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Episode 153: Falling out of love, Cultural shifts, Faced with food temptations
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haha yeah alright what are we doing well today we are going to be asking some questions about falling out of love different ideas about cultural shifts and what to do when you're faced with food temptations but before we get to those questions it's interesting I was looking at there's a website it's a forum for the internet called reddit and we're all people taught you can post all kinds of different things so you can read what other people post and there's a sub forum in this in this place that people just ask fun questions of each other and there's some interesting questions well I'm reading this forum and it's called what's the most effective psychological trick that you use on other people and as I'm reading this I was reading this maybe a couple maybe earlier yesterday or so yesterday evening and then sure enough I get an email from one of our listeners saying oh my god you have to go over some of these in the website on the show today so I thought it was hilarious so dr. Lila I thought you would appreciate these but they're they're very curious little tricks that people use of course in your TED talk called the pleasure trap you you joke around say that you'll even use some tricks from psychology the hammer the message home about the pleasure trap and of course that's an interesting interesting use of psychology let me read a few of these then you can kind of explain what these psychological tricks are and then one user one looks very Mia one user here comments to the forum post or comments well when somebody's shy who's speaking I just look at them and nod your head and Courage's them to keep on talking now the person says put in your headphones but don't don't play the music that way you can hear what they're saying about you good poker player okay but the other ones have set your expectations low and then blow people's minds with your mediocrity and okay ego trapped there and then the one I like the most actually the most positive comment but I those you know there's thousands of comments here the one I saw the most I like to avoid workplace drama and be well-liked compliment people behind their backs yes actually a great strategy the that that's that's one of the great political strategies ever is to to essentially compliment people behind their backs because then they find out about it and it is worth a lot more than complimenting them to their face and so that of course that would make sense because I mean they're attempting to run a CB on their relationship with you and if they find out that you are complimenting them and they don't even know that it's happening then it means that you're your high regard for them must be authentic status being a zero-sum game if you're complimenting them it is elevating them in hierarchy possibly at the cost to yourself and so the as a result of that that makes you worth quite a bit more to them as their champion and so that's one of the that is one of the slickest things that you can ever do yeah great trick I thought it was fascinating because I remember in one of our earlier episodes called how to repair a strained relationship you explained this process where where the person this has no choice they actually it's in their best interest to tell the world that you have good judgment that you have excellent judgment when you tell people how great they are and that's right it's just a nice death a virtuous cycle that that occurs yeah yeah that's actually attempting to trip a virtuous cycle is what we're trying to do very good well fantastic I want to thank the listener I know sometimes I don't reply to emails but I read each and one every one of them I really appreciate you guys sending me the emails and the questions that we put here on the show and this one I we were on the same page so dr. Lyle will look right to the questions here the first forum has to do with falling out of love dear dr. Lyle what do I do when I find myself completely not into my husband anymore we've been married for 25 years we've had many rough circumstances that we've helped one another through we have three children that are all doing well finances are stable but I simply can't stand to be around him he runs a business out of our home and I find myself planning my days to be gone as much as I can simply because he's there it's driving me crazy because I don't feel like I have a home to be in I work and make enough money to sustain myself so why don't I feel comfortable in my own home I find myself wishing I had a place to go just to relax and be by myself I'm not attracted to anyone else I'm simply wanting more and more time alone from my husband's perspective he's incredible he plans fun dates with me always tells me how beautiful I am he buys me flowers sends me kind texts throughout the day he works really hard at his job and wants all of his resources to be spent on me he shows his care for me constantly and I feel bad that I have no spark in me he even eats all the healthy food that I prepare and he even enjoys it which is really sad it's is there something in my genes saying that since I no longer am at an age to have children that my mind simply is just done with the marriage it'd be quite convenient for us just just get along and be happy why do I feel this way why do I want so much distance away from someone who cares so much for me what can I do to feel more attracted to my husband who's so kind to me I've read the how I found freedom in an unfree world or most of it and it's great ins helping me learn helped me with learning more about myself and others every day but I'm interested in what else I can do about my disinterest and what I can do to awaken in my genes to have a desire for a relationship when all I want is to build on well with that such a such a detailed question that in a question of this magnitude we want to I want to give very responsible feedback so the so there would be many questions that I would ask this person that we obviously can't ask on the air so let me I can take that person through the questions if they're listening and also this might be instructive for other people the first thing is that I would want to know about the history of the relationship specifically so I've heard it's the 25 years