Home 🏠 🔎 Search


Bad Transcripts
for the
Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Episode 211: Neuroticism and IQ, Creating habits, Saving a post affair marriage
an auto-generated transcript


To get a shareable link to a certain place in the audio,
hover your mouse over the relevent text,
right click, and "copy link address"
(mobile: long press & copy link address)
 


how does neuroticism interact with IQ we've all been in situations where a reasonable point of view is met by a barrage of irritable insults just for caught in context in one of the in this group one of our members recently posted about how she went to a therapist and just asked some ideas about evolutionary psychology and was met with a barrage of you know lecturing and telling her you know that this was not a real science and whatnot so so that said our people whose emotions play such a major role able to reason in an abstract and measured way or does high neuroticism knock off the equivalent of 10 or maybe 20 IQ points has this ever been studied those are a couple of different questions yeah yeah well Jen and I have a mutual friend who has coined a new phrase for this and he calls it effectively stupid so and sometimes it doesn't matter how high somebody's IQ is if they are if they have horrendous information and they're effectively stupid and if they are if they they're more susceptible to holding on to horrendous information if they've got some haywire personality characteristics so so for example I can give you an example of effectively stupid imagine a disagreeable person a very disagreeable person in a lawsuit and the right move is to settle because it's just by far the right strategy but but he but he can't help it he's just so disagreeable he's not willing to just settle and walk so instead he just continues to throw good money after bad continue to pursue a lawsuit on just because he's so disagreeable it can't let go that that is effectively stupid so that's that's how I look at look at this situation with this therapist we could we could we could speculate about what sorts of things are disturbing to this to this lady you know there's all kinds of there's there something an EP for everybody something something very disturbing any tea for everybody that's true well particularly when you're when you're any kind of psychodynamic therapist or anyone outside of the EP world and your status is being actively threatened by it too so like it's not this was not just a personality disruption or you know just the any any other reason to fight back against it but there's very potentially an attack on this person's the therapist placed in the greater hierarchy where they perceive themselves so of course that makes people also more likely to hold on to horrendous information bad personality and status defense will both do that yeah that's that's actually a yeah go ahead oh good I'm not gonna interrupt the great guru now I've forgotten what I was gonna say that never happens to a real guru they never forget yeah go ahead yeah I guess I was asking - I was thinking of mmm you know in in a past episode have anything recently maybe the last ten or so episodes you mentioned that that if someone is not in a good financial position that it may knock off 10 IQ points and so I suspect this questioners asking a similar thing is that someone is a particular threshold of instability or neuroticism can that knock off IQ points in general well or is it just context dependent yeah I yeah this would I think Jen and I were trying to say maybe it's just a little too obvious for us so we're not being clear the the to the extent that you are emotionally poorly regulated you you are ie neurotic then I mean just by definition we're talking about the if you're getting in the tail ends of the bell curve either for high neuroticism or possibly overly stable in any direction you go away from the middle of the bell curve you're very likely to wind up with significant distortions in your information processing in terms of your ability to evaluate you know what this what this information means and how it should be calibrated in an overall scheme of running an ideal cost-benefit analysis for your life so it's most obvious in someone who's emotionally unstable we can see that they quote overreact but it's also the case that people that were extremely stable can under react it's it's just it's less obvious when that's happening but the same thing can be happening in other words a person can be essentially have some vulnerability that they're not reacting to and they're not taking essentially protective actions because they're too relaxed about it and they're they're not understanding that there's an emergency so any any variety of personalities personality characteristics that are substantially different than the mean with the exception of IQ are likely to be vulnerable to certain environmental contexts certain contexts that that would that can prey upon that particular distortion and wind up causing trouble so the so that said I don't think we would say it knocks off a certain amount of IQ points I mean you you you could potentially find a situation that you could in theory probably pull data on such a thing and get some kind of gross estimate but it wouldn't really mean too much other than you would demonstrate the phenomenon that we are that were that we know is there we know that someone could be for example exceptionally bright but very volatile emotionally and make really bad decisions and we could look at their lives and say wow that's amazing that that person made that bunch of decisions in fact they were they're super intelligent the but but the personality essentially got in the way and that so yeah I I don't think that we can say oh it's it's not the same interesting and curious phenomenon that goes on when people have a bunch of money trouble and you can actually measure an IQ change in their performance on a test that's fascinating to me so that's a that's a little bit that that's being overwhelmingly distracted by by financial issues so that's a that's a different kind of phenomenon this is more an issue where depending upon what the circumstances are coming at the individual if they have an unusual personality that personality could be vulnerable to them being sucked into making poor decisions poor decisions then then their IQ would their IQ cohort