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Episode 198: Earning attraction, IQ discrepancy, Market limiting cues in dating profiles
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I think that you're absolutely right when you say that happiness comes from esteem earned in the right way from the right people that matter it's really beautiful to me how that works but on the other hand I occasionally meet women who impressed me a great deal just strictly based on their DNA like their above-average looks brains and personality or as you might expect even just well above-average looks so my question is how can attraction be such a profound emotional experience when so much of it is purely on the basis of DNA and nothing that has been done to earn it and in fact people are actually more impressed with someone when it appears that they are not trying is how we feel about ourselves based on what we earn but how we feel about others mostly just a matter of DNA you know really deep thinking excellent thinking this year this is a great great listener question now there's a lot of questions here so we'll try to unpeel this from a few different directions the first thing is is that how we feel about ourselves is not a singular psychic event we actually feel about ourselves from a variety of perspectives it's a multi-dimensional process so there isn't there isn't a single a single thing so for example we've talked here on this podcast about a quite a major difference between the concept of self esteem and self confidence so self self-esteem is that essentially a moral system where the internal audience looks at what you are doing and judges whether or not you're giving an excellent and honest effort whether you're behaving morally appropriately and whether or not you are doing things well according to a a standard of behavior that would be it would be inside the heads of villagers that would be watching you so that's that's a different feeling than the feeling of self-confidence so the feeling of self-confidence is there is the result of perceived self-efficacy so receive self-efficacy judgments are based upon largely your personal experience and also the experience of relevant others and also the feedback that you have received from other people about what they think you're capable of doing so this is all sort of well figured out by Albert bandura in the 1960s and 70s so perceived self-efficacy is a is a cognitive it's a computation about your perceived probability of success with respect to a given endeavor your confidence then is derived from that so your confidence is a feeling that is the analog to the perceived self-efficacy now there's a lot of confusion as you can imagine in the world world about these two concepts they're they're the concept of self esteem is seen as the same thing as self-confidence that's simply because people aren't used to distinguishing these two very different processes yeah that's just the way it is I mean they're it's complicated enough I don't I don't think I don't know that I've met a psychologist that knows the difference so if they say well have your kid you know if your kid gets good feedback and gets a trophy that's good for their self-esteem if they win it's good for their self-esteem that's really good for them no it's not good for their self-esteem it has absolutely nothing to do with their self-esteem winning it something may increase a person's self-confidence but it does not do anything to impact their self-esteem those are different phenomena now so how we feel about ourselves is going to be we can't sum it up in a single process we have to distinguish these types of processes and our self confidence in so many things in life has to do it the feedback that we receive from other people so the if we're very sexually attractive for example and we can stroll into a bar or party or dance and we can immediately get very bright eyed attention from highly attractive people that we would be interested in we have a lot of self-confidence in that domain we may not have any self confidence in other domains but quite frankly who the hell cares the truth is is that the point I hope you pay very close attention to that little gem of information let's face it the truth of the matter is the whole point to the organism was reproducing DNA and so reproductively relevant processes whether you're gay or straight or whatever you're your perceived probability of success with respect to sexualized interactions with highly attractive others that that's going to be about the most important quote confidence related process that there is on earth for humans or animals for that matter so as a result we rewind our way back to an interesting part of the question which is that you know that although I talk about happiness which is also not a singular experience it's a whole set of experiences that are positive mid States but I talk about happiness the core of happiness being esteem that's earned in the right way from the people that matter and the most important person that matters is you so the self-esteem that you earn is the most important foundation of your your life's you know experience now second to that is going to be what the feedback that you get from other people and so if you get a lot of positive feedback from other people that's going to have a nice impact a nice positive impact on your life experience on your happiness the you might say you didn't earn it but your DNA earned it so you're so in by the same token see that DNA is inherently valuable and the things that people observe about you the