validation of everyone else around them, right? Avoidant people just tend to show their more avoidant tendencies, or I'm sorry, anxious people tend to show their more anxious tendencies kind of right off
35:36 Speaker 01 the bat because you can sense it. So on the surface, yes. I think the answer to your question is yes. Avoidance just seemed to have more of that independent sense of self, firm sense of self, right off the bat.
35:51 Chris Williamson? That's very interesting. I wonder how much as well the intermittent reward of, we're on, things are good, and then, hang on, where the fuck did you go? And we're on again and things are good, and then you sort of ran away again. I wonder how much that combined with, they're so impressive. They just seem to have, especially if you have the classic sort of anxious and avoidant relationship coming together, one who maybe is a little bit less self-assured, one who does need a little bit more reassurance from the other person, and someone else who seems to have it all together and can then provide the amount of stimulation and reward that you do want and then withdraw it.
36:32 Speaker 01 I think it depends on what you value. And a lot of that often comes with age. I won't say always, but you get to a certain point where that roller coaster is unattractive. You get through those first inconsistent exchanges, you haven't texted back in days, or canceled plans again, and you, part of you just says, I don't know, no thanks, not interested, been here 17 times, I'm not interested in an 18th round, like, no, thank you. I value communication, transparency. I don't need you available to me all the time, but you absolutely need to let me know rather than canceling last minute. Or like, your standards are just clearer. When you know what you value in a relationship, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to say,
37:16 Speaker 01 does this feel the way that I want love to feel? And if not, I'm good. I don't need to understand why. I don't need to know why you're avoidant. You know, what, what, what was it? Your mom, was it your mom or your dad?
37:27 Chris Williamson? The late night journaling session.
37:28 Speaker 01 Yes.
37:31 Speaker 01 It just doesn't help at the end of the day if the relationship isn't, for the most part, feeling the way that you want it to feel. That's the important distinction.
37:41 Chris Williamson? Such a basic rubric.
37:42 Speaker 01 Crazy.
37:43 Chris Williamson? Right of all of the different bits of relationship advice. Do you feel good in this relationship? And is it making you feel the way that you want it to feel?
37:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. And that's a good thing to ask if you're already in a relationship too. If you have a conversation with the person you're with, like, hey, is this feeling the way you want it to feel? Pulse check. What's up? Is there anything that I can do? Is there better ways that I can love you? I mean, again, it's kind of a, kind of a cliche at this point, but do you know how the person you're with wants to be loved? Or are you coming in so big and bold and self obsessed that you're only giving what you want to receive?
38:18 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
38:19 Speaker 01 Looking outside of yourself.
38:21 Chris Williamson? It's an interesting one around disappointment. You know, it's, it's very easy to show up well when things are going well. But to sit in, I've been disappointed and I now need to try and be my best self too, even if this person doesn't deserve it. Like, they messed up.
38:39 Speaker 01 Yes.
38:40 Chris Williamson? This person messed up. They don't deserve me to be good now. Like, I'm allowed to stamp my feet and be petulant.
38:46 Speaker 01 Yes.
38:47 Chris Williamson? So there's this line from Visakhkanth Verasamy that he calls the divorce paradox. He says, why is it that so many people seem to divorce their supposed best friend? And it's that the way people handle bad times is a much better indicator of how long the relationship will last than how they handle good times. And the fact being that if you're able to go through a hard time and come out the other side okay, safety.
39:16 Chris Williamson? That is, that is so much more predictive than we just didn't have enough peak experiences. You know, we didn't go to Six Flags enough. We didn't go to Six Flags enough. He wouldn't ride the fast roller coaster with me or whatever it is. It is all about how do you and your partner get on. Obviously, there's other things, but I think way more separations occur because people couldn't deal with bad times, not because they didn't have enough of the elated ones.
39:47 Speaker 01 Well, I think it's, I would, I'd venture to guess it's indicative of a bigger issue. Like the not handling bad times is actually a symptom of a bigger issue, not handling bad times well, where just take consideration, general consideration for someone else's well being. If you don't naturally have that, if you aren't actively working on that, if you aren't aware that that's important in this relationship, you're definitely not going to show up with that in bad times. And that would make the good times 100 times better. You see, you see what I mean? Where if you're, if you're pretty self centered, if you're not all that introspective or self aware, if you're not trying to become more
40:32 Speaker 01 emotionally mature, which I think most of us can almost always progress in that area. Of course, when bad times come around, your capacity's shot, you're kind of like running on E and what's left is none of the good stuff, none of the stuff that keeps you together, that values connection, nothing that's going to feed this love. But I think if you have it tenfold, if you have all of the love and consideration, all those things, that when you get down to running on E, there's still a little bit of that left.
41:04 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes total sense. Do you think empathy can become dangerous then in that regard? It overrides self respect and boundaries. Too much understanding can be a bad thing.
41:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, absolutely.
41:21 Speaker 01 Empathy without boundaries is self abandonment. And on the back end of empathy that lacks boundaries is some sense of
41:35 Speaker 01 lack, like, okay, if I just empathize enough, if I can understand why this person is treating me so badly, then I'll be able to rationalize it and I can keep them around a little bit longer because I still need to be chosen. So the idea of being lonely and not having anyone there, we can't, that's last, last thing we ever want to encounter. So let me just try to empathize enough to be okay with the behavior that I don't like because it's meeting a need. So rather than having a pretty firm sense of self that says, I'd rather be alone than be treated like shit, I'm gonna say, no, I'd rather be anything but alone, so I'll be okay with being treated like shit.
42:19 Chris Williamson? It's so interesting that you're saying empathy is rationalization to help us keep going.
42:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
42:26 Chris Williamson? It's actually empathy becomes very selfish in that way.
42:29 Speaker 01 Absolutely, yeah.
42:29 Chris Williamson? It's both self abandonment and selfish at the same time, but it's not really about the other person.
42:35 Speaker 01 Well, self abandonment is almost always self-serving. It's always the abandonment of self to meet some deeper need.
42:43 Chris Williamson? Same.