people similar to them with similar ideas but but not unusual personalities that those people would be far less likely to make those mistakes does that make sense yeah that makes a lot more sense and and I kind of realized as you were explaining is that I'm like I'm asking about one particular variable in the entire scheme of you know adding these variables together so it's like me asking you about you know biochemistry but asking one specific reaction you're like well there's this whole biochemical explanation here right yeah and so that makes a lot more sense yeah okay the flip side of that just to add a little bit of that is - um you know it's doctor Wells talking about the IQ cohort being more likely to make mistakes I would also say that for the personality cohort high IQ is protective so for the personality cohort of the same distorted crazy personality problem the higher IQ you have and this is this is again implied and everything you just said but just to make it really clear if you do have higher IQ that's mediating the the effect of the distortion to some degree just because you're a better information processor overall so the fact that I have a higher than a iq is probably what kept me alive despite my 95th percentile openness during my okay it'll spent youth you know my openness got me into all kinds of bad situations but I was able to more accurately assess all of the different pieces of information coming in other other aspects of personality we'll also interact with particular distortions that you have so in my case my high conscientiousness helped out with that as well so all of these things you don't want to be too deterministic with any type of particular personality distortion even though it can it can definitely get you into some trouble but you are you were a dynamic being depending on your IQ your other personality descriptions and of course the the broader environmental context that you're finding yourself in yeah right now that makes a lot of sense and and appreciate that because I mean this it sounds like like it's not like we have IQ points and then you get a few points off because of the instability at some points there's the conscientiousness then you get a few more because it agreeable you had me like that's it's kind of like like a mile in our line of work with the food and lifestyles not like you add you know potatoes then you subtracted by french fries then you add some with you know fruits of them yeah yeah yeah if you think about it you write if you're if you got any sort of math background this is vector analysis all the way so this is this is just a situation comes up and there are several forces that can be acting in concert or as opponent processes and in some kind of multi-dimensional space and the behavior that you see is the result of the vector analysis of being and the entire personality interacting with the entire situation so that's that's what it is and the entire situation is not just the situation you see it's also filtering its way in that individual through their memory circuits so it's not just what they see here and taste it's also all of their memories so now you start to see what what behavior really is behavior the behavior that you see is the consequences of computations that are environmental input sensory inputs through five senses being filtered through two additional filters one of which is the person's previous experience which is what behavioral psychology and essentially what psychology was in the 20th century believed was everything so they believed that that was the filter that the person's learning history what they had been reinforced for or punished for or observed others being reinforced for or observed others being punished for in other words through their learning quote the laws of learning they believed that that was the filter that new circumstances were filtered through and then that caused the the computations that would lead to behavior that was a big mistake that was a catastrophic error that has now been corrected by by behavior genetics so now we understand an evolutionary psychology more broadly so now we understand that know what behavior is it's the result of sensory data in interacting with both the personality which is an innate structure in other words the individual differences in those brains along with their learning history so now we have all the variables accounted for and that's so that's a very complex set of vectors pushing pushing and pulling against a given behavioral impulse and that's that's what it is that you're seeing all right well let's roll on ok so our next question so we dr. hawk taught we talked about this last show a previous show where the question was that dr. Lisle has mentioned the concept of internal ugliness a couple of times in previous shows how does one go about identifying their own internal ugliness and then mitigating or correcting it now with this question dr. hawk and I couldn't remember when you had said internal ugliness it's just not something we remembered but we figured we'd ask you dr. Lyle and get your take on this well I deal with my own internal ugliness by looking in the mirror try and think about when I need to color my air I actually I I don't have the faintest recall of using that phrase so perhaps I did but I probably was doing so in a in the diatribe about some some disgusting human and describing them as you know having internal ugliness so yeah all I mean by that is personality characteristics that I that I find undesirable so that's all I mean by that so that tends to be low conscientiousness look low you know disagreeable and low conscientious are are my two primary candidates I don't have anything against extroverts I don't have anything against people that are more unstable and therefore sort of more passionate individuals the but but if you if you show me a disagreeable low conscientious then you can better believe I'm not going to like that person I would consider them internally ugly and if you are such an individual there's really nothing you can do about it go go find some people that think that that's attractive yeah the good news is they're probably not too many if any of those people listening to this show oh right that's good that's right yeah they would yeah they wouldn't be able to stand more than a few minutes listening to that no because if they're disagreeable