and in 25 years there are you know a long history of vicissitudes they did have taken place the and she's referred to those the however a thing that I'm often very interested in is I'm interested in the the inherent chemistry in the relationship actually from the jump and I want to know when it went south so that went south a year ago and it was in good shape a year prior 18 months ago then that's an entirely different story then if this has been a duty of this person who was was then to a guy somewhat you know 24 years ago 26 years ago got herself married to a really good person that was crazy about her and then endured a sexual relationship for for however long wound up having children and then you know we become behind high conscientious high stability and really know no objections otherwise interpersonally about the personality dynamics just literally kind of wasn't into this relationship really for the last you know 24 years or 25 years so I would want to know that was the situation or whether or not we had 15 good years 10 good years 20 good years 18 good years etc and the reason why I would want to know this is I want to know if there is something that happened if there is some specific characteristic or some situation that that has transpired that has resulted and them going from a pair of people who were into each other to a pair of people where one person is no longer into it and so I guess this would be really important now she semi alludes to the following that she's speculating maybe she's at an age now where she's just not not into this and that is quite possible so I believe it's 88% of postmenopausal women have no sexual interest in their husbands so this uh this is uh obviously you know that puts us what seven out of eight or whatever the heck that is the UH I think that's about right so that wouldn't be a shock the however with anybody specific we want to know I mean but there's a lot of reasons why that would be true by the way it wouldn't necessarily be just some biological inevitability that takes place because you know after fifty years old remember 50 percent of relationships wind up in a divorce within fifteen years so that tells you that the nature of the species is that this romantic chemistry and enjoyment of that process winds up normally disappearing that that is situation normal for the species so you can you can imagine that if fifty percent actually go to the trouble of getting divorce a whole heck of a lot more of next fifty percent don't want to be where they are but they're pinned in by obligations finances it's in you and conscientiousness and enough stability and worry about kids and blah blah okay all kinds of things embarrassment for God's sakes the loneliness don't want to be by themselves so there's there's a whole slew of things that we keep the other 50% together given and indicate that in other words and excellent romance is definitely on a a less than fifty percent state of affairs big margin by the end of fifteen years so so that we are can we aren't going to pin that tail on that donkey and call that biology I'm not we're going to call it psychology evolutionary psychology we're not going to say oh you just get worn out your past childbearing age and don't care no we already see this same phenomenon and people that are younger so however to check all the bases I would make sure the person had like a thyroid check and a full CBC panel and make sure that they're not tired or chronically fatigued or have you know super low you know a sex hormone chemistry blah blah okay we certainly want to make sure that it doesn't look there like there's a biological cause a health-related cause and we would want to see to it that this was a stable phenomenon in other words that this is this has been going on a long time as opposed to a short type it's a short time obviously we may be able to isolate some factor in the relationship or the person's biology that is responsible so if this person wrote to me and said we had it great for 23 years the last two years just dropped off well that's a very different state of affairs than someone who says actually it's been lousy for 20 years for me as a completely different conversation so therefore any advice that I'm giving now has to be s be painted against the background of a lot of questions and a lot of details about the nature of this relationship you know in the nature of the history now yeah so a relationship that is not very good is not a relationship that is not very good not very good not very good they're all different they all have different different histories and those histories are extremely important when it comes to responsible prescription for what the next moves are that you would make the I'm going to assume for the sake of for the sake of simplicity that this is not a recent phenomenon I'm going to assume that this has been going on for 10 years I'm going to assume that there has been a she's not saying that this is sudden she's just mystified and feels a little guilty about it feels bad about it but it's interesting that she says can't stand I think that's very interesting the you know you don't just can't stand the person you can't stand specific features about the person and the nature of the interactions that you have with them so I'm not sure what the specific features are but the reaction of can't stand would be extremely important if she had been in this relationship until fairly recently and now she can't stand up that would indicate that something there has been some tipping point of some some specific process that we would want to investigate in a lot more detail to see to it that she's not sitting on a bunch of anger and feeding about some conflict of interest that they have and that that could be a feature that's blocking her sexual interest and her attraction now from the sound of things uh sounds like he acts like a man did it's crazy that his wife and also it sounds like a man after 25 years it goes to an awful lot of effort which sounds to me like he feels like he's over rewarded so one has to wonder if that's been the dynamic of this relationship since forever and that and now finally this person may be seeing the her looking at her life and watching the hours of her existence and seeing that she's just not very happy where she's at and if there's nothing grievously wrong with this with this person that lives in her house and that