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Episode 109: What can our behavior signal to a romantic partner
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all right good evening everybody it's Nate G here along with dr. Lyle dr. Lyle how're you doing today good good how you doing doing pretty good all right so we've got a couple of questions today and we're just going to fly right through them as best as we can dear dr. Lyle why wouldn't a man want to spend the money to keep his home up when he's able to afford it my husband likes to spend his money on expensive luxuries like sports cars and exotic trips but he doesn't want to update our home in ways that are long overdue this is an ongoing source of frustration for me and friction between us please help me understand why and what I can do about this okay all right well let's think let's back up and once again we're going to look at the fact that all behavior is a result of cost-benefit analysis and so we also know that what luxuries expensive luxuries are Fitness indicators for people to display so a male that's displaying a Fitness indicator peacocks feather Fitness indicators like up there is advertising for mates and so the fact that this guy is married and that he is advertised it looks like he's advertising for mates particularly it would look like he's advertising for outside mates outside of the relationship he's not advertising to the female within the relationship otherwise he would be absolutely responsive to fixing up the house that they're in that she wants fixed up and he doesn't want to doesn't want to spend the money on so that's what you're looking at here is you're looking at evidence for that that the priority there is to signal to outside other females for casual Medic strategy so what can you do about this well there would be a number a number of things to do about it but the first thing to do is to understand it clearly and then to sort of put your foot down and make sure that ah you know I don't know that's that's a bit is a bit of a complicated clinical issue and I don't want to give a snappy what do you call it what is that ladies named dr. Elora answer I don't want to give it dr. Laura answer to a problem that's actually more complicated than this and there's going to be personalities and circumstances involved here that are going to be subtle they would determine how it is that I would manage this clinically but certainly the DES fundamental issue here that's the root of this problem is that the wife is feeling like she is not that highly valued and the husband is signaling that and what the husband needs to know is that he is signaling that and that the signal is being heard loud and clear and that such a signal is very risky to that relationship and and you know it's essentially cancerous so that the problem needs to be solved at the level of that signalling so this is what the husband is actually feeling and wanting in what he wants to signal then that's one thing if he's actually a sort of asleep at the switch and is inaccurately or or essentially mistakenly making his investments the way that he is making them then he needs to be he needs to be educated that this is deeply insulting and these are in fact defection cues that he is sending by by these decisions and so he needs to be educated along these lines so that he can correct the situation if it's something that he would be motivated to correct so my question is I guess from the other perspective is the female trying to make the house display fancy so that she can display for other mates or is this a way to get you know the village you know to get village support for her children and her genes yeah she's right she's not really displaying for mates this is these are if anything it's uh she's looking to display general gene quality for general problems it could be displaying or to display to the village that her children come of hygiene quality it doesn't hurt for her to display to other potential mates that she was able to secure resources you know a great many resources etc and so that too to bolt males and females she is signaling this so somebody thought very very highly of me ok is sort of what that signal is and so that that certainly adds to her cachet but in general a female is is not is not doing this in order to secure casual mating because males are not really interested in being provisioned by females and so that that isn't really what she's about she's displaying and proudly that she it's essentially also a signal that she is extremely important to her mate and it can also be a signal to the village that she has won this mate and that it's essentially exclusive ok that all the fancy resources are coming here that's where they are so that's that's kind of some of the things that are transpiring there so yeah it's a definitely that what the male is up to is clear and what the female is up to with with the beautiful home strategy is not the same thing it is actually a different it's a put it this way let's let's put the shoe on the other foot for just a second so people want to see this a little bit clearly you can do an internal role reversal imagine the situation where the female has no interest in decorating the home at all ok doesn't want to put a picture up of her and her mate in the home basically never doctor once directed decorated even though the husband wants her to this was a scene in the novel The Fountainhead where Peter Keating was married to Dominique and dominique is his the beautiful haywire female of ran heroine of that book she is not interested in essentially really being his wife you know she's got a twisted up Brandi in psychology and so but but it's signaled through that very process and so that that is a big-time rejecting the program of the female towards the male with the female is adorning her nest and wanting and accepting the resources from the male and showing off those resources that is not her showing off to other mates it's showing off to the whole village that she's got this made secure she's she's a very high value to that mate and look at how fancy our stuff is therefore we have good genes it's a it's a much more general sales job okay alright well next question do not yell Oh mister there's no oh also hold on I want also spend the role reversal on the other side suppose a male is investing tremendously in the home being nice and really doesn't give a damn about his car and he's driving around in a Dodge you know Caravan with little stickers of the little you know stick figures of him and his wife and his four children there what is that signaling that is