and they would have to be high continuity high in conscientiousness to want to do something about their their disagreeableness which would make them listen which rules them out and if they're sufficiently if they're not disagreeable in there they're not a candidate anyway so I think we're fine yeah we're good next one thank you thank you for clearing the clarifying yeah alright our next question dear doctors what are the uses and limits of trying to create habits for example I often try to establish patterns of doing the dishes before bed going to bed early showering early during the day cleaning regularly and the like but it inevitably falls apart like someone coming off a diet in what areas are or situations is it worth bothering and how do I keep keep on track how do i alter my cost-benefit or C B and make my conscious priorities into my nervous systems priorities - yeah I can I can tackle this one this is a really common question people people are really kind of misguided and misdirected by a lot of the information out there that's like oh you know 14 days to create a new habit and if you just if you just do the same thing and you can you can turn your life around and you can change all of these behaviors where habits are equilibria that are emerging from your personality and your cost-benefit analysis on the problem so and to some degree the environment that you've created to be around the problem so we must often dr. Lyle and I are dealing with people who are trying to change their their diet they're trying to get healthier and this is an incredibly common question that comes up in that context because people think if they could just change their habits they could just you know have a salad for dinner every night or have oatmeal for breakfast or get to the gym or whatever it is that's a so-called healthy habit than they they would vastly improve their lives and they are led by the entire psychodynamic military-industrial complex to believe that this is an easy process and that you just need to decide and then just like you know 10 days 14 days a hundred days whatever it is but you you're you're at the mercy to some degree with any habit of personality limitations as we've talked about a lot on the last show and we've touched on this show it all always begins with your personality limitations so if you don't have a fair degree of conscientiousness in your personality and in the genetic code of your personality you're you're really going to be struggling with any kind of habit development especially something that is outside of your comfort zone something that is turning turning your life in a different sort of direction so that's the first big limitation on that and the second is the cost-benefit analysis so if it's a if it's a high cost to your your life in whatever way either it's taking more time and energy or it's taking you away from other ways that you would prefer to be spending that time and energy you're just not going to have the motivation to to be making any kind of major changes in your in your day-to-day life for any kind of sustainable period of time or if there's not some big perceived benefit it's all going to come down to the little computer in your head that is going to produce the correct result for what the most optimal cost-benefit is at any given time so let's say you've got the personality you've got enough conscientiousness let's say but just for an example you want to go for a walk before work every morning this is a habit that you want to create so you've got a personality that has enough conscientiousness in it to actually apply yourself to create this habit and you've looked at the situation and you perceive but there's an there's enough benefit that's gonna motivate you to do this so you're gonna get outside before the hustle and bustle of the day started so you can take the dog for a walk there's you're really going to enjoy it you're gonna you're gonna feel good you might lose some weight etc etc etc and the cost is perceived as fairly low so it seems like everything is in place but then you're dealing with the problem of the environment so if you do not set things up for yourself optimally to make this as easy as possible you're also not going to be able to execute on any given habit in any kind of ongoing way so that may mean that you you know lay out your clothes to go walking in the morning the night before you go to bed so you've got your shoes you've got the dog leash you've got everything set up you're just trying to lower the cost at every single interval so these are all the things that you have to do to even have any kind of a chance of so called you know developing a new habit and these are things that are very very difficult to create and sustain over time unless you have a major major change in the informational matrix that is going to change the overall cost benefit analysis on the problem so if you have if you just had a heart attack and you have all of this new information that is that is coming into the system about what kind of trouble you're in and the fact that you need to lose 30 pounds or you're going to be at high risk for another heart attack that is new information that can change the cost-benefit analysis which makes it more likely that all of those things that you put in place will be more successful than they would have been before you have that additional information so this is this is how these things are all interacting is it's its personality its cost-benefit analysis which is really just the the aggregate of all of the information that is in the system and it's the environmental situation that you have set up to support the development of that new habit I would also just really briefly add that information in this case can also take the form of the self esteem process that we've talked about a lot on the show so if you are trying to develop a new habit you have the conscientiousness you have high motivation to do it you've set up the environment appropriately the last piece of the puzzle is that as you as you go into this and you are diligently applying yourself and you are maybe not making any visible progress to anybody else but you are impressing your own internal audience with your diligence that counts as new information in the cost-benefit analysis that makes the overall venture more worthwhile so you actually start to plug that into