she has great connection to in terms of her over life process and her children etc and that they are definitely good friends but there's just no you know the relationship to her is just not a romantic relationship in this to him and therefore they have you know a conflict of interest and so we're going to assume that that's what the situation is and the the right decision is to essentially make the smallest possible modifications first so the way we attack this problem is never make a big decision when a small decision will do so she is fantasizing about having her own space so sounds like they both work financially stable so that now what we would do is we would take some of that space so I would have this person take you know a very small idea would be to I probably take a weekend off nice extended weekend off three four days and get yourself an Airbnb now or a hotel and you know we're going to spend $400 on getting some time off so $400 experiment and husbands all upset about it no problem okay this is we don't need to be brutal with people but we need to be recently honest and he clearly is getting all kinds of signals that she's not interested these things aren't happening in a vacuum she's not fooling him with what it is that she feels she's guarding the eggs she's seeing to it that that all processes romantic and physical are being shut down as peacefully and elegantly as she can figure out how to do it so the as a result again I'm assuming that there isn't some brooding anger about some other issue that's causing her feelings I'm assuming that she's just not into it and this is this is not a tragedy this is just simply a nervous system that says hey you know I don't know where I'm at but you don't qualify and I don't know if anybody ever would qualify again and it doesn't really matter the truth of the matter is is that given that state of affairs essentially I'm kind of tired of guarding the eggs and I don't want to pretend and give you false feedback that you qualify okay so that's not where we are doesn't matter that we're married that's cuddly irrelevant it doesn't come with any obligation here that's just a hope and so the way we would talk to this person would be essentially gently but with some honesty as much honesty and as much dignity as we can get and just say hey listen I need a little space so I wanted I'm going to take some time off I'm going to take a weekend off and I'm not going to be here Friday night Saturday night no I'm not going to be here Sunday night and I will go to work from my our B&B on Monday morning and I'll be back Monday evening so you know your weekend is yours to do and and I won't I won't be seeing you and I won't be calling you no no no check-in ok you can we check in by text a little bit hey but I'll just let you know I'm fine that's it take some time off and and then if it turns out that this this create a you know we'll find out what it creates I'm not I don't even want to anticipate sounds like this might be a heck of a guy he might have a spilling cert oh well it's not going to it's not going to hurt anything and so if he gets all upset and obsessive and difficult and angry oh well now we're starting to see some reasons why there might be you know serious problems in the relationship but maybe not probably not it sounds like this is a case of for whatever reasons this dis man no longer qualifies for this woman and when a relationship is wrong for one person it's wrong for ball okay there's no such thing as a relationship that's right for one person wrong for the other person no such animal okay so if it's wrong for one it's wrong for both he does not deserve to spend the rest of his life being rejected in a marriage that he would work so hard and be such an outstanding partner for somebody he deserves the opportunity to go out there and try to find someone who would be eager and absolutely delighted to have this kind of attention in this kind of feedback so we're not doing anybody any favors by staying other than some children and they have a little rattling and there's in their minds that oh my god you know our parents are not sexually faithful and happy with each other and everything is not hunky-dory that's not good for me I don't like that feeling I want everybody to be stable I want all those resources to be lined up right behind me in my interest that's what folks forget the kids none of their business it's not in anybody's business so you're the only person's businesses is yours so you have no Shinto anybody about this not your husband not your kids not your church your mother nobody okay she only got a hundred thousand hours left don't waste them so I would run the smallest reasonable experiment first if you feel an enormous sense of relief and a luxurious feeling that well on Friday evening as you as you have the time to yourself and then you look at a weekend where you don't have anything or anybody to answer to okay and then that that comes to a close and you go back and it turns out it's a little strain so it is we do it again the next weekend okay and then we do it the next weekend after that and the next week after that we may take a whole week we let the evidence of the experiments tell us how to play this thing and for a very modest amount of money we can get an awful lot of data and and we let the data essentially tell us whether or not you know what I'd be happy happier not living under this roof and if that's true then the next experiment is you know what I'm going to I'm going to do a intermediate term rental some corporate apartment from 60 days and I'm going to do that I'm not going to rent anything let the rent furniture I don't have to go into huge expenses it's going to cost a little bit more so if some you know in more intermediate term and you take a longer hiatus that's how you do things and if it turns out wow that's so good and then you go back and after after two days back you're like man I can't wait to be on my own again no problem then next time you move into your own apartment and you go for longer and assign yourself a six-month lease so you do this in successive approximations and you let the evidence from your own nervous system tell you whether you're on the right track but the principle of the solution is that we run the smallest possible experiments first we rule out any kind of metal medical health biological issues we make sure that we we hear that