singling pair-bond psychology all the way mm-hmm okay so this is so once again we're seeing that as we play our way through these role reversals the question that this woman is asking is very clear she is reading the cues right and it's disturbing her a great deal as she says this is a source of ongoing friction and this is the reason why Wow okay alright dear dr. Lisle I'm 50 years old my husband of 10 years wanted to be a swinger and asked me to give it a try we've done it for several years now and I feel just about ready to quit it was never really my thing but he loves it and doesn't want to stop how do we resolve this huh well in general the my way of looking at conflicts of interest of this nature is that people should never be he essentially pushed into doing things that they don't want to do and so that it doesn't make any sense to me that that would be a legitimate way to to do anything relationships should be in principle aiming at what we're going to call the intersection between two personalities so let's suppose that you know we've all met people in this lifetime that were somehow naturally very very connected to each other practically breathed the same air and had practically the same thoughts and would never want to be apart so Paul McCartney and his wife first wife Linda apparently didn't spend any nights not together for 25 years that they were together or some such thing you know that was the love of this guy's life and the there are people that are extremely intertwined in that way and good for them they've found somebody that fits that well there are other people that can have good relationships that are very much worthwhile but the amount of overlap into who those two people are might be considerably less so you might think of this as Venn diagrams where two people are overlapped ninety percent and another two people are overlapped thirty five percent that might be two people that that have a love relationship but it's it's just not at the same level of interpersonal closeness and intensity it's its own thing it's a it's a different it's like a different dining experience okay just a different kind of a restaurant now the however what we don't want to do is take two people who would be say normally 50% overlaps and then essentially say well we're going to make it 70 okay we're going to force it because if we do that means that somebody is doing some major conceding and in this case we're talking about doing things that are making one party uncomfortable that is really not what it is that they want to do I want to you know we could use different examples here that would highlight this in a way that might be useful let's suppose one partner likes to smoke pot but the other one doesn't can you imagine a situation where where the partner that smoking says no I want you to smoke I'm going to be uncomfortable if you don't it's like wow that's a little odd okay similarly if the person who does not want to smoke I it might say that the person that is smoking listen I don't like to be around you when you're high that's totally legitimate it's not the same human being when they're highest when they're not high okay so it's like the the the person that's like liking to get high might say well gee you know it's just part of who I am it's like you know it's not the part of you that I want to be intersected with so I'm fine interacting with you when you're not under the influence but when you're under the influence I don't like it that's a legitimate set of boundaries as to the degree of intersection between those two people so this situation is you know this is there's a reason why women are choosy and with their sexuality and that's because the eggs are the most valuable thing on earth human eggs in other words this is the this female sexuality is you know is what you see all the tall buildings in the world and all the fancy crap and Rolls Royces and jaguars and you know what do you think that's about okay this is this is a competition for getting resources partly in response to the competition that males need to go through in order to compete for resources to compete for females so the notion that some female is going to be talked into outside of her marital relationship to to be doing something giving that away or having experiences that she want to have she's designed to guard the eggs that's how she's built and the women are going to be quite different in their proclivities about when those defenses come down and when when they do and when they don't come down but they're usually pretty defensive and and usually even in situations where they may be very open to experience they're still very choosy and so the the swinging lifestyle is a lifestyle that is fraught with conflicts of interests between husband and wife and the notion of one person you know wanting to push another person into it is is going to be is going to be problematic so my attitude is that you again once again personalities individual differences individual sets of circumstances etc but in general that the notion would be we're not doing something on any level where one person doesn't want to do it if they do it they might be interested in doing it once a year twice a year once every five years or once in a lifetime but if they don't want to be doing this often then it is absurd and out of line for for one person to be pushing another person doesn't make any sense and it's uh it's cancerous alright let's go on alright do dr. Lao what's up with Valentine's Day and of course this is one week after the male Valentine's Day which is March 14th in and to two months are one month after I'm sorry one week after male Valentine's Day and one month after I guess normal Valentine's Day so dear doctor lights up with net with a Valentine's Day why do guys always feel guilty about having to quote deliver the goods like flowers Julie dinner on this day to the beloved and their beloved expects the goods to be delivered is there some evolutionary psychology basis for this I sure hope not me think about this just think about this I've never given this any thought it it makes sense to me you know people develop times when when they did there are sort of cultural signals of or times when we're going to be giving so Christmas for example this is a this is a time when we display by what is that we give how much we care about other people that's what it is and so this is a so that that makes sense it's a signal that we're sending to how valuable the other person is and we also have one that's highly individualized ie just birthdays things like that anniversaries etc the so Valentine's Day is one