variances that are important your sexual attractiveness your intelligence your personality characteristics your connections your wealth all of these things are your athleticism okay all of these things are variances ie they are items that vary from person to person and they're they're related to either immediate outcomes for real live situations in in another individuals life like their intelligence you can help them do something or you might trick them because you're smarter than they are so your intelligence might be dangerous okay so the but you're you bring characteristics to the table that may either be positive or negative with respect to the other individuals life situation in addition something like your attractiveness you might say well geez you know it doesn't really make any difference whether a person's a 3 a 5 or 9 or 10 they all have the same sexual equipment you could still have sex with those individuals what's the difference and the answer is is that you we are only all each endowed with attraction sensitivity mechanisms beauty detection mechanisms of various kinds not just visual but also sound touch touch smell everything and so as a result we've got beauty detection mechanisms that are designed to analyze variances and look for indicators that some some person one person's DNA is superior to another person's DNA ie pure mutate mutations etc so as a result yes a great deal of how you feel about other people has nothing to do with anything they earn it just simply has to do with the genes if they have that is accurate okay and so the same thing is true on the other side of the equation the vast majority of what people feel about you doesn't have anything to do with anything that you earn it has to do with the genes that you carry and so people are trading both in romantic processes and in friendships and actually even in trade situations they're basically trading DNA characteristics is what it is I mean in trade that's less that's less true than anything so we don't simply have a sort of a test score that says well you're really smart you're really conscientious so we're just going to pay you a bunch more money no you have to do something with the smarts and with the conscientiousness it's actually useful for another person in order to get a big check so but when it comes to looks you don't have to do anything just comb your hair and take a shower and put on some form-fitting clothes and that the other individuals on the other side can see where to rank you and you don't earn it okay so so how we feel about ourselves is going to be determined primarily by two processes number one of those processes is going to be the self-esteem that is a stream of information that comes through the nervous system as a feedback device for telling you whether or not you're doing things well well and morally and honestly okay the other is your self-confidence is going to also be a feedback system that's going to flow through the system and it's not always going to be high and it's not always going to be low it's going to depend upon the competitive constraints in the situation but we're decided by nature to be trying to reach as high as we can and most competitive domains so we're bound to face situations where we or where our confidence is going to be limited and it's at those places where life is going to be the most exciting when we're trying to achieve things that are the upper reaches of our abilities now this is where achievement comes into this story and so we we don't just look at people and listen to how smart they are etc we also want to know about their life histories and what they've accomplished what they've overcome etc because that tells us a bunch of things about them and the things that it tells about them are genetic so it tells us about their openness to tell us about how agreeable they are tell us about how conscientious they are tell us about how emotionally stable and how intelligent they are so in other words their life story and what they've achieved is is itself the achievements themselves are in fact indicators and we can't separate that out we can't just say well look at Joe over there looks like he's got it all okay um well he can't have it all because he may look like Brad Pitt and he may sound like Brad Pitt but if he hasn't actually gone to the trouble to develop the skill the Brad Pitt has and hasn't gone through the wars trying to get those parts etc and and actually been hours and hours and hours on the set in order to bring a part home and done the homework necessary to do it then he's not Brad Pitt and so our feeling about him is going to be different than if he were okay so that's because the demonstration of achievement is in fact demonstrations of the central six characteristics that are reside inside the bloonan so the same thing is true with with any achievement it could be your physique so your physique is somewhat variable some degree variable depend upon the efforts that you put in so once again this winds up being not that just the physique itself but also what the physique stands for so ah so whether it's money or your ability to play the guitar or whether or not it's your physique or whether it's the degrees or awards that you've had the things that you have created all of these things are part and parcel of the achievements that that essentially give rise to other those assessments of who it is that we actually quote really are down in our DNA and there are also demonstrations that we can see from ourselves from inside to see what is that we've accomplished so big complicated