the benefit side of the equation and so it becomes its own autocatalytic process where you are chasing the self-esteem of the the pride of doing a very good job of developing a new habit so if all of those things are lined up and in sync and ready to go then then you've got a fighting chance that created a new habit and if any one of those things is missing then the combination lock is off and it's never going to happen and you're at the mercy of your personality in the environment so that would be my rant on habits yeah Wow it's phat phat doc dr. Hawk feel free to rant anytime yeah let me let me give just a little bit more it's the same information that may be slightly different words in some spots what ultimately as as Jen saying this is a this is information processing is changing and so the what what fires the the first move towards a new habit is is a speculation so it's a speculation that our previous CB may be wrong so person that is sufficiently open to the possibility that it could be that they are behaving sub-optimally and that it could be that a different pattern of behavior may result in a more profitable CB ie a better resistance so it's a gamble it's like a penny stock we're gonna put a little bit of money in it and see what happens and what typically will happen is people will put a little bit of money in and they find out it didn't do anything so the the grand plan crashes after after a week that's because they they didn't see the result that they thought they were going to see now once in a while they may start to see results so that penny stock actually was a legitimate company and it starts making money so the behavioural change starts to result in payoffs and as as Jen's talking about the see the self-esteem mechanism could be a major part of the payoff which I had forgotten about and but there could be other payoffs as well so a person that has had cramps and constipation their whole life you know starts to eat a bowl of oatmeal in the morning and things are different and they're out of that pain and now they're having painless bowel movements for the first time in 30 years and so now it's like oh well in that case I'm gonna quote change my habit okay so what what Jen and I would both rant about equally is the the fantasy out there in the world of pop psychology and elsewhere that you can quote program your brain into doing things in a good positive better way you know with psycho cybernetics Tony Robbins or some other thing the no you can't your brain is not that stupid it's an extraordinarily sophisticated Seabee machine and if you haven't been doing this big thing before you're probably not going to do it now because your brain is run the Seabee it's already probably run many little tests in that direction and it felt like at the end of the the data said no I don't think it's worth it so and as Jen was saying it's all being run through personality matrices that are giving the person internal feedback telling them you know what was it worth it or not and so nothing there's nothing wrong with having a personality that doesn't feel like joggin two miles a day nothing in the world wrong with that that's just it that's a given personality that goes out there and jogs around the block and after a quarter of a mile says now I don't like it it's not worth it that doesn't make you a bad person you're just that just means that you're a person that that's not going to become a habit so the a moderate investment may alter the Seabee as a result of a number of ways we may feel a lot better or we may have a self esteem mechanism that gets activated it's also extremely likely that whatever benefits we see don't feel like it doesn't feel like it's worth the cost so we went on a diet for two weeks we didn't lose 22 pounds so we ran our like forget it I'm not doing it so the the lasting changes that quote become new habits are just are just Seabees cost-benefit analyses that that have reached a different equilibrium because the person has new information and that becomes the Seabee it's not because of a habit the now there's one last aspect of this that people are fascinated with and and it feels very compelling and that's that repetition is the mother of skill and skill is the reduction of error so as you learn how to chop up a pot of you know vegetables and put them in a steamer and make them you've now reduced the cost of creating a nice plate of steamed vegetables from the first time that you did it okay so that's why being open to trying something out a little while until you develop a little bit of skill is a worthwhile thing to explore okay so that's worth it but after you but most of the skills are involved you don't need to become some master chef or anything else under the Sun in order to get the cost down learning curves are you know particularly you know the human mind is very adept at a few repetitions getting an awful lot better I've seen people get much better at yeah at some motor move literally on in ten repetitions you can become far better so it doesn't take a lot for an individual a little bit of gumption to try a new pattern of behavior and then now the costs of executing that behavior are reduced as a result of a little bit of skill and now they get to sit back and look at whether or not whether the payoff is worth it most of the time it isn't okay so most of the time the kinds of things that people are wanting to change are embedded in a very complicated bunch of vectors vector or processes that their life has pretty much reached the equilibrium that that it that it has based on who they're the nature of their identity sometimes people do change and sometimes they they change in interesting and productive ways usually but when that happens it wasn't quote because of a habit it was because of a list of essentially inputs to the system that dr. Hawk and I are explaining yeah that'll skill development piece is where you don't know yeah I'm gonna riff on that it's just that that's super critical that that ability to develop a comfort with something new that might be that might have very high value and to reduce the error and then to change the CV long term but that's exactly that that's the sort of the the dead zone where personality hits its limitations particularly conscientiousness because you have to sort of grit your way through with conscientiousness and to some degree IQ that really