such as one such signal and you know I don't know who put this together as a marketing scheme but it doesn't matter I mean it's it's with us and so therefore it it becomes a signal and so so of course there's pressure on males because they're competing with in principle with other males who who are everybody essentially this is a signal of provisioning of male to female is what it is and so you're going to be normally in a situation as you could expect that the very nature of of wealth is that it's limited and that there's not enough of it what animals are trying to do is they're attempting to gain resources including humans and you're trying to make really careful decisions about the expenditure of those resources are our fellow with the with the house that needed work but with the Ferrari or whatever was in the driveway is sort of you trying to figure out the best use of where to put his resources relative to his interest in casual mating strategy versus his wife the in this case of Valentine's Day the guy is thinking through the expenditure on this day for this mate relative to all the other things on his agenda including getting new brakes for her car you know what have been getting paying for school tuition or paying for his own you know he needs a gold tooth whatever the deal is he's got a he's got a lot of time and energy problems in his life and now he gets to to to compete with the expectations that that female has about settle resources coming her way so no wonder this stressful if a guy happens to have a lot of resources over duh and this is and feel like he's over awarded this is a really exciting time for him to land a bunch of resources on her and say listen you know I may be I may be getting over rewarded here genetically but look what I can do for you oh it's in that case that guy's not feeling guilty or anything else you can't he's you know looking forward to Valentine's Day being a day when he might be able to just cement her cement or in a little bit on and it could be also just a relationship where is all very healthy and good and he has sufficient resources and not a problematic conflicts of interest with resource allocation issues that it's it's all grand and he enjoys the entire process however in great many cases the guys already getting access to the female sexuality the the relationship is whatever it is and the truth is this is a night that's going to you know that supposed to nail him for another five or six hundred dollars but he's going to try to get out of it with three hundred haha no this is why this is why this is the stressful situation that it is alright alright dear dr. Lyle why is it that a woman can tell a man she's not happy for can tell a man that she's not happy for years and then when she finally leaves him he's stunned and says he thought everything was fine I've seen this dynamic play out again and again why do men think everything is fine when their wives are clearly signaling that it's not you know I'm not I mean this is a this is a person who's reporting something that that you know it's an interesting observation from the standpoint of reporting the dynamics of that that particular couple that in theory that this person's talking about but the truth is is that I don't believe there's any scientific evidence at all that indicates that that this is one directional that this is a process that the female will goes through versus a process that the male goes through so it's just you know I think that if you're a if you're a female that goes through this process it's much more salient to you and so you're like look I raised the issue ie I I bitched and moaned and bitched and moaned and bitched and moaned for ten years I made it as clear as I possibly could and then then when I leave you you're surprised like what the heck what's why weren't you listening the but the same thing happens the other direction men may not be be interesting they may not be as a verbal but they send the signals nevertheless okay so the signals are being sent and I don't think that anybody is tone-deaf I think that people don't believe necessarily the threats and usually those threats are usually the noises that people make if they're not squawking loud and threatening loudly then most of the time people are you know people are running the CB on the other side so in this in this notion in this hypothetical case the guy doesn't really believe that she has that she's got a better option than the one that didn't the one she's in and so he's looking at the situation and he's basically thinking to himself I think it's fine I don't think I have to invest anymore in this relationship I'll just do exactly what I'm doing now and I'm in an equilibrium okay in other words I'm getting what I'm and this is what I'm paying and that's good enough and so when the female squawks that it's not a good enough deal it's like well how many times she squawk 117 times in 107 you know in in a thousand weeks no problem it's like that meant that 116 times I was right there wasn't any big threat at the end of it so so the fact that someone may eventually become upset and eventually follow through on on a threat that's been leveled for years and then somebody surprised on the other end of course they would be surprised because it had most of the time it doesn't happen when you see this dynamic so anyway that that's what I'm saying so I don't the the underlying commentary or question that's being made here is why are the men tone-deaf and my answer is there no more tone-deaf than the women I'll be brutal here okay this is this isn't exactly a PC podcast so let's just point something out bed R I have I have heard this like oh if he mentions my weight that's grounds for divorce the truth of the matter is is that men may make an awful lot of noises about women's weight very quietly okay sometimes not so quietly and what's going on inside those men's heads with that they're expressing is that they're frustrated with the women's weight now I'm not blaming women there's 50 you know integrated reasons why this is a fight you know I wrote a book about it but the point is is that are we going to say that women are so surprised you know women are so shocked when the guy actually leaves after 15 years of bitching about this in his own way hey I see this commonly and what I will often see is right before he goes as he makes his final signals that he's really means business suddenly she starts dropping ten or fifteen pounds it's like really how come you weren't listening the last 15 years now I know it's difficult but this is the is the mirror image of this question and I'm