question and hopefully I've given a perspective on this that the answer is you know just complicated it up that we can't give a quick one here that how you feel about yourself is a complex array of judgments and complex array of experiences and how we feel about others is all is also the same at the root though we're going to find the genetic code and sensitivities to variances in the genetic code wind up being a major force in the determinants of both of those things fascinating dr. Lisle would you say that earning it is nothing other than simply displaying your abilities in as a crying to display it and as accurate way as possible see earning it yet well earning it is attempting to optimize and yes that is accurate is possible I wouldn't quite say that I would say as optimally as possible okay so the earning it has to do with the fact that we've invested efforts in in a given display or project and the results of that will be able to will help others determine the the floor of our possible upside in other words if we've achieved X literally that in figuratively in the world if we've achieved it then everybody knows that's we can do at least that okay and that winds up being an important assessment tool oftentimes when other people are trying to analyze our gene quality so that in my head that implies that most people are not really looking at you know our day to day actions unless they directly impact them that my accurate my thinking there I don't know who on earth is looking at our day-to-day actions except ourselves and not even aware of them okay no matter about them it's my hyper conscientious in that case brain that's totally an ape see and you filter that you know you've got so many hyper conscientious people convinced that other people are judging them all the time and judging their day-to-day process yeah they're not judging your day-to-day process they're judging your DNA like like Doug is talking about imagine you're the XP at name but they're not they know nobody's paying attention to your your internal process in your own achievement and your your daily experience no blissfully unaware unless unless you're on the internet and having to deal with the trolls well those are yeah right okay very much okay they're just looking for something to complain about yeah all right very good but doctor how could you have a comment about this particular question oh no I don't think that that was a extremely comprehensive answer I don't think there's anything not to like in it make multiple answers like oh I'm sorry because I don't know something I don't usually spin out for quite such a lengthy material really tour okay underpinnings of it all right well our next question mm is I think dr. dr. dr. hockey you take this one so go all right how does IQ affect relationships specifically a male having a greater IQ than his female partner at what point would this cause problems in the relationship and how ha yeah so this is it could it could cause problems in a couple of different ways it's possible that a higher IQ and male would contribute to disqualifying him in a pair bond but it's not the usual way that that would go so qualification whether it's for casual medium romantic qualification for casual mating or for repair bond is a a three-part process so you're qualifying the the other person based on looks brains and personality so IQ is in the male as the female is looking to that male and deciding if he qualifies on the on the brains dimension his IQ is really a proxy for his provisional capacity she is looking at his intelligence and his problem-solving capacity in that if ed is correlated with his IQ so it's not the IQ per se it's really what what it represents and when it's linked to and it's linked to the primary qualities that are most valuable to her in a pair bond so his his ability to provide and protect and have superior decision-making like if he if he doesn't have better decision-making and a better ability to solve problems more effectively that means he can't keep her safer and better provision and she could keep herself so like what's the point of him what's the point of him sticking around after he's contributed his DNA he's really just a burden on the system at that point obviously he contributes some DNA he might be able to contribute some child care sharing sharing of resource but really if his if his IQ ie his capacity to offer those that superior decision-making and problem-solving to her is not there then there's the that's dangerous to the CB for her so obviously if he's very very attractive his DNA is worth it she might keep him around for that and they're there of course individual differences and what merits this qualification so some some women are much pickier about this than others some some of them are willing to scale down a little bit or accept somebody who's you know equivalent and some women need someone who is really able to show some superior decision-making in this regard so that's all just to say that I don't think higher IQ and dr. Lisle might disagree with me here but higher IQ and the male is generally not a problem at all for the female so it's not a problem for him either because all things being equal he's less concerned about that than he is about physical attractiveness in her he's willing to scale considerably down on IQ generally down down to whatever his minimum minimum threshold would be so this is all about thresholds and and where that is and he he is not likely to go beyond whatever that is and he's not going to know what it is until he gets into the relationship so he's got some