Home 🏠 🔎 Search


Bad Transcripts
for the
Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Episode 22: More real life examples of relationship conflict
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)
 


your genes podcast it sounds kind of interesting because when we consider what we're doing in life is we are biologically trying to further our genetic reproduction and that's what the purpose of biological purpose at least to life and what we're trying to do at this podcast is we are seeking to understand what our genes are trying to get us to do and to see if that actually matches up with what's going to make us happy and in a lot of cases that actually does make us happy for instance our genes are designed to keep us safe so if you cry if you're crossing a street and there might be a car that's about to hit you your genes are going to be the ones that are going to motivate you to get you it gets you out of the way however in things like relationships love sex work food all kinds of different things in life are there where your genes may be getting you to do things that are beneficial for the genes but they're not beneficial for your happiness so we are seeking to look at different examples in life through these podcasts that where we seek to understand where our genes are in favor of our happiness and where they're not and whether or not we're going to be trying to beat those genes dr. Lisle how you doing today welcome welcome thank you cup for coming back this week absolutely pleasure to be here Nate alright so last week we had a couple of real-life situations from from listeners from other other stories that I gathered from different different avenues and and we had a really interesting turnout with some some more questions I found some more some some examples here now if there's anybody listening here and they they come up with some questions of their own if they want some clarification about feel free to give us a call live on the show we are live every Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. Pacific Standard Time the phone number to call in is six five seven three eight three zero seven five one however if you feel nervous about calling in feel free to email me you can email us at beat your genes at gmail.com and if you want to do have a couple of questions maybe some personal questions about to clarify an issue or to maybe have dr. Lao lift some pressure off of a situation feel free to email me we can arrange a time to talk about this affair and then record it separately and put it on the podcast so again that email is beat your jeans at gmail.com and the callin number is six five seven three eight three zero seven five one so dr. Lao did you have a good time last week going over all these real life situations I sure did those were those were very interesting and I think it gets good good for folks to to sort of listen their way through other people's struggles because probably many people have similar issues and so hopefully the principles we talked about might be useful wonderful well we have some more real life examples this week that I want to go over with you and I'm curious to see because I actually just came back from Las Vegas I was visiting a couple of visiting a friend there and it was very interesting to look at this lens of basically freedom and people are able to display however they want in a city where it's designed to kind of you can really be yourself and it was very interesting through the lens of evolutionary psychology to see the different mating strategies that were at play there dr. Lai have you ever been to Las Vegas yes I have in the conservative part of Las Vegas I'm sure yeah it's very interesting you know a friend of mine long time ago kind of got me interested in evolutionary psychology she ended up telling me she said yeah after I learned enough about this all I see are monkeys walking around and displaying certain things to each other beating their chests when they need to sure I thought that that about sums it up alright well let's let's not delay any further and let's go for the first first example here right okay this is from a man and he says my fiancee and I have been dating for about two and a half years I proposed to her last December and she said yes and we've been working very hard to save up for a wedding and honeymoon but two weeks ago I asked her question about her views on prenuptial agreements and I have some general understanding of this I'm assuming he's he's that's his profession well she flipped out and said that she's not going to marry someone who doesn't trust her and is planning to leave her in the future I explained to her that it wasn't about trust issues with her but to financially protect both of us if we were ever to divorce or if the mayor's just didn't work out well she was really emotional about the whole issue and this didn't this actually resulted in really bad drama she yelled at me a lot but I just quietly listened to her and I hardly said much I personally don't want both of us to financially suffer if a divorce happens now I've worked very hard to save up for my future multiple properties IRA Roth IRAs 401ks cars in addition to family inheritances that will be handed down by my father and grandfather I did explain to her that once we got married everything is ours from the day we legally tie the knot well she completely broke down eventually and left my house now this drama happened about two and a half weeks ago now last week I communicated with her by phone saying that she she communicated with her with him by phone saying that she needs to rethink all this but wants a break now it's getting to the point where she's bad-mouthing me to all her friends she told them I was emotionally abusing her and I didn't understand the emotional abuse but I only calmly communicated about the prenuptial agreement I don't know how this is emotional abuse now even some of my best friends got