uncomfortable space between the the new habits still being really uncomfortable and therefore high cost and full of error and four iterations later when you're much more comfortable chopping the vegetables and making the soup and suddenly this is a really good idea that doesn't take that much effort but people quit after two or three they don't get to four or five because they don't have the conscientiousness to push through so that's that's why personality is so critical and why if you do have like you going back to the earlier question and you have the information about you know how you could change it you've you've read the books you you know about the new the what you want to be doing as far as diet and lifestyle all of those different informational processes are really important and you just have to get through that really uncomfortable space but that's a big limitation for people yeah here's here's another here's another thing that changes people's lives and this jenilee to do this and that is that if this is what I call structural change so this is where the environment changes not you so you don't you don't get you don't develop the skill we just flat-out change the environment so a number of people over the years when I've counseled people on diet lifestyle issues have changed their lives because they hire to cook so there and it's to income high income household and the last thing they need to do is kind of struggle home from their big bigshot jobs and then chop vegetables when they could pay somebody $15 an hour to do that and so that that's a so we make a structural change in the person's environment where healthy tasty food is already available and all they have to do is walk through the door and take out a fork so that we've changed the Seabee unhealthy eating for other people that need to make you know they just need to sometimes make some kind of healthy change that could make a big difference in their life sometimes people believe that they have to make sweeping you know CinemaScope changes in their diet and lifestyle in order to get major benefits that's not true you just have to like a lot of times just make some changes and it could save your life and the difference between terrible and okay you know isn't that hard to to impact but you get most of the that for just given the body a break and so I had a woman that was five foot four and 338 pounds and I could not get her to make any changes because she was conceptualising it no matter how I worked at this as all or nothing and one day I finally said look just just one just open e all in the morning just try it for a little one well she got I said you know put count shockula in it I don't care what you do she just was eating a terrible diet and I don't know whether it was six months or a year later but she is down to 260 so that single change over time I do is about a year later had resulted in eighty pounds of weight loss nothing else had changed okay hit her die yes so yeah sometimes you know one one change the reason why people sometimes don't make the one changes they feel like well I have to make all kinds of changes it's like no you don't just if you'll just this is what I call one pot of soup you don't have to become a vegan chef you know you have become a vegan but if if if you're eating crap all the time if you make one pot of soup a week and you'll eat you know five or six or eight bowls of that soup over the week that's huge for some people it can replace a lot of very rich food that the reading and result in a new equilibrium for their health so this is again the and what change there is not just what it is that they did so we didn't have to have a big bunch of habits where we're gonna make this spectacular change we change one thing and that one thing results in a new equilibrium that's really worth it to the person and it wasn't worth it because they may have had a mistaken belief about what they had to do to get the benefit and and it turns out no you can get most of the benefit from just doing this half-assed that's gonna happen with you know so many things around health the the difference a big part of the difference is just get it half right and you will get a great deal of health benefit if you're coming from a really bad place when it comes to bad behavior you know it's destructive behavior alright enough already what else do we got Nathan that's wonderful well I was just thinking so this question is asking how do I alter the CB and make conscious priorities I guess the only thing I can think of from what you guys saying is is they really can't other than maybe invite someone they really care about impressing over every day so they know they have to clean everything yeah that's that's structural change yeah yeah yeah I mean there's all kinds of creative ways that you can solve problems which once you start thinking that way and that that is a legitimate alternative like absolutely yep mm-hmm all good all right okay our next question this question is two questions for the doctors dear doctors my husband had an affair last year but we are slowly working through things ourselves and taking steps to save our marriage for our children first question is how can I get over the feelings of inadequacy that I have in my marriage post affair it's been almost a year since I found out and I still bring it up in arguments at times I use it as my trump card and I win our arguments as he he feels bad every time I bring it up yet I can't bring myself to stop doing it the second question is how can I let go of the jealousy and resentment towards his affair partner they are still in contact and remain friends but I find myself checking her social media accounts and obsessing over her and I want to stop well that's a that's a boatload of issues okay so I'm not I'm not laughing at the person I'm just saying that's a that's a lot of questions to ask and and you know thank you for having the courage to write those questions to us and and have us even talk about this so I don't think I want to break down everything here there's there's too many moving parts and and too many too many different issues on the table but let's talk about and Jen please feel free to help me here because I'm going to mhm parts in the whole thing and then you're gonna you're gonna say oh yeah you're gonna fill in the blank first of all the first thing I hear is we've