some minimum where he needs to be able to have a conversation with a female and and so there's a range there but that's almost certainly below below his own and it's not likely a problem for her either to have him have a higher IQ unless he's an obnoxious man's planner who's super condescending and kind of shitty all the time but that's not the ideas fault that's that's a bad personality so that's that's a different deal but it's a higher IQ and a female can be a legitimate problem and this is a problem ripped from the headlines of my own life this is something that he he potentially could find very threatening unless he's the kind of you know super progressive open-minded feminist male who listens to the beat you're James podcast of course but it's really a problem because he's a she if he had significantly lower IQ than she does she is not going to be able to she's going to have a very hard time sustaining admiration for him over time if she's a great deal more intelligent than he is she might admire his characters might admire his humor his biceps whatever but by on since we're we're in the business of grand sweeping heteronormative generalizations on this podcast this is having having a higher IQ than at a male partner for email is a real blow to a potential pair bond it's really a problem because if she can't sustain those feelings of admiration for his superior provisional capacity then she can't sustain the romantic attraction generally speaking so he's just not going to qualify long term not that I can know anything about this topic well you're reminding me of a movie I saw a while ago with Will Smith called hitch where oh yeah character is the dating coach and his whole job is to put these men in these positions where they can demonstrate their heroic character and then therefore swoon sweep the the woman off their feet yeah so yeah I love love mine that he has he's he says something in that movie like no woman leaved her house not willing to be swept off her feet today or something like that she's like this this great insight into the female mind well one of the scenes in there is a really attractive woman I was being you know watched by this guy and what he does is he sets it up so that her dog is about to get killed somehow and the guy swoops in and says the dog and so all the rain you know the sparks fly but the rain is like all Hollywood but riffle proposition fishing idea check out that man yeah yeah don't put any dogs at risk doc I can't stomach hey listen get you get desperate out here sometimes up gotta take ideas from everywhere the yellow I run into very much like shit turn it's turning on her admiration ship because he is providing something that she can't do for herself essentially so if you know that's that really that that gap between her abilities and his abilities is his usefulness to the relationship that's his that that is what and creates that that whole dynamic of admiration that is absolutely central to her attraction to him so without that the whole thing is dead in the water now does he constantly have to display things that are admirable like does he constantly have to save the dog every year who he is in a sense or zone one or two shots think what's that he does if the whole thing is a bluff mmm-hmm if you if it's a bluff yeah then he he did that's a good point yeah that's that is the subject of many a romantic comedy actually yeah yeah the whole thing is a bluff and he's really just a mild-mannered sort of loser and he you know you know he gets himself ego trapped and he Bluffs her into thinking that he's some great hero and then he has to continually escalate and continually impress her so he he doesn't necessarily have to do grand gestures to engender her admiration over time to be a successful pair bond but he does have to you know in an ongoing a very meaningful way be securing her admiration so he has to do that through his IQ and through his personality and to some extent through his attractiveness and that that is you know what is maintaining her connection to that pair bond over time but yet not generally in the form of the grand gestures or the stunts unless there's a lot of bluffing and deception involved mm-hmm no all right we're going to take one more question and we'll get to the phone to the caller all right Selman all right next question I am a recently single thirty year old male and I've been hitting the online dating apps once again with my more finely tuned evolutionary lens thanks to your podcast I've noticed something interesting at least to me it seems as though most of us while we want to put our best foot forward in order to increase our chances of success we still can't help but leak potentially marketing limit market limiting cues being heterosexual I haven't been able to view the male side of the market on the swipey apps but for example on the female side I find it interesting just how often females can't help but leak possible testosterone cues by way of demonstrating interest in what would be considered very masculine activities it really seems that every female interested in these masculine activities demonstrates this on their profile obviously there is nothing wrong with this but leaking those interests on their profile is likely to be a market limiting move especially in a major city is it simply that we are programmed to be honest so that we don't end up wasting our time with people wouldn't find these market limiting interests appealing or is just a simple energy conservation cost-benefit analysis I'd also be interested to know if you think that leaking