this is a stable phenomenon so it turns out that there's not some brooding you know resentment issues that have recently come in and interrupted this and one of the things we do not buy is we do not buy the status quo of current thinking in psychology and marital dynamics and I'll set it aside okay if we talk to these people nobody'd ever get a divorce that we have therapists would go home at night and have themselves a scotch and say oh thank God I still have a perfect record okay perfect record of misery that's what they have the what we want to do instead is we want to free people from relationships that these days have a tremendous amount of food they have like vice grips on these things they have financial they have familial they have social consequences there's true religious consequences all kinds of social pressure keeping relationships together that should not be together and so this this has the earmarks of relationship that shouldn't be together however with the caveats that I mentioned of which there was several I would never rush to judgment on this and I would and I would take this this person through a set of questions and then through a set of conservative procedures to discover how to put her in a position to enjoy her life more fabulous now dr. loafer for some of the listeners who are listening and they may be in this exact situation where day but they already know where they are in this relationship what are some things that they can say to people who give them pushback when they start saying well I'm going to go away for the weekend and now the husband or the mother-in-law or the kids say well where you going for a weekend why why are you doing this just like I don't have the answers I don't have the answers I just need to go mmm tit done we don't have that we don't have to give answers to people and so that that's it we just you know go into a cocoon we don't need to talk to these people now you need to talk to me no no you don't now you don't they have to earn the right to be talked to so they better ask those questions in a way that's super easy for you they better be there for you we're not there to reduce their anxiety to keep up some status quotes of family structure everybody could just pound sand down a rat hole it's disgusting okay it is disgusting that people put pressure on other individuals the this is hard enough as it is to try to find your own happiness whether I have to calculate all all this social stress no your job is to to figure out what it is that you think you may want to do she's got she's got an you know an internal voice essentially imagery excited her head it's whispering whispering whispering whispering calendar take a right turn take a right turn take a right turn take a right turn keeps telling her okay the only reason she's not is all these considerations from from other nervous systems and they fall out and all the pressure and everything else under the Sun she's got a thought through pretty well she can afford to take a right turn she can afford to take an experiment and all the pushback can come from you know the pastor the therapist the mother-in-law her mother the kid her pushy daughter whoever does say you know what I don't have any answers for you you know you're just going to have to wait I'll tell you later in my own good time that's how we get with him I love it yeah dr. Lyle more people have to listen to you speak about these things but I love it all right what do we got all right our next question is about a cultural shift now talked about this before where you say well things that were the way they were and how they are different now those questions on the same topic so dr. Lyle you often say that many things today aren't that much different from the past however I've heard many veteran teachers complain that when they first got into teaching decades ago parents fact the teachers but now these teachers say that the parents question the teachers even more their complaint is that their students as behaviors worse because of the greater willingness and society to question authority for instance they tell me that years ago if a child got in trouble at school there was almost without exception more trouble for that child waiting for them at home today if a parent is called about a child acting out the parent is more likely to blame the teacher I've heard this complaint from teachers working at schools at both low and high socio-economic levels so it doesn't seem to be limited to teachers working in challenging school districts though I recognize that what I'm hearing is anecdotal at best I also wonder if school administrators are feeling more compelled to tolerate misbehavior given that in some states there are laws today prohibiting them from issuing suspensions and expulsions and given that money for schools is often tied directly to student attendance dr. Lau do you think that there's been a cultural shift are people in general in the u.s. more likely to question authority today or other things likely at play I would certainly say that that some of this type of thing is happening and that's I would I'm not sure we would call this cultural shift I would just say it's a it's an ongoing cultural evolution as things change a little bit you sort of chip away and they sort of evolved in in wasted or sometimes unpredictable but I think usually when I talk about the things are pretty similar to the past I'm usually talking about that the human nature and its problems are pretty similar to the way they were in the Stone Age okay but if we start talking about you know and also I certainly say that things are quite a bit similar to how they've been my whole life things have been quite quite similar across that that you know 60 years beyond now are there changes certainly overall life is much better than it did it has been in the past so are there a few perturbations to come along and are there trade-off that we have to endure when one thing gets better sometimes there's something other feature about it gets worse so we now have to put up with some more entitled little brats but in this way we don't have defenseless children being beaten by school masters in a way that they might have in the past so more recently the obviously they probably weren't being beaten by school masters in 1990 and there probably is though a continued cultural evolution towards essentially litigiousness against