42:43 Speaker 01 So if you're people pleasing, right, similar to what we're talking about with empathy, well, I'm just gonna make nice so everyone around me will be good and appeased because I need people around, I need to be accepted, I need to belong, right? So I'm gonna abandon so that I can get this fundamental need met. Where the self is really more your self-respect, like your self-concept, the you that is maturing and has a firm sense of this is who I am, this is what I like about myself, this is what I, this is how I allow people to treat me, et cetera. But self abandonment always comes with some kind of benefit. We don't just do it for fun. It meets some deeper psychological need that isn't being met over early.
43:27 Chris Williamson? So interesting to think about that, that empathizing aggressively allows you to understand the other person's situation, which just extends that fuel, it just pours a little bit more fuel back into the tank.
43:39 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:40 Chris Williamson? Okay, I can keep on puttering along a little bit more and then something else. And I, oh, but their childhood, you know, but their relationship to their stepfather.
43:51 Speaker 01 And what about it? And what about it is always what you follow it up with. What and what about it? We're all the way that we are because of something. No, do we just fall out of the sky like that? We, there's a reason, there's a why for everything. It doesn't mean that it's reason to tolerate behavior that's disrespectful or harmful.
44:10 Chris Williamson? Ultimately, it gets to, is this making you feel the way that you want it to?
44:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:14 Chris Williamson? Regardless of the reason for it or against it. Yeah, this, this is a very British thing, actually, I think. The, the nobility in putting your desires to one side, sort of, I mustn't rock the boat. Mustn't make a fuss. Don't want to make a fuss too much. I certainly, you know, I saw in my last life as a club promoter, like a garrillion different relationships make up and break up in the space of no time at all. And a lot of the time, neither side felt like they were allowed to say what they wanted. And I think that that was, it's a kind of boundary setting. Hey, this is how I would like to be treated or this is the thing that I want.
44:59 Chris Williamson? And there we go. But it's still interesting to see kind of the pluripotent stem cell, like the little proto, you know, the proto relationships that happen when you're sort of 18 to 25.
45:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
45:11 Chris Williamson? It was really interesting to see those because I think that is you without all of the learnings and the insight and the things that come with age. So it's really, it's dating at its most raw in some ways because all you are are your childhood patterns.
45:28 Speaker 01 It's attachment.
45:29 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
45:29 Speaker 01 At its most, 100%.
45:31 Chris Williamson? It was really fascinating to see.
45:32 Speaker 01 I can't, I'm sure alcohol really helped with that too.
45:35 Chris Williamson? Helped is a complex word.
45:39 Speaker 01 Helped as a viewer.
45:40 Chris Williamson? Yeah, well, yeah, I'm sure it did. What do you wish more people knew about how boundaries worked? I think that this is, I I'm aware that a lot of the time pathologization of therapy speak language, but also a really important thing that you're supposed to do inside of a relationship. So what do more people need to know about boundaries?
46:01 Speaker 01 Boundaries are rules for yourself, for yourself. They are rules that I will abide by because I know what I want for myself, for my life, from the relationships that I will have in my life. It's a rule for myself. And people tend to think that it has to come with a means of control, controlling the other people around them, getting what they want out of life. It doesn't. It's I will do this or I won't do this. This is what I want in life. Are you in or are you out? Kind of if you're specifically in romantic relationships.
46:38 Speaker 01 There's a creator that I was, I can't remember who it is, I'm sorry. There I was watching a video and basically this couple that's married, the guy was saying that he didn't want to marry a woman who was going to bars. Wasn't what he wanted. You know, bars are typically for single people. Now, whether you agree with that or not, it's a boundary of his. And he didn't even ask her to stop going to the bars, didn't ask her to leave. He just said, I don't want to, you know, I'm looking for a wife and the wife that I have isn't going to be going to bars by herself for whatever reason. It was his boundary. She said, cool, I'm good with that. Don't need it. I'm also looking for the same thing, the same level of respect. So no more bars for me.
47:21 Speaker 01 That's his boundary and she had the option to say, cool, I'm in or no, sorry, I'm not. That's, that's an example of a real boundary, not, hey, you better leave because I told you that I wasn't cool with this. And so if you go to the bar, I'm not going to talk to you and you're going to, no. It was his rule. She got to opt in or opt out. That's a boundary.
47:43 Chris Williamson? Interesting how many disputes that we've seen, you know, some text leak of a couple, famous couple or whatever, and one person is saying one thing, this is what I like and this is what I don't like. Yeah, the delivery of it, there's an awful lot to be said about that. But ultimately, how many debates have been had online?
48:05 Chris Williamson? On on podcasts about should you be okay with your partner going to the bar? Or whatever you go that that is a completely personal choice.
48:15 Speaker 01 Yes.
48:15 Chris Williamson? For you with your partner and it is a completely personal choice for them too. It is absolutely fine for you to want whatever you want.
48:23 Speaker 01 Yes.
48:24 Chris Williamson? Up to a limit.
48:27 Chris Williamson? Must put a caveat in.
48:30 Speaker 01 Check the laws.
48:30 Chris Williamson? Exactly.
48:33 Chris Williamson? For the most part, it's completely fine with you for you to want whatever you want. You want to go to bed at nine P M. You that's fine. You want somebody that is quiet in the morning. It's fine. You want somebody that's vegan. That's fine. You want somebody that's conservative. That's fine. You just need to ensure that you make that plane. And the other person is allowed to opt in or opt out. It feels really.
48:57 Chris Williamson? Almost all of the relationship problems that I see that happen on the internet are just two people who aren't compatible for each other, shouting about the fact that they're trying to make it work. They're trying to like hammer this square peg into a round hole. And then everybody else gets to sit on the sidelines and say, I'm more like them. Or I'm more like the other one.
49:16 Speaker 01 Yes.
49:17 Chris Williamson? Just both of you should fuck off and find someone that's like.
49:20 Speaker 01 Leave each other alone.