marketing market limiting cues is more of a female behavior than the male behavior since females are essentially trying to narrow their search efforts to establish a pair bond whereas males are working hard just to not get ruled out by as many females as possible yeah I can jump in on this one too but interesting entry points and he is on to something with some of these things if we were operating in a paraben centric online dating world but we're not we're operating animal mating centric to hitting world particularly on the swipe yet so I I think a couple of things going on here first of all I think that I think the females well-well definitely people do leak some liabilities in online dating and I think Doug has some some reference to some study that looked at this where the there's actually it's been shown that people will put up like one sort of ugly photo to kind of leak like what they really look like they have a bunch of flattering photos but then they sort of accidentally on purpose reveal you know what you're really getting so there is some degree of leaking that does go on and I do think in in a pair of on market that is more of a female strategy for sure I remember I remember when I when I first started on online dating and I was I was amazed because I would go look at other women's profiles to see what what kind of people were doing and I was amazed and how many women have some phrase along the lines of I'm equally at home and high heels and tennis shoes like it's a it's an almost ubiquitous sort of message that women are trying to send because I think they are I think in the in the dating market such that it is they to they're trying to they're trying to advertise all of their potential attributes they're trying to cast as wide a net as possible if there's any testosterone in their system go ahead and give it a little bit of a bullet point because you don't you don't want to leave anything on the table and I think that so they really are believing they're not seeing it as a leak it is actually part of the ad and I think that that has been incentivized as the dating apps have progressed into more and more casual mating markets so so it's become actually part of the casual mating bluff so this is this is what we call the the mirrored deception process of the human mating dance so so the there's two sides to the deception and they're both those both the opposite of the sort of archetypal idea so the in essence men are bluffing that they are more pair-bond oriented than they actually are and women are bluffing that they're just totally cool with casual sex no strings attached you don't need to worry about provisioning me I'm just here for the casual mating when they're really actually looking for pair bonds so there's there's all this descent all of this mutual deception going on and a lot of self-deception as part of that so women are are often going into online dating scenarios completely legitimately convinced that they're just looking to have a good time but then they sort of get into relationship or they go out with a guy and they sleep with them and oxytocin is a hell of a drug repeat exposure is a hell of a drug and they get all they get all attached but for as far as casting the net goes they're just bluffing casual mating all the way and so that that looks like these testosterone cues that that would that would be how those manifests those things like you know at home and the tennis shoes partner-in-crime up for anything let's have adventures like all of these kinds of things that women will say in in their profile all of those sort of testosterone eyes cues are saying hey I'm up for anything I'm no trouble it's all easy with me I'm you know I'm a really good deal so it's an environment of plenty but the the male nines and tens that are really playing this game are are going to become more and more attune to those casual mating cues which are testosterone cues and so the women are going to become more and more incentivized to to use those as they pick up on that market distortion and they are trying to be attractive to those nines and tens because they don't understand how the game works no well because women don't understand they don't understand repeat exposure they don't and how became work so there there are no women out there on the sweepy apps as he calls them which is really cute there are no women who are swiping yes on men who were 25% less attractive than they are they are not doing that but that is what they should be doing if they actually were looking for an over rewarded pair bonder but they're not doing that they're swiping yes on the hotties who have their pick of the litter and are looking for slutty cues and so they're waiting yes on hoppin and I'd give you any twos but what the market demands you don't have to go down 25 percentile but 10 percent I wouldn't hurt you're looking 15 if you're looking to have a super super over rewarded you know you're loyal right doctor yeah yeah yeah yes that's what I like receiving mm-hmm now this question is for both both doctors now would you say that over over a long period of time say say maybe not long but maybe several years of a casual mating career for a male they may get they may not have enough practice I guess trying to shoot high to get a pair bond but on the other hand and so the question is in that accurate and the second question the follow-up is for females do they get miscalibrated and then so they're they're essentially unable to get their bond because they just it just doesn't qualify it doesn't hit any circuit so there's that have been