decided we're gonna save our marriage for the sake of the kids that's a terrible idea okay so so right away we have a bad idea so we've got a mistake in understanding about optimize or happiness right from the jump so the the only reason to stay married you know is financial desperation and and and that you want to be there okay that you'd that you're you love the person and you don't want to you don't want to live without them those are two good reasons to stay married if you are not financially desperate and you don't want to be with the person or they don't want to be with you which amounts to fundamentally the same thing in the end if that's if that's what the situation is for God's sake don't stay together for the sake of the children because you're not doing the children any good so that's the first thing that I would have to say about this now you know I put you know undoubtedly there's going to be a lot of people that are uncomfortable with this but the they're you know dr. Laura Schlessinger would probably have heart attack or stroke if she heard if she okay because dr. Laura thinks that everything is about the children and you know every little thing that you do the children that's a bad thing for the children and that's a terrible thing and that the the moral high ground for all life is to do everything right for the children so that the children you know aren't damaged in their developmental process she's not alone that dr. Laura I think has a doctorate in chemistry she never learned anything about psychology but had she ever learned anything about psychology she would have learned it wrong she would have been right at the doorstep of the psychodynamic and and developmental learning theory thinking that early childhood processes and childhood processes are bending and shaping the individual personality there's a very reasonable very reasonable belief but it turns out to be entirely false so the notion that your children are going to be damaged by a divorce process is false it's not true okay so the fact is that they may be they may squawk and be very uncomfortable if you go through divorce process they could be uncomfortable but they're not gonna be damaged by this so so that's where I begin my discussion so I began my discussion with that is a lousy reason to stay married so now we're going to go a little further that this person has these feelings of inadequacy well obviously those feelings are probably being fueled by ongoing esteem signaling that are coming from the husband so I doubt that the person would be feeling quote inadequate inadequate for what inadequate to compete as a sexual target for the husband's interests that's what the inadequacy means so that means we can just feel like we can translate this into I'm not qualified my husband is giving me consistent evidence through his behavior that I don't qualify okay so how do I get rid of the feelings that come from my husband giving me consistent evidence that I don't qualify answer you don't get rid of those feelings okay the only thing that could change those feelings is if you qualified then you would feel differently okay or that you are out of the relationship and therefore you are not in an intimate psychological signaling matrix where you are attempting to get positive feedback and being refused okay so that that is that story as far as that goes so I guess all that you can do is you could do everything that you in your power in order to try to figure out you know how to make yourself more appealing and then to find out whether or not he changes his feelings towards you and therefore gives you evidence that you qualify that's not going to happen by when you argue you know using using his affair as a trump card you should be using his affair as evidence that you didn't qualify now that won't always be the case someone could qualify and someone could still have an affair but I don't suspect that that's what's happening in this particular case I think in this case the the evidence that I'm getting from the few sent you know a few sentences that are written here is that this woman is getting evidence that she doesn't qualify they're sticking together because they've got a misguided notion that this is good for the kids or there's financial considerations and I'm not I'm not minimizing those this can be very important considerations the children's feelings can also be considerations and they would have merit in terms of the weighing of the decision but if you are why would I say so well there are their people and they would have feelings and they would go through some unpleasant processes if you were to get a divorce and so you know depends upon how old they are and what's at stake in your life and how old you are and what you want out of your life and whether or not the husband and wife could just remain kind of good friends and and whether or not the wife can cannot care really could could care less whether or not she gets positive steam signals from the husband about or attractiveness and whether or not he sneaks around has some affairs on the side that she doesn't know about like hey you could be good friends and and have quote marriage so we stay together and it's easier on the kids and they don't know what's going on that's all cool that's how that's how people want to do things I I have no problem with that if that's the decision that that you know a pair of people decide but in this case that's not what's going on the woman is highly sensitive to the signals that she is receiving because it would appear that the husband qualifies and she does not qualify now can you change things about yourself that would increase the statistic like that if you qualify I would ask some other questions that would be important in this for this relationship did you ever qualify okay sometimes you never qualify it even though you got married and you got pregnant and you had kids you didn't really ever qualify and sometimes people know that they they are aware what the tone of the relationship was if if he has always had a wandering eye and he was never that into you and it was that way really after 12 months together and you got married anyway then you'd really didn't qualify at least not for a very long period of time and now you don't qualify now okay if it turns out that that isn't the case that she qualified for 10 years and then some things