49:21 Chris Williamson? Yes, leave, leave and find someone that wants to go to bed at nine P M. Or has never voted Democrat or that doesn't want to eat meat.
49:28 Speaker 01 Well, the politics is something that I actually disagree with. A lot of people say you can't be with someone who has a differing political view, political view than you. And I I disagree in most cases. If we understand the why and the values behind. Okay, so we can take any of these situations as an example. We can use the bar. We can use the time you want to go to bed. We can use politics. Do you know why those things are important to you? Why is it important? What's the value behind not going to a bar if you're in a relationship without your spouse? What what's the value behind going to sleep at nine o'clock versus two o'clock in the morning?
50:09 Speaker 01 What is the value behind having liberal views or having conservative views? What are the values? And from there, it becomes a real conversation, rather than this fight of who's right and who's wrong. And I can't believe that you would want to kill these people and you don't care about these rights and da, da, da, da, da. It's like, well, at the end of the day, we don't even know what we're fighting about because I haven't asked you why that's important to you. Why are your views on this, that and the other? What does that mean to you? I'm actually curious about what that is. And do those things align? You can have similar values and, oh, God, I should put on this thing. You can, you can, you can have similar values at the heart of it, and it can look quite different as far as who you're voting for and what you believe.
50:55 Speaker 01 I told myself I would never speak on politics.
50:57 Chris Williamson? Jared, have you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? I don't consider a lot, Chris. Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing Co. last night. But they're non-alcoholic. And that's not a problem? Sorry, man. I just kept chugging, waiting for the regret to creep in. Never happened. See, most people, like Jared, don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet.
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52:04 Chris Williamson? What do you make of the differences between the sexes right now? Like, are men and women just becoming less culturally compatible?
52:11 Speaker 01 I think we're all becoming more ego-centric. It's almost like...
52:17 Speaker 01 Arrested development?
52:20 Speaker 01 Children by nature are egocentric because there's no way that their little brains can conceptualize anything beyond just them and their need to survive fundamentally, right? And so then ideally you grow up and you can ascertain the stability of the world and whatever you go on to form an identity and a sense of self. If you get stuck at a more egocentric age or in a more egocentric phase, everything is about you. Everything is a reflection of you. Your needs are the most important thing. People who have different opinions or values or feelings, all the things wrong because it is me and I am I and the center of the world. I'm being hyperbolic, but I think that we have a really difficult time, both men and
53:04 Speaker 01 women, really looking outside of ourselves without losing ourselves. Are you familiar with the term differentiation?
53:13 Chris Williamson? No.
53:14 Speaker 01 Are you familiar with the term enmeshment?
53:17 Chris Williamson? Kind of, yes.
53:18 Speaker 01 Okay, so they're chips off of the same block. So differentiation is essentially I can stay connected to me while also being connected to you. So we are not one. And this goes for platonic relationships, familial relationships, all the things. But I can hold my sense of self while still being connected to someone who's different than me.
53:38 Chris Williamson? Give me an example of the opposite of that.
53:40 Speaker 01 Enmeshment?
53:41 Chris Williamson? Okay.
53:41 Speaker 01 Codependency?
53:42 Chris Williamson? Right.
53:42 Speaker 01 Right? Your feelings are my feelings. So if you're not okay, I'm not okay and I have to fix it for both of us. That sense of we are just one unit.
53:54 Speaker 01 I think that being able to hold on to who we are, what we want, what we value, and still being able to relate to people that have, that feel differently, that see the world differently, that have their own sense of self. I'm not sure that we have much practice in that, let alone solid examples of what that really looks like.
54:16 Chris Williamson? And that's contributing to men and women struggling a little bit in the modern world because of cultural differences, because they're stuck in this childhood ego phase?
54:26 Speaker 01 I think it's, that sounds, that sounds bad. But yeah, I think it is a, it's a socialization issue. Where we aren't really taught how to relate in a way that says, tell me who you are. And I'll tell you who I am. And we can still have a relationship, even if all of these characteristics don't align.
54:44 Chris Williamson? As if your self is a threat to myself.
54:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
54:49 Chris Williamson? Now, that's interesting. And that's certainly something I think that we see on the internet a lot, that
54:57 Chris Williamson? somebody stating a view, a, a girl stating a view about what she thinks to do with child rearing, is seen by not only men, but especially women, as a threat if they don't agree with that particular view. Like, everything becomes tribal. But yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize that we're basically sort of enmeshing ourselves with the entire world. And that because of our lack of a strong sense of who we are, we see somebody else's sense of themselves as a threat to ours.
55:28 Speaker 01 Well, and you're also looking, I mean, to differentiate requires a certain amount of safety. Whether that be safety within yourself or safety within the people that are closest to you, right? Like, you know who you are. You trust the people closest to you to reflect that back. And then you get to go venture out into the world and meet people that want to argue with the opposite points or, you know, have differing views.
55:50 Speaker 01 Part of the, the greater problem at large, I think, is that we're using shame, judgment and criticism to try and change the other party. I hear a lot of hate towards men. I hear a lot of hate towards women. I hear a lot of hate of, well, it's their fault that we're like this. And their fault that we're like this. And it's like, these are conversations that we need to have, but we're having them with the, the entirely wrong attitude, an entirely wrong attitude. No one wants to change because they're shamed enough. Sustainable change, real conversation, real.
56:26 Speaker 01 Real understanding doesn't come from spewing vitriol at other people. It doesn't come from hatred. So I think that that that general atmosphere is already adding fuel to a fire that's raging.
56:43 Chris Williamson? What are the most common misunderstandings that you think modern men and women have about each other? If you were able to pull a chip out of one sex and give it to the other?
56:54 Speaker 01 Hmm.
56:58 Speaker 01 This is a really good question.
57:04 Speaker 01 I think I would want women to understand the power and influence and importance that they play in men's lives. I think that gets lost in conversation. You know, a good, loving woman is quite powerful in a man's life if he also loves and respects her. Like, and I think that that gets lost, especially in today's conversation of like
57:34 Speaker 01 submission and being a docile, good woman. And it's like, we had just put the rules aside. You're important. You make a really big difference in in this man's life. And I think that that should be reiterated. I also think that if if women know that they're appreciated and that they're valuable and just their their presence and their love and their attention goes a long way. That's how we get things to to change. When you feel valued, when you feel appreciated, it's like, oh, that's great. I want to give more.