so used to being fired up by the by the hotties yeah I can answer for the women that suggest and girls definitely get misguided because they they are they're constantly getting dates with the hotties because the hotties are more than happy to sleep down so they have no interest in para bonding but they're bluffing para blots bonding all the way so they'll go out they'll go out on several dates with the hotties they'll sleep with them they get all the all the para bond cues so they think they qualify they and usually the hotties are given them some sob story about their you know intimacy issues from their childhoods why they can't can't be in a pair bond with them so every single one of these relationships that doesn't work out seems like its own little snowflake and it didn't work out for very specific reasons so it doesn't get plugged into the calibration machine when and they're not realizing the nature of the game so yeah they're like well I'm not I'm not swiping yes on this guy because last week I went out with somebody 10 20 % hotter than that he was super into me he just wasn't ready for a relationship right now so they're they're desperately confused and their same same thing if they're going out to the bars with their girlfriends and they're having plenty of the hot guys hitting on them and willing to sleep with them they're not understanding that it's a different qualification process for pair-bond so for the men that I'll leave that answer to the man's planner of the podcast that just beautiful stuff there yeah I'm not sure what the man part of the question was Nathan what say it again what you're yeah or you're trying to ask yeah my my hypothesis is that males who have been engaging in mainly casual mating strategy you know as they as they I guess I guess as that you know as they transform to wanting more pair-bond are they are they limited as far as I have they miscalibrated themselves because they're they haven't shot high enough oh god no mm mm okay that they're they're plenty naturally narcissistic as is every human being on earth so no they don't they're not going to underline [Music] world trust me know so that no such problem this fascinating did the daylight between the males and the females after casual meeting notes yeah yeah yeah that I think the I think the online dating world is as Jenn is described is a is a beautiful firestorm for having women swirling around confuse in this thing and so it's uh it's interesting to note when we look at this that that if you look at if you look at this from a very broad sociological perspective had you known what was coming or what the bit the potentials were in the year you know 1997 when this starts to be born you you would have thought that this is going to be an unbelievable bounty for solving the problems of human separateness you would have felt like oh my god we're going to have a marketplace you know where we're people of all all places up and down the continuum for attractiveness can now find people within three miles of them that they would have never met that they have a great deal in common and so the it looked like it was going to be you know spectacular and certainly there have been victories but mostly what we've wound up with is an amazing is an amazing storm of failure that is that this is why you've got 90 million single people in the United States despite the fact that match.com exists and match.com and its derivatives exist it's like that's incredible and the reason you know there's many reasons for this that we'll explore you know in the year to come but but one of the reasons is the the false feedback mechanisms that this that this keeps keeps women women specifically addicted to addicted to the the tees of the fancy casual mating strategy player and it keeps them from from winding up executing or having executed on them the primary love strategy which is repeat exposure effect for male who isn't as fancy and gets to demonstrate his inner beauty okay so those those two processes are ruled out I mean or those two processes you know online creates a swirling fiasco which is really the world that you see yeah yeah there's a there's a new actually a few years ago there was a kind of the other side of this thing for instead of like in a swipe the apps it's a place I think it's called events and adventures it's like just a bunch of single people that come and they do you something something together some art activities I thought man that's pretty cool that's that's a lot a lot more accurate as far as mm-hmm as far as other for the fab swipe apps okay so alright so our caller Oh our caller just I don't know if he got disconnected or he hung up but AJ if you are still on give us a call back and we'll take your call but in the meantime we're going to take our next question our final question for gotting sure all right I am a single woman in my 30s and very recently the friend who I have been closest to the last five years said she wanted to down-regulate our friendship very close to not so close more or less the reason is that she got very hurt by me recently and now she says she doesn't really feel safe with me and is too scared to get that hurt again for her I didn't realize until she told me months later how much it hurt her that I pulled away a bit so I'm very confused it feels weird to me to have a friendship where I know she doesn't trust me and doesn't feel safe can the solution for that really be just not to keep in touch that often we are both highly conscientious and we've both struggled in life and had a lot of pain for many years we both had