changed whatever a change your appearance changed she got a big raise you know or just life happens and we drifted apart then in that case you you may you may be impossible to qualify at this point however it might be possible so is there anything about yourself that you could make yourself a more attractive partner on any number of dimensions that would cause you to qualify maybe so you'd have to look at how long look at that and see where it is that that you know who you are has how how have you changed and in what ways and can you do anything about it well I think she already she's maybe the process that's why she's obsessing over the social media accounts of a chippy she's she's stalking I'd be comparatively to see what what is the chippy hat that she doesn't have she's already in that process but whether that's coming from a place of genuinely wanting to qualify for the partner or whether it's sort of like a panic about using the relationship for provisional protection reasons like she I would advise her to get very much in touch with her true feelings about that like if she's still in love with him does she still truly want to be with him does he still qualify for her or is it really we're just trying to sneak the marriage for the children quote-unquote and and she feels the impending huge status loss of the divorce and losing the relationship and so she's trying to qualify to to win not because she truly is in love with him so those those are important traps that women can get themselves into in this kind of situation and that that drives the comparative frenzy with what this other woman has that she doesn't have and the only way out of that is to engage in some really deep self-reflection about what your actual feelings toward this individual are and if you really truly want to be with them yeah yeah I would think good that's great Jen the I would I would say in terms of the the comparing and looking and tracking the female shut it off yeah you know just I'd shut off the whole thing easier said than done for the female disable your Facebook I mean that's structurally you have to disable your Facebook your going as long as you have access to social media you're going to be stalking this person so disable Facebook block right account you know do everything you can to protect yourself from that information for sure but let's remember in 2004 I don't know when Facebook was created it doesn't five I think yeah - to cut yeah 2004 there was no Facebook and the are just fine okay so that we we don't have we're not going to die of a facebook emergency so you owe your life right now Facebook's not going anywhere okay so guess what if you shut off Facebook for the next six months you shut it off no Facebook at all beat your genes Facebook nothing just get rid of it all you don't need to see what other people are posting and what it is that they're saying you could just kiss it off yeah okay just quick now six months from now yeah yeah just get rid of it you could do a structural process that gets you out of that thing okay then if you do that for you know thirty days you start to be able this is just like a quote new habit right we get to see for long enough what the CB really is on the other side of this and it's going to turn out that there's going to be a more peace of mind without it yeah and okay so that's that's why I would have my Jesus the mind am i right now more attention to your own feelings going back to what I was saying before because right now yes your CV is being driven by this comparative frenzy by constant information looking at her looking to see what she's up to you're you're artificially inflating the importance of this this battle that you're in in your mind with her regardless of of your actual desire for the relationship so if you shut down that input then then that forces you into a direct confrontation with your relationship with your husband as it stands separate from your perception of who she is and what she represents so that's that's an important piece of that process ya know doctor I have a question for you doc talk and I'm not trying to be argumentative so if it comes across that way that's not my intention which is you know you mentioned how this lady is you know how she is you know she's getting gonna get that she may get caught into competing for against this woman for her husband and so the first thing that came to my mind is is isn't that the whole point is that this is a competition and if she starts becoming more competitive and therefore is more likely to win she will feel better as a result and maybe even happier I might be missing something there that was what I was yeah I just don't want her chasing the false esteem of winning the game for his so-called affection if she doesn't qualify and never qualified or if he doesn't qualify especially post affair but but maybe he never did either so I just don't want her blinded by the esteem hunting that she is in with the the context of this the the the status that's associated with the marriage qua marriage rather than whether this is actually a set of emotional dynamics with this human being that she is happy and content with and wants to continue in her life and wants to somehow you know recover everything that's good about that relationship I'm not getting a lot of that in the question which is why I'm sort of driving in that direction because the question is to me implying that you know we're staying together for the kids there's there's big status loss associated with the loss of this marriage we don't want that to happen so so how can I you know gain the system not oh my god I feel like I'm on the brink of losing this human that I care profoundly about and my heart is breaking over it and what can I do that's a different kind of set of circumstances and if that's the position that she's really in we would we would you know some some of the success of a yeah well maybe you do want to be thinking about how you could qualify and confronting all of that head-on but but it seems like we just don't want to be in a situation where we're competing for the sake of competition got it okay no that makes a lot more sense because I guess I'm understanding a little bit more than what I learned with my sister's growing up not that they didn't educate wasn't paying attention but so so you're saying that women will Willis it was they may be