58:04 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
58:04 Speaker 01 So that needs to be communicated. And I think that
58:09 Speaker 01 I would want men to know. So if I was implanting this, I think I would want men to know.
58:19 Speaker 01 I would want men to know that there's far more value in who you are beyond just what you can offer on a piece of paper, beyond just the things that you can write down. I see that a lot in clients that I work with who are dating and clients that I work with who are married. It's still a lot of these norms of you're only really worth anything if you're of a certain size stature, if you make a certain amount of money, if you have certain status, power, whatever, the things that you can write on a resume, basically. And just the value in showing up and being present and being loving and being available
59:01 Speaker 01 as a man is also important and necessary to women. So basically, less bravado, if I make a long story short.
59:09 Chris Williamson? Yeah. Do you think emotional men often get overlooked?
59:14 Speaker 01 I think it's starting to change, but I do think that there is a bit of socializing, socialization that has taught us that men aren't supposed to cry. Men aren't supposed to have more feelings, they're definitely not more feelings than the women in their lives. That's like, that'll scare you away, like, oh, can't do that. And I don't think that's true. And I think that that conditioning, I know that's not true, and I think that the conditioning around that is starting to fall away. I think that we're having more conversations about it, we're taking a real, honest look at what we were socialized to believe, and then it doesn't really make sense. All right, if women are complaining about all of these emotionally unavailable men,
59:58 Speaker 01 and I can't get the man to have a conversation with me, and like, he doesn't care about my day, like, if you want an emotionally available guy, that's gonna mean that his emotions have to come to the table. So, you know, what do you want?
1:00:10 Chris Williamson? I want you to be able to sit in emotions, but only if they're mine.
1:00:14 Speaker 01 Right.
1:00:14 Chris Williamson? I don't want you to have your own.
1:00:16 Speaker 01 I see that mostly in the work that I do. It's like giving men the vocabulary and the language to express what it is that they're feeling and like the space to actually communicate that. And then I often see a lot of the work with women is the practice of allowing the men's emotions to take up space and not just theirs.
1:00:39 Chris Williamson? What are the problems that women encounter when?
1:00:43 Chris Williamson? Giving enough space, giving space to men's emotions.
1:00:48 Speaker 01 I think there's, there's a fear that if their emotions aren't being recognized, if we're making space for his feelings, his emotions to come into play, then mine are just gonna be overlooked. Then mine get put on the back burner and then I'm just appeasing him and then what am I even here for? I'm just here to validate him and he doesn't do anything. It's like, okay, well, nothing's gonna get done with that attitude. Nothing. The real question is, can you build the, the capacity and the practice of having your feelings and tabling them for a second while we also talk about his? Right? It's, women tend to feel and express boldly, largely loudly in a lot of ways,
1:01:31 Speaker 01 which I'm not against at all. I'm very passionate. I'm, I'm quite loud myself. But it has to come with an understanding that if you want to be in this relationship with another human who has feelings, sometimes we have to give it a beat. Emotions are not emergencies. Just because you feel a certain way doesn't mean that you have to act on it now. And it doesn't mean that we can't give attention to the other person who's in this dynamic.
1:01:54 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
1:01:55 Speaker 01 Does that make sense?
1:01:56 Chris Williamson? No, it does. It does. I, I've been thinking for a while. I wonder whether,
1:02:01 Chris Williamson? I wonder whether standards have risen or expectations have become unrealistic.
1:02:13 Speaker 01 Both? Am I allowed to say both? I think it's both. I think that
1:02:22 Speaker 01 far more people are actually marrying for love. I think that, again, as Sarah Perel talks a lot about this, but we're expecting one relationship to fill the needs that an entire village would have before. And we're on social media that is filled with every single highlight, real magical moment. That's all been produced and very meticulously crafted, by the way. Um, and then comparing that to our, you know, normal Tuesday nights. It's like, well, you must not love me because you didn't send me $7,000 worth of flowers on Valentine's Day. And you, I can't be with her because to be honest, I mean, she's not a double D and she's like put on like 10 pounds.
1:03:02 Speaker 01 And like, she's kind of a bitch sometimes. It's like, can we just, where's the humanness in all of this? I think we've lost. We've lost the plot when it comes to expectations. And we need to make room for the higher standards that we have while also accounting for people's humanity. For the connection that occurs just between two people who have a little bit of chemistry, similar visions of the future, and decide to build lives together.
1:03:32 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
1:03:33 Speaker 01 So I think it's both.
1:03:34 Chris Williamson? Yeah, I see it in comment threads all the time about problems with coupling. And I would say, on average, it's more, um, our standards have risen from women. And more, the expectations are unrealistic from men. That, at least from where I see it in comment sections, I would love someone to do some data on this. Regardless of who is saying what, um, it's not, it's not particularly helpful to say either of those things at the other side. Like, you need to be better, women or men. You go, well, do you not fucking think that they're trying?
1:04:17 Chris Williamson? Who's actively trying to not be better?
1:04:20 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:04:21 Chris Williamson? Right? Who is actively trying to not be better? And when was the last time that somebody was, like, cajoled, like, beaten over the head into change en masse as a group?
1:04:32 Speaker 01 It doesn't work.
1:04:33 Chris Williamson? No.
1:04:33 Speaker 01 It doesn't work.
1:04:34 Chris Williamson? No, no. People think that they can change other people, but they can't. And people think that they can't change themselves, but they can.
1:04:42 Speaker 01 It's one of my biggest pet peeves, this idea, and it's kind of come back into trend recently, that we should be shaming ourselves into change. Like, bring back public shame, bring back, and it's like, why don't we just bring back, like, respect and, you know, a sense of decency, but not shame. Shame.