upbringings that make us hurt easily I think in many ways our similar backgrounds are usually something beneficial to us both as we can understand each other better in many ways we have been a big part of each other's lives in past years and helped each other a lot this is the first time she told me I did something to hurt her and it feels really surreal to me and she loses faith in me so easily maybe there's nothing to do and I just have to accept that for whatever reason but still I can't help but feel the reason for us not staying close would be very sad it's only people who you really care about who can really hurt you from my perspective and I have to think that there's another way than for her to pull away to protect ourselves do you have any suggestions for what I could do Oh before you answer the question AJ is back on could we take AJ and then we'll do AJ you could sell gets a question for another 50 perfect right thanks so much for calling back and for your patience staying on hold for so long welcome to show yeah must have hit it at the perfect time and I call back I'm like I don't know what hap hey AJ one ready hey it's uh midnight where I'm at how are you guys doing yeah good a little earlier here thanks for staying up with us you bet oh good alright awesome looking happy when I yeah yeah I had a question for Lyle but feel free everyone to chime in um I'm currently living at my mom's house and I'm actually moving out in one month but I'm finding it very very difficult to control my anger with who I'm living with and it's kind of really starting to affect my everyday life um I live with my mom my sister and her boyfriend and I don't know if it's some storm sort of PTSD because now even if things aren't happening just interacting with my sister and her boyfriend it's just uh it's really getting to me I don't know if you can cut it I'd really do want to go from there well that's how how old are you AJ 27 27 years old how about your sister and her boyfriend how old are they 20 we they're both about 2142 both 21 years old okay so they're quite a bit younger than you okay yeah the UH now let's just just for on an entertainment the we know that anger is a signal to tell other people that they have not treated us fairly okay so tell me some of the things that they have done that have felt like you to you that things have not been fair sure oh so the way the house is set up um two bedroom house or that's new bedroom apartment and my mom and sister each had their own room and I was in the living room and um they would just do random things like come home 3:00 in the morning start doing their laundry and start doing cooking talking but whispering consider whispering but you know turning lights on and putting blenders on taking showers and um is very frustrating because didn't matter if I talked to them they'd acknowledge it but then they go back to doing it a day or a week or month later and then it was affecting my health because I was a recovering her mom adrenal burnout and the gentleman said clinical I mean a diagnosis and um so the rest was very important and me my sister before this boyfriend were always very good with communication but it's more um seems like she takes what said and brings it to him and then the tenants decided what's going to happen from there like almost like she does never a thought without consulting him and then he can just kind of manipulate the way he wants it that's how it comes off to me at least right so essentially she is she fighting with him and because she's considering that that his good will is critical to her best interests and it outweighs yours okay good so you're seeing a demonstration of that and that that's a little person to watch that happen the so I can understand that and I can also understand your frustration in the situation that you're in you've signaled to them that that I see what can't we go to sleep at a reasonable hour around here but what keeps them up so late do you have any idea did a work late or what's the deal at first it was when they started dating there's very strange baby out of so my sister my sister was always very considerate close to coming to my family and then all of a sudden she wouldn't return and this was until she was 20 years old she wouldn't return Mo's we didn't it was going on we didn't know she was being abused she was just like now it's not a good time and she was over here with his house and then after a few months two months of that eventually they started coming back here and by then he lost his job so they weren't really on any kind of schedule mm-hmm so you just overcame and you're not understanding that do you know what they're doing at 2:00 a.m. that they're coming home at 3:00 oh okay okay so we're actually a little bit mystified as to what what's happening there they haven't have we tried to have for example just you know this is just the way that we would try to solve things like this not just talking to you but I'm talking to other people that could have similar circumstances have we try to have a little meeting about some ground rules like it looks you know can we have a reasonable curfew where everybody's home by midnight now if we had that kind of discussion um so we had this we've had discussions one-on-one with her and then we've had a meeting with the both of them um I wouldn't say two things to that um yeah when we had the meeting that was still when it was going on and it was pretty much like whoa it was pretty much me my mom and them too and we were having it when we were talking it was me and the boyfriend he was basically