competing for the same guy just to win the competition rather than to actually find happiness and that is a that that is a right that they would have to be their genes in order for not to do that and to consciously think that the gender-specific traveling I think I think I think everybody can fall into that trap because of what the relationship looks like to the outside world and I'm like kind of all yeah and I think different different people are susceptible to it behind different personality characteristics but it is it is something that women you know I have noticed get themselves into just because of the ancestral demand for provision and protection that is that is getting dinged with this whole process too so that's you know especially if she is in the position of weakness as far as her finances go and if these kids are pretty little and she's looking at being a single parent like all of these different things are gonna play into into the whole process now from approach you yeah oh sorry sorry good I mean terrific oh no go ahead I was just at the end of my rant you know from a practical purpose let's suppose she fell victim to this and was actually starting to compete just to win the competition and not actually you know taking care of what she actually wanted or you know would she be let it would I mean I guess I'm thinking is is wouldn't that still be good for her psychology anyway because she would be becoming more competitive and she'd maybe get in better shape or you know find a hobby or so some something competitive and so she wouldn't be she wouldn't be left worse as a result I think that I think that I think that what were what we're trying to get out here is the following that this person is suffering and what we're attempting to do is to try to shed light on what are the most effective moves to reduce the suffering and so there's a number of moves that you could make but what we're trying to do is to get to the heart of the best strategy and the best strategy that that's why I ranted for quite a bit on really sentence number one we're staying together we decided to stay together for the sake of the kids BAM right away you just lit off an atomic bomb in my head okay and so we we already are in deep trouble in terms of the optimal strategy for optimizing human happiness okay so that that's why what Jen is talking about is of course Nathan yeah you can make some moves in a in a social media haywire world where you are sort of amplifying the cost of losing in a romantic game you've effectively become your own celebrity you can imagine Hollywood you know relationships and the status loss is associated with who who dumped who in and a breakup and how nasty those things can get as a result of the accusations and the tabloids about you know who really qualified and who didn't qualified and who said and who did what and what the promises were and how they really behaved okay I'm surprised that we don't have tabloids saying well you know the reason why we actually broke up is that you he had a small penis and nobody knows it okay but you know I put up with it for a while but you know that's why it broke up it didn't break up because he slept with somebody else no no no no no no I had already broken up with him because he has a small penis that's what you know I'm surprised I haven't heard that but the point is is that the the status seeking and defenses that are natural to human beings in the breakup of a pair bond you know these are expensive processes and people this woman is probably feeling the weight of that like the loo this is bad okay if I'd been rejected if I have been fallen short if I come if an interloper has out competed me then it drops my mate value in the village and so I've got to be all freaked out about this okay because I got Stone Age brain on red alert saying oh my god you know what does she look like how do I have to how can I compete how can I keep this thing together long enough so that the world and our family and all of our friends sort of half-ass forget about this affair and that if this thing comes apart five or six years from now it'll be on my terms when I reject him okay that way I maintain my mate status any kind of strategies and believe me I've seen those strategies run the those are bad strategies so even though good things could come of it ie get in shape look better get some new clothes new hair do more makeup whatever the hell okay we could we could put a pretty face on it but really at the ultimate where the rubber hits the road in human happiness we want to flush all that because the status loss is associated with with breakups and pair bonds are temporary okay they they may hurt there are an ancillary loss that a person may temporarily go through in the Stone Age like we why did Suzie break up with you okay and then there's some questioning and people in the village as to a person's real mate value maybe we need to discount them 10% because they they went through a breakup and we don't know why but we know that they're the reject D okay so as a result those but those losses are temporary and they're they don't even exist in the modern environment because the new people you meet don't know anything about it okay so we're responding to phantom threats to esteem and as a result what what Jen and I want to do is be like a laser and hone in on the most important thing and the first thing that comes to my mind is don't stay married for the kids unless there's some awfully important ancillary reasons why you would do that and the second thing and and a related thing that Jen is honing in on is don't compete for this guy just to be competing with for the guy that's a big mistake that's a total waste of your life okay you need to get in touch with wait a minute is this you know can I legitimately compete with them have I ever qualified for him does he qualify for me and is there a hell of a lot of happiness in this relationships future that all that what is required is for us to get you know to get past some obstacles and some conflicts of interest between us if that's true fine then it makes complete sense to to stew over these things and to work and try to get some expert assistance if you can find it and and and you know work through some of the conflicts but it shouldn't be overly hard folks because the great romance is not overly hard
Back to the top
🏃     👖




Artist