1:05:01 Speaker 01 Shame doesn't create any kind of sustainable change that anyone's going to want. The more that you criticize someone, the more that you shame them, the more that your actions are going to be fueled. I mean, okay, shame at its core is this fundamental belief that you are broken or bad. So everything that you do is going to be to some way disprove that you are fundamentally broken or bad. If your actions are fueled by shame. At some point, you're going to be exhausted and you're going to run out of energy to do so because you can't outrun it. You can't disprove it. There's no way to do that. Not the actual belief of shame. You um, you're much better off trying to say that's not a person that I want to be.
1:05:43 Speaker 01 And I believe in who I am. I'm devoted to being a better person. Not because I'm fundamentally broken, but because I know what a good person I can be. And that's my commitment is to be that person. Do you see how, you see how that differs? So this idea of shaming your way into change, bringing back public shaming is like, it doesn't work. And I think that it perpetuates more negativity, more aggression. And honestly, more isolation than it does any kind of beneficial change.
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1:07:26 Speaker 01 The ones that are just kind of bad.
1:07:30 Speaker 01 Kind of bad, I'm I'm kind of taking a left on your question, but this is what came to mind first. The cycles that are most difficult to break, I find are the ones where the relationship is fine. Not totally destructive, but like, kind of bad. Because
1:07:49 Speaker 01 neither person is really all that committed to making the change in the relationship because it's just kind of bad. So then over time, the cracks grow and the cracks grow and the damage continues and it expand in your error.
1:08:04 Speaker 01 You're basically looking at an issue that could have been repaired if it had only been a little bit worse, a little bit earlier. Because you probably would have taken it more seriously. Does that make sense?
1:08:16 Chris Williamson? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:08:17 Speaker 01 That's the
1:08:18 Chris Williamson? It's a thousand tiny paper cuts.
1:08:19 Speaker 01 Yes, yes, exactly. Or there's another option that people, if anyone's listening and it's kind of like, oh, that's me. You can care, you can just start to care, you just have to intentionally see that this kind of bad thing could get worse if you don't pay attention to it.
1:08:33 Chris Williamson? You mentioned repair then, what's the gold standard for rupture and repair, in your opinion?
1:08:42 Speaker 01 Well, you have to start with curiosity, you have to make sure that you understand why the rupture happened, how the other person was feeling. Share how you were feeling, you know, whoever was whoever was kind of on the receiving end of that that damage. Has to be able to say, this is why this hurt. This is what I was feeling. This is what your actions meant to me. And then the other person has to take accountability. It's really that three step process, curiosity, accountability, and then actually changing, implementing the the change.
1:09:21 Speaker 01 And I think what often, what becomes difficult in this rupture repair kind of cycle is the fact that we often don't change it right away. It will more than likely happen again.
1:09:34 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:09:34 Speaker 01 Sooner than we'd like. And tolerating that disappointment can feel really difficult. So you rupture, you repair. I won't do that again. And then you do. And then there's the same thing. Sensitive issue comes back, comes back in your life.
1:09:53 Chris Williamson? Hang on a second. I just gave you my trust that you were going to change this thing. You didn't change this thing. It's happened again. It's never going to change.
1:10:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:01 Chris Williamson? I now can't ever trust any more repair.
1:10:04 Speaker 01 Yep. And the disappointment that you fall into with that. It's, there's a certain tolerance for disappointment that we all need. And I hate, it's such a, it's such a, it sounds like such a negative phrase. It's such a bad connotation, but there is a certain amount of disappointment that we have to tolerate if we're going to be in a relationship with another imperfect human. Now, the second, third, fourth time that that issue comes around, that it was ruptured again, and it was ruptured again. I wouldn't say that's a sign, it's not a sign that you're necessarily with the wrong person. If each time it comes around, you can stay in it with the same curiosity, with the same genuine like, okay, shit, this is why I did, okay, you're feeling this way.
1:10:48 Speaker 01 Okay, that's similar to last time, but this time there's a little more anger than there is sadness. Okay, so the reason why I screwed up this time for the fourth time, honestly, I just, it slipped my mind. And so because it just slipped my mind, this is what I'm going to do to try to keep it more top of mind. How does that sound to you? Like you're, you're going to have to keep coming back to the same, to the same issues for at least a little bit, if not for a long bit.
1:11:12 Chris Williamson? You've got this line, "Life doesn't remove what isn't for you. It just lets it exhaust you over and over and over again until you choose differently."
1:11:20 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. There's, um.
1:11:25 Speaker 01 I also, I take issue with pretty much anything that starts with someone who loves you would, or someone who loves you wouldn't. I know it sounds like a kind of a, yeah, okay, I'll explain. But the, you lose a sense of intuition when you take other people's black and white assumptions without any kind of introspection or feeling into your own sense of right or wrong. So someone who loves you would. It's like, well, someone who loves you would text you every, would text you good morning every day because they love you. And that's just how it is. It's like, okay, well, that's a little silly. There's plenty of ways to love people. I want to feel into whether or not this love
1:12:10 Speaker 01 feels right for me. Because like that, um, that line is, is highlighting. There's a sense of knowing that you have, a sense of knowing whether something is really for you or really not. So the universe doesn't remove what isn't for you, it just lets it exhaust you over and over and over and over and over again. That's going to be a felt sense of shit. This is the 700th time that I've felt this way.
1:12:37 Chris Williamson? Yep.
1:12:38 Speaker 01 There is no right, wrong, rule, boundary, like no one else is going to be able to give me the knowing that I build within myself. And that's what's going to help you get up and make the change that you need to change.
1:12:53 Chris Williamson? A lot of this is tapping into a sense of self-trust. Like, hey, my desires are legitimate. I'm allowed to want what I want. And I'm allowed to not like something that doesn't make me feel good and that I don't like. Strange how much acrobatics, Olympic level acrobatics, people are prepared to go through in an attempt to hide away from or justify or legislate.
1:13:22 Chris Williamson? I don't like that.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:25 Chris Williamson? Is it okay for me to not like that? Is it okay for me to not like that thing that I don't like?