talking for her and right when I would bring up things to address it was pretty much that they would put this spin on it that well that's not what we want even if it's fair or not fair it's not fair to us cuz that's not what we want so it wasn't like a reasonable discussion was like well that doesn't work for us right got it okay so let's now battle a pretender oh we don't have the answer to more you new here I just want to say one other thing oh that yes a few months ago since they both stopped working they are on a schedule now but I want to carry over a bill lingering feeling that even if they aren't doing as much now just even the site or these small interactions that I have or still I don't know if it's a PTSD thing it's just like very frustrating I get closed down and angry I can't write deal with them yeah I mean I think that that it's not PTSD so it's not even close okay it is being sensitized to the situation and essentially I think if we were to try to read inside of your nervous system inside the stone-age Bren it would basically be telling these people move four tenths down okay I don't want you anywhere near me this basically what you're trying to tell and so the obviously this guy is pretty disagreeable he's got the upper hand in the relationship with your sister and so your sister who would normally be very reasonable to deal with where this conflicts of interest now now she winds up being an extra vote in a quasi Democratic situation where they've got where is your mother and how did she weigh in on any of these conflicts my mom is very very agreeable and she wants everyone to get along and be happy as a result we're all here around each other and unhappy right up exactly so this one is that being essentially conflicts of interest between you and this boyfriend is not only having sex with your sister which is never a pleasant thing to think about but it's also the case that he's disagreeable ah yes you know essentially poor manners as as my mother used to say bad manners and bad odor dad uh and and really in a stunning situation you guys are in an unnatural situation where where you're cramped okay in a space and this is not what would have happened in the Stone Age because in the stone age there is no crimp and if there's people that you don't that you have conflicts of interests with over things like this you just move keep feet away and it's not a problem so I think that you know this is what can I do to help you nothing your this is the what Jen and I have a a technique we call it the maximization of misery that you've got about thirty days to go and you've got you've got X amount of you know you've got some X amount of interactions with this guy left on the chart it's not very many so maybe you've only got so many nights and of those nights you know ten of them might not have any significance so we've got sort of twenty year 'table interactions to go so like a prisoner with a calendar on the wall just every time you have when check it off in your mind and then one of them you just took care of five percent of the remaining problem okay so we do have a chat array - calendar that I checked go power hop great yeah as are we doing from the doll check it off like you check like a check it off and you're going to get your parole here pretty quick and then we're going to shake the dust off our feet and and get a nice big distance between you and this kid who is a pain in the ass okay now I'm curious as to whether when I could because when I am in another space whether or not someone else's house I'm completely feel freed up this is I'm here that tension is there even if they're not even here oh yeah is there hot is your way I should is there a way to go about it afterwards to make sure that the relationship isn't completely broken between Lane my sister because I feel more anger towards her des that I do hit sure well the truth is just because in effect she quote betrayed you and so you're signaling that to her and you're basically saying listen you need to pay attention because you could be making a mistake okay so you you should have seen to it that I was treated more fairly under these circumstances and you didn't do it and so you're you're risking my negative feelings towards you and possibly coalition break that's what you're trying to do and the truth the matter is that this is all being driven by short-term irritation and it's going to fade okay so well with any luck and statistical averages she won't be in this relationship in 24 months so you don't have to sweat it too much if she is and this by some miracle winds up being your brother-in-law then all we do in this life is it's going to mean that we're going to probably keep a what I call the disagreeable distance between the two of you and over time he may become considerably less annoying than he is remember we we compounded the annoyance by having too many adults in too small a space okay and they invaded your space and they weren't they're just young people and they weren't sufficiently they weren't sufficiently respectful of the problem and the delicacy involved in you know being the person without a bedroom having to live in a living room so you know the truth is is that hey you got to live in a living room your mom put it you're agreeable mother put a roof over your head you're agreeable mother by virtue of being a sweet agreeable person couldn't lay down the law with this pimply-faced 21 year old pain in the ass and so we got what we got okay check off the box get your parole and don't sweat
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