just pointing this out because this is a this is a what we're seeing that within marriage relationships and this is the broader answer to the question within marriage relationships what's going to happen is is that the whole cultural societal evolution of marriage makes a very high barrier to exit romantic relationships artificially high barrier to exit all behind the defense of wealth and they're being directed towards offsprings you know the genetics what we've discussed this at other times on the on the podcast so because marriage puts a artificially high barrier to exit behind financial implications that were never there in the stone age of this magnitude the as a result of that people relaxed essentially you don't have competitors you've basically signed an agreement that's given you a monopoly over that person's existence and as a result everybody gets comfortable okay so when people get comfortable that doesn't mean they're happy when your partner starts getting comfortable and essentially starts putting out less benefit relative to the costs that they bring you may not be happy about it and this is what I call the chiseling chip in other words if I can get those same goods for X price I think I can get it for X price minus 1% and the partner on the receiving end of that who just got chiseled says hmm I just got 99 percent of what I was getting before you know what I'm going to give 98 percent back because I'll probably still get the 98 and through this process it's very similar to the process of what used to take place with hard money coins that you would see a gold coin and you have a bunch of chips you know somebody take a little chunk out of it out of the edge of a gold coin it's still worth you know $20 but it's 20s because it's stamped $20 on it but a little bit gold is missing okay this is what I call the chiseling chip and so within marital relationships you will see the chiseling chip and then people will start you know something but we'll start squawking about it and some people may squawk consistently but a lot of times the the partner basically feels like hey I'm not going to do anything about this because I've got a big barrier to exit and you've got a big barrier to exit we're not going anywhere and so so this is what they think and then of course on the rare occasions when somebody walks the other party can be very surprised because they thought essentially they were they were protected by this financial societal expectation matrix and they and they weren't sometimes you're not Wow all right social oh we got time for one more got time for one more okay dude dr. Lyle why does it feel so devastating when your spouse cheats on you even if it's just a casual hookup or one-night stand my husband cheated on me six months ago and I can't seem to get over it how do we move past this well I think the reason why that's going to stick with you is because there's a threat there in other words we could we could save this two ways we could say this like I will eat cheat on me six months ago was just sort of one time like okay well now hold everything let's think about this he just cheated on you one time let's think of these circumstances under which this took place this guy had to think about it had to plan it you know had to go to effort probably was on the market for you know some period of time flirting with a number of possible prospects that he took seriously until one actually all matched up and everything or you know all the little gears clicked relative to the to the other female psychology what it is that she seemed to be wanting out of the relationship what what any financial implications were what the expectations were at blah blah other words wait a second how many prospects did he have to look at it how many prospects did he up to get you know 90% of the way through the door before he finally got one that he got all the way through the door it would be naive to think that this was a one-time thing that meant nothing and just sort of happened to fall into his lap and oh well not bloody likely okay so if it's six months ago your brain is now and this got found out not who knows how but the point is is that that that female mind has to be on red alert essentially thinking what are we looking at here okay so not sure what to make of it this is clearly should be read as a significant threat now we don't we don't know what it all means and we don't know that but this isn't this isn't altima Lee a solid and a pair bomb but it's worth continuing on etc etc and there's individual differences in in females about this that are huge other words this is just natural differences in female psychology about this I knew a woman that got cheated on once and 25 years later she was still ruminating about it daily and giving the guy the third degree constantly 25 years later okay sky really stepped in it like if you're gonna if you're gonna drink with this I should've just left this poor guy but psychological dated yes I'm sad that yeah I'm here to tell you okay now there's on the other hand there's other people who are you know much more forgiving and have you know short memories and etc etcetera so the individual differences are here huge it isn't for anybody to say what is the right way to view this thing the wrong way to view it however would be to view it as nothing that shouldn't be thought about and shouldn't be ruminated about of course it should be and so it isn't a matter that that you have some modern-day ridiculous you know Victorian view of human sexuality and you shouldn't be upset about this no you should be concerned about it because that it is a that is a significant possibility that is a signal that that you are you know that you could in some trouble if not this year then next year and so as a you know as a woman in our in a marriage you know the marriages these days is not about the romance and sex and excitement and protection and some provisioning that took place in the Stone Age marriage they have houses mortgages children etc they have there's much greater implications for your life than there would have been ten thousand years ago and as a result the tentacles that that a mate that looks like they may be straying you know these these have deeper reaches and therefore their cause for they would be cause for anxiety anyway but they're caused for legitimately greater anxiety today in some in some respects than ever before not talked about things that that's that's pushing it then then in our natural history yeah if here in 1940 in Appalachia that's a that's a bigger problem
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