1:13:29 Speaker 01 Hence why you need the 10 rules of if he loved you, he would. Or if he does these 10 things, he doesn't love you. It's like, where are we? Can we be so for real? Does it feel like the kind of love you want to receive? Just because he doesn't text you good morning every single day? Okay, well, he takes out the trash every time that he realizes that it's getting kind of full. You didn't ask him to do that. Maybe you don't even live together, but he notices it, right? He opens your car door. You never asked him to do that? He lays there and lets you put his cold feet under his legs at night in bed, even though he hates it. Like, there's so many ways to receive and give love. And I think that the real, the love that is for you is going to feel right to you.
1:14:14 Speaker 01 It's not going to come in a list that someone on the internet gives you or that the, you know, the universe will magically remove what's not for me. It's like, no, no, check in here.
1:14:25 Chris Williamson? It'll just exhaust you enough until you can't bear it anymore.
1:14:27 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:14:28 Chris Williamson? Yeah, there was a line very similar to yours. I saw that the universe will continue to shout louder and louder until you finally hear the lesson. And it is, it is. At least as far as I've seen, most of my friends that are smart originally eventually end up at the place that they're supposed to. The goal is to try and reduce down the dose that you need. It's like, do I have to wait 700 times? Can I have not got there at 350? Can I have not got there at 100?
1:15:00 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:15:00 Chris Williamson? Um, how did you come to think about? I don't think it's a really nice rubric. You are allowed to like the things you like. You're allowed to not like the things that you don't like and your desires and the way that you feel is legitimate. But also, we know that instinct and intuition and gut feeling can cause us to act rashly. They can cause us to follow our impulses when we should have actually taken a little bit more of a step back and tried to be a bit more equanimous. I know you're a fan of the mindfulness gap in between stimulus and response.
1:15:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:36 Chris Williamson? How do you come to think about balancing those two things? Because I think the curse of the over thinker is somebody who goes, "Okay, so it's important for me to feel how I feel and how I feel is right." Well, yeah, but there's also impulse in there and a lot of reaction and sometimes activation. Do you understand how these two things could be sort of on opposite sides of the same scales?
1:16:00 Speaker 01 I think it comes down to knowing your values.
1:16:05 Speaker 01 Majority of the decisions that we make become a lot clearer when we know what's important to us. So if kindness is important to you, what's the kinder decision here? And genuine kindness, as in, maybe I need to leave this relationship because it's unkind of me to stay in it, knowing that this other person is fully in it and I'm not. Like, it's unkind of me to stay. So then the kind decision would be to leave, right? The, when you're looking at the values that you hold true to you, you basically are left with, okay, yeah, this one's more aligned and this one's not. And if you aren't, then it's pretty much a game of self-trust because you're going to say, "I'm going to go left and I'm going to make the most of whatever left is going to bring me."
1:16:50 Speaker 01 I trust myself to do that. I've looked at the, I have another video where I say, actually, it's on overthinking. And it's basically, if things go according to plan, great, keep it moving. If they don't, great, keep it moving. But the reality is, you need to know that you are there to pick yourself up if or when things don't go according to plan. So make a well-intentioned decision, preferably one that aligns with your values, and then take it from there. But if you're...
1:17:26 Speaker 01 If you know that you, that this decision isn't going to genuinely harm someone, if that, that's pretty obvious, right? If it's gonna harm someone, you probably shouldn't do it.
1:17:37 Speaker 01 But most other decisions are typically gonna come down to, what do I genuinely want more of or less of in my life? And it's gonna feel really big and really heavy. And it's gonna feel like this catastrophic or potentially catastrophic decision. It's like, well, if you really boil it down to this one's gonna bring me more of this and this one's gonna bring you more of that, which one do you want? And then you decide.
1:18:02 Chris Williamson? Hmm. So much of it is, again,
1:18:07 Chris Williamson? self-trust. It really does come back to that. I wonder how people are able to operate functionally inside of a relationship if they don't have self-trust.
1:18:16 Speaker 01 Not well. Not well. I mean, you're looking at, you have to look at,
1:18:22 Speaker 01 you have to look
1:18:25 Speaker 01 at who you are in this, I call it like the third entity that, that you're building is the relationship. And you have to look at your side of the street. And that's really difficult to do without shame spiraling. Like being able to take a look at how you've contributed to the circumstances of your relationship that you dislike. Being able to genuinely do that is necessary to move the relationship forward in a healthy way. But it's impossible to do if you don't trust yourself to go there. If you don't trust yourself, you spiral. It's like, oh, I'm so bad and everything's so awful and you're, you also can't, you can't hear the other person in the relationship without falling into, you know, defense mechanisms and another shame spiral and more judgments and deflection.
1:19:10 Speaker 01 Right? If you, if you bring something to your girlfriend, wife, whoever, if you, you're to say, hey, I'm really bothered by this, you know, I, I really miss you, you know, you've been working a lot. I've been working a lot and I just, I want more time with you. She could hear that as, he doesn't appreciate the work that I do. He just wants me home. He doesn't even understand. He only cares about his job. Right? When in reality, you're saying, hey, I miss you. Could you, could we spend more time together? You have to be able, she would have to be able to really trust. Her ability to handle her own feelings and thus trust you in the relationship to really hear the request there. Does that make sense?
1:19:48 Chris Williamson? Yeah, it's it's interesting how many people would prefer to default to a shadow sentence or passive aggression. Oh, going out with your friends again tonight, supposed to, I miss you and I'd really like to see you and and it would be really great if we could spend some time together this week.
1:20:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:07 Chris Williamson? Like the difference in those two senses and one of them kind of encourages this ever escalating game of tit for tat of wow, last time when you did that thing, na na na na na, as opposed to, I see where you are. You're doing something just exclusively out of love, pretty much. And fuck, like, I should nurture that. I'm sorry that I haven't.
1:20:31 Speaker 01 And you you said that so nicely there. That was such a beautiful way.
1:20:36 Chris Williamson? It's a British accent.