people in authority and any abusiveness etc so this is a CD that you know there there can be a pendulum that swings a little bit too far and it probably has in some instances without a doubt probably has but no no great harm done generally when this happens the I'm always rolling my eyes at when anybody is talking about the good old days in in almost any dimension the let's just review here for second folks let's go what are we 1919 so I think when did women get the vote like 1922 I can't remember what it was so we go back a hundred years and women can't vote lynchings are probably still going on and black men that did have about you know I probably had a very difficult time getting a ballot in their hands being gay was an unmistakeable whore women were all but unable to work as professionals people were dirt or ignorant as hell life is difficult few options there's no birth control no tampons no Kotex you know etcetera the you know what are we talking about so the of course life is massively better than it was 100 years ago so now we're going to say okay well I wasn't talking about hundred years ago okay well let's look that let's go to 50 years ago that's what 1969 so we you know put put people on the moon that's cool but in the Vietnam War you have a draft that you don't have now still a scan would be gay civil rights is just getting subtraction more Luther can get shot women are still barely professionals I mean where exactly is this nirvana so wasn't a hundred years ago and it wasn't fifty years ago you know was it 25 years ago I don't think so okay so what we're going to find is that you know essentially life is getting better and better and better and better at ship at a time a better economy than ever before better environment than ever before we are freer wealthier etc everything and much more accepting of individual differences across all kinds of spectrums whether they are religious racial cultural you know other belief systems etc so the no I don't I don't look at anything like this is is any kind of you know major problem I look at the the megatrend team the life under free societies and it all looks fabulous the that doesn't mean that there aren't that there aren't some pendulums that may temporary swing too far in one direction and I think maybe this is one of those cases but I'm sure it's not so far it's not like the inmates are running the asylum and children don't have any respect for teachers Authority in a classroom it's just it's some shit heads are probably getting away with things as a small minority and they're getting with their with their shit head genes inside the shithead child also in a shit head parents that are going to the administration and defending their their little monsters and intimidating you know so is some of that going on with more latitude than before undoubtedly but I don't I can't imagine that it's some quote cultural shift of any magnitude I think it's an annoying annoying thing that teachers have to put up with now but along with that came from greater strict scrutiny and greater vulnerability on the part of school officials that that may have in some ways been intimidating children in the past would when the should not so this trade and uh but I'm not looking for evidence of cultural unwinding and and the pillars of civilization crumbling because we got some some of this crap going on in schools I don't think so I think that you would consider this a minor perturbation of possibly an overcorrection of a pendulum swinging a little bit too far that things will swing back find themselves in reasonable within reasonable oscillations on either side of appropriate equilibrium and life will continue to get better in domain after domain after domain as human beings get smarter and smarter about how to solve the problems that human beings face now dr. Lau do you think it has anything to do with that if you're too agreeable as a parent and your child misbehaves like any normal child can sometimes do that the administrators will now you know walk you down the path where they now have to take psychiatric medications when in fact they are not indicated no I wouldn't know about that the I do know that I've certainly heard that God forbid you have a kid that it's a little energetic and a little impulsive that there can be a lot of pressure to put kids on ADHD medications so I think that's that's a part part of something that's circular it circulating around in this mix but I don't I don't know too much about these details and I don't want to speak in broad generalities about you know some cultural phenomenon when I don't have any data hmm Fastback all right fantastic okay so our next question is about what to do when faced in the face of temptation which I'm curious about so dr. vile in the whole food plant-based world you've said that we should work harder on our environments than we do on ourselves but regardless of how hard we might work to clean up our environments particularly a home environment it seems that inevitably we might find ourselves in a situation where we are confronted with something like maybe peanut butter and chocolate to be precise that is tempting us is there anything at all that we can do in that moment of temptation or at that point is it too late well it turns out there's a trick if you actually pinch your nose and then you turn around three times and say take me home and click your heels together yeah yeah you can not you can not eat it that's great I remember watching Beatle Jess and and maybe like we all come up with something where people say Doug Lyall Doug Lyall Doug Liman you appear like on the side of their shoulder or or chef AJ or dr. Goldhamer chef AIDS is much better yeah that's prettier that's prettier than this oh my goodness yeah sorry folks I mean you're you're going to let unless you're one of these hyper conscientious freaks to the world like Allen or AJ you're you're probably going to stumble and when you stumble let's not catastrophize over it you're you're good health can handle stumbles let's just make sure that it's not an avalanche for goodness sakes so that's why we do a good job controlling our environment so we have good healthy food in our environment and we don't have a bunch of junk food our environment because it'll the reason it's in your environment is so that you can absorb it like an amoeba
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