1:20:36 Speaker 01 I'm suggesting.
1:20:38 Chris Williamson? British accent.
1:20:39 Speaker 01 But sometimes it does come off a little passive aggressive. And even in that opportu- even in that is an opportunity to actually listen in to what's being asked of you, even though the delivery isn't great. That's, no, we don't like to talk about that. We don't like to talk about having to be the bigger person in the relationship. And I'm not saying that you should be with someone who talks down to you all the time, you know, but we all have off days where we didn't regulate before we came to the table and we weren't able to say, hey, I really miss you. Could we please spend some time together?
1:21:08 Chris Williamson? Yeah.
1:21:08 Speaker 01 It comes off as, well, about time, haven't seen you all week, you know, first dinner we've had together in six days, yada yada. There's an opportunity there to lean in and think, okay, what is being asked of me? What is the request here? You know, I care about this person enough to assume that what they want.
1:21:31 Speaker 01 Isn't necessarily to my detriment, right? It's not going to hurt me. They're looking for something that I can supply. So if they're looking for more love, what could the love look like in this passive aggressive?
1:21:44 Chris Williamson? Hmm.
1:21:45 Speaker 01 Comment? That's not fun to do until you get really good at it, then it's kind of fun, but.
1:21:51 Chris Williamson? But then after a while, you you do risk getting into the late like late night journaling sessions for a very long time. Well, you explain to me again. Why it is that you decided to call me a fucking bitch? Like, just tell me, is it because of your father? Like, you did this thing. But I get it. And a lot of this is learning to temper your foot on and off the gas. But too much of that, too much of that overthinking of, well, am I? Should I be a little bit more understanding or have I? Is this really? I should take the the five step Byron Katie journaling protocol so that I can make sure that I understand. Go, dude, do you feel good?
1:22:28 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:22:29 Chris Williamson? Do you? It just comes back to, do you feel good?
1:22:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:22:33 Chris Williamson? Inside of this relationship?
1:22:34 Speaker 01 And is there? OK, let's play that situation back to passive aggressive. You're the bigger person. Awesome. You found the the request.
1:22:46 Speaker 01 There should also be a comment that's like, hey, I really love you. Clearly, you're really stressed. Can we work on this? Because like, that wasn't fun to communicate with. You know, I'm really trying to stay in it and like, I care about you. So like, what what's? What can we do to make that better? Do you not just to put up with it endlessly? But it gives the, I mean, think about that. You ever been in a really bad mood? And you bump into someone who's in a great mood? And you're like, man, I just, I got, I need more of that. I need more of that today, you know? And you and then you do, you shake some of it off and you go on about your day a little bit lighter, a little bit more upbeat. It's similar in a relationship, only kind of a hundred fold. Like, if you come to the table trying to be more emotionally mature, more secure,
1:23:29 Speaker 01 and the other person does too, you're going to have days where that doesn't perfectly align. But the fact that you're both committed to it means that you do level up.
1:23:35 Chris Williamson? Yeah. What do you think AI relationships say about people today and their need for connection?
1:23:42 Speaker 01 I don't know. What do they say?
1:23:44 Chris Williamson? Well, I mean, there's an awful lot that GPT four oh.
1:23:48 Speaker 01 Oh, you're saying our relationships with AI.
1:23:50 Chris Williamson? Yeah. So the fact that people are having relationships with AI. What do you think that says as a comment about where? People's attachments are at the moment?
1:24:02 Speaker 01 I think we search for the least amount of friction possible. And that's an issue because humans are imperfect, right? Like we're we're all fallible. And that's a problem when you can log on to a chatbot who's going to validate your every request, every desire, going to validate your every thought, your every feeling with zero expectation, zero expectation of reciprocity, anyway.
1:24:36 Speaker 01 And you get to scratch that itch. That becomes a problem when you're looking at, you know, real life. And if you're really looking for a husband, a wife, a partner, someone to even just friends, then your friends become annoying because your friends have inconvenienced you, unlike your chatbot does.
1:24:55 Speaker 01 That worries me a little bit. It does.
1:24:58 Chris Williamson? Do you see Whitney Wolf Hood, Bumble CEO, talk about how people's AIs will date other people's AIs and then sort of pass that up to the inverse sales funnel?
1:25:10 Speaker 01 I mean, I don't see, I would love to actually see what she's talking about because that just sounds insane. That sounds absolutely bonkers. You tell so much about a person by the photos that they choose on their dating app, by the way that they answer certain prompts, by the way that the opening line that you get when you first message, like, there's so much that you read into. Well, what does that even mean? Your AI avatars are going to be speaking to each other. I don't think it should be legal. Sorry, I don't. I really, I think that you're crossing into really dangerous territory when it comes to choosing romantic partners based on your AI avatars. It removes the humanness from a fundamentally human necessity.
1:25:55 Speaker 01 That's concerning to me.
1:25:57 Chris Williamson? Well, the one area that AI sucks is most is taste. Being able to be tasteful. If you ask it to tell you a joke, like, write an interesting joke about this. I'm yet to hear any that. Even partly understands how human psychology works. And that level of discernment, I think, is essentially non-existent. Now, this may just be a compute problem, right? If you get 10 times the transformers, maybe this will just come along for the ride. But something tells me that, yeah, it's fundamentally a human, a human challenge. And also, there is something about the meat, the, what's it called?
1:26:41 Chris Williamson? A meet cute story, like, how did you guys get together? No one wants to say online. No one wants to say online dating. I fucking bet even fewer people want to say, oh, my AI avatar and his AI avatar. They really got on well and we didn't think it was gonna work, but the AI avatars, they convinced us.
1:26:59 Speaker 01 Do we, do we know how it's going to work? Are you genuinely gonna be pulling up a conversation between your avatars and being like, oh, that's going well?
1:27:06 Chris Williamson? I would imagine it'll be some kind of pre-screening. So I imagine that you'll do some kind of psychometric evaluation, testing, conversate. What are the sort of things that you're into? What matters to you? Da, da, da, da, da. And then you do the same with somebody else. They must have some kind of data set of compatibility of people typically who are like this don't get on or do get on with people who are like that. And then over time, you end up filtering these out. Now, what's interesting, what's interesting is that maybe if you do get away from swiping, and apparently this is, I don't know whether this is true or not, but I heard it. Sort of the swipe economy is eating shit at the moment. They're really struggling. User numbers, usage, revenue, all of this stuff going through the floor.
1:27:51 Chris Williamson? So this is a way to try and counteract that. One thing that might be a bit of a white pill, at least a white pill lining on this. If you get around some of the biases and.
1:28:07 Chris Williamson? Erroneous judgments that people have of others. Maybe the AIs will be able to feed you partners that you would not have seen as a potential match that may go on to actually be a match for you because it's gotten rid of some of the, you know, there tends to be a zeroing in, like a gravitational pull towards certain people on dating apps. Now, that's because everybody's optimizing for the same quite small bucket of traits that are usually available through, through dating apps.
1:28:43 Chris Williamson? If you have AIs, maybe they're going to be able to find people that you wouldn't have necessarily swiped on, but you would get into a great relationship with. And I don't know, maybe, maybe that broadens the playing field a little bit more, makes it a little bit more, I'm trying, I'm scraping the barrel here. Okay.
1:29:01 Speaker 01 What if we?
1:29:04 Speaker 01 What if we, I was gonna say, what if we came up with shows, dating shows, where we put everyone on planes and sent them off to go date? And there's like a hundred of those, right? Where we send people off to go.
1:29:13 Chris Williamson? Okay, yeah, there is. I was on that.
1:29:16 Chris Williamson? Yeah. Yeah. You don't need any more of those. You do not need any more of those. But we do the AIs and the AIs talk to each other and then we watch the conversations and then we have an infinite number of dating shows.
1:29:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's part, that's such a good idea. And then we don't even need to date. We can just sit there and watch our AI avatars date on screen for us.
1:29:32 Chris Williamson? The dystopia is just, it's too ready. But yeah, I look, I, I.
1:29:37 Speaker 01 Can we just all go to coffee shops? Singles coffee shops, Thursdays from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM, especially someone like somewhere here in Austin.
1:29:46 Chris Williamson? You know, I like, I like this lectures on tap thing. Have you seen this?
1:29:49 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:29:50 Chris Williamson? So it's kind of in New York. I think it might be coming to Austin as well. It's professors and, and academics and, and other people that do interesting research, giving presentations in what looks like bars and maybe sort of small event spaces. And people get to go and it's kind of like going back to school. But like, there was one about black holes and there's another about human evolution. And then there's another about geology and whatever.
1:30:20 Speaker 01 I love it.
1:30:22 Chris Williamson? Probably not great if you're trying to listen to a lecture to have someone going like, hey, hey. Be single.
1:30:29 Chris Williamson? Watch your Instagram.
1:30:30 Speaker 01 Just put it in.
1:30:31 Chris Williamson? Dude, shut the fuck up. I'm learning about.
1:30:32 Speaker 01 Name tag?
1:30:32 Chris Williamson? I'm learning about how gravity works. Yeah, learning about how gravity works.
1:30:35 Speaker 01 But you come in an hour early, two hours early. All the singles come in at a specific date, like they're just. I, I, I wish that we could have. I wish that we could encourage people to get outside and actually speak to each other more. And I know this, everyone says it and I, I don't have an answer for it. I don't know how to solve the issue. But there's a magic that happens just by being in someone's presence. And then your laundry list of to, of, of wants and non-negotiables and all of the things, maybe not the non-negotiables, but your, all of your wants is seems so.
1:31:09 Chris Williamson? Well, your non-negotiables become way more negotiable.
1:31:11 Speaker 01 That's right. If they're true non-negotiables, they'll stay non-negotiable. But your list tends to, to dissipate quite quickly when you're just in the presence of someone that you enjoy.
1:31:21 Chris Williamson? I had an idea for a dating app, which is all that you're allowed to put up is a one minute selfie video. It's just video, because what you're trying to do, basically, as far as I can see, most online dating is just you speed running through this sort of weird, sterile, autistic, back and forth conversation, where you try not to be too keen, but also try to make the needs known without seeming too needy, to get to the point where you can see and speak to the other person. Problem being, I've not experienced this, not a woman. Reliably, I've been told that the DMs of most women on the internet are a fucking cesspool. And if you open up a dating app to just have video,
1:32:05 Chris Williamson? I worry whether that would be a potential.
1:32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, you'd need some AI on there to filter.
1:32:12 Chris Williamson? Okay, so people would be dressing, they'd be dressing their dick pics up with a moustache. They'd be sort of.
1:32:16 Speaker 01 Literally.
1:32:16 Chris Williamson? Popping this on the top and they'd be like, hello.
1:32:22 Chris Williamson? My name's Christopher. I'd love, how lovely to meet you.
1:32:27 Chris Williamson? He's like slowly getting like lower over time.
1:32:31 Chris Williamson? Sorry, let me put some blood back in.
1:32:33 Speaker 01 It's like you're speaking from experience.
1:32:34 Chris Williamson? No.
1:32:35 Speaker 01 You're always this creative.
1:32:36 Chris Williamson? Look, I've never done that before. No, that's not, that's not how it works.
1:32:40 Speaker 01 Good.
1:32:40 Chris Williamson? Let's bring this one home. You're awesome. I love your work. I think you're great. I love the fact that you're trying to help people understand themselves better. Why shouldn't everyone go to check out what you're doing?
1:32:48 Speaker 01 At Quinn and Walter on all the things, all the places. I'm doing a live tour. Super excited. 12 live workshops. Dates to be announced, but it's in the coming months. Got to keep that one a little, a little quiet.
1:33:00 Chris Williamson? I know. I appreciate you. Until next time.
1:33:03 Speaker 01 Thanks, Chris.
1:33:04 Chris Williamson? Bye. All right. See you next time, everyone.
1:33:06 Speaker 01 Yes.
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