upset at me because she told them about it and I explained to them that this is actually was not the case and told them my side of the story and they understood and actually stood by my decision now her female friends were very upset and I had to cut contact with all of them so based on this I may have screwed up my relationship with my fiancee but what I want to know is is it even worth pursuing or should I let it go and move on well whoever this is I have I have a couple of comments and questions for them number one the I don't know how old they are it sounds like if this person has amassed properties and has a substantial net worth then this is probably not somebody in their 20s so this seems like an older person the the the behavior of the woman in this case is indicative of somebody that's that's uh got some real limitations in terms of their personality there's obviously a pretty significant entitlement streak that's going on here and I'm sure this isn't the first time that this is surfaced so I would say that that the we don't you know when it comes to relationships I would say if there is a if there is a mistake that people make in relationships it's generally that they stay too long so that that is the probably the most common large mistake that is made there's various and sundry reasons why that is a common mistake today that would not have been the case in the Stone Age the there are there are societal and financial pressures that will keep relationships together when those relationships would be best best off being severed B on the other hand we don't want to be cavalier about relationships that are very significant we want to we want to my attitude is we essentially turn over every reasonable rock on the beach in order to to see to see whether or not a relationship exists that is worth fighting for so we certainly do all the reasonable activities in order to see what happen in this case I feel like this man accidentally stumbled over beautiful a beautiful stressor that put this woman under enough psychological pressure that she actually displayed her disagreeable characteristics you are not entitled to somebody else's wealth nobody is entitled to anybody else as wealth and a what we should be delighted about is that that we're in love with somebody that we've actually found a person that we're considering spending the rest of our lives with and if that person is much wealthier than we are then and they want to be responsible with their finances the and they want to say look I'm going to support you I'm going to be the big obviously I have the big net worth that will influence our standard of living considerably however in terms of our in terms of your future in my future we have we actually have differences in our net worth but not in our standard of living which is what I've discussed before on a previous podcast so two partners should not have a different standard of living they shouldn't drive different level of cars they shouldn't they shouldn't have different levels of vacations they shouldn't have their independent differences in in how much they can afford for clothing and their clothing style in other words they should be living in the same house under the same standard of living but they could have very different networks and so this is a this is an entitlement on the part of the bride here that is very notable what her reaction is her reaction is is immature and irresponsible and it's really not the kind of reaction that is that bodes very well for anybody in a long-term romantic love relationship quite frankly romantic love relationships long-term romantic love relationships kind of require some really serious psychological chops they're not for the the unstable disagreeable low conscientiousness they're they're really not fit very well for humans that are not quite responsible and this this reaction on the part of the female is is quite irresponsible and it's a it's evidence of some serious limitations personality was however with that with that being said my advice to this man would be to take your sweet time I would certainly postpone any wedding with there's a wedding date B I would I would figure that that has been postponed and my attitude would be that we're going to discover through through the next you know two or three month process kind of where we're at and we keep the dialogue open we see whether or not she calms down we we signal that she's important and that the relationship is important but we are trying to we're just trying to move through this and see whether or not we can find some common ground see eye to eye if we can't if what we get is female hysteria and a division of the divisive 'no syn their little local village then you have really gotten the answer that you need and consider yourself very lucky to have tripped over this essentially a diagnostic moment and and yeah because to me the minute the minute I read that somebody's telling their friends that someone's emotionally abusing them in this situation I'm not turning any more rocks over you know yeah I I would be done with this girl but I here's my the reason why I'm not there's a reason why I'm not being definitive and that is that this cannot be the first sign of trouble they in other words so this relationship has weathered her personality up to this point and and this guy has seriously considered her and his proposed and was intending to marry her so there must be some significant strengths from from his perspective that is keeping him as has him seriously interested it's interesting that he did not roll over or anyway back away from his position as he's describing this and didn't doesn't sound like he lost his cool and so I'm just thinking that he knows he's in a bad spot but they're made she may be very beautiful he may be very attracted to her there may be very significant reasons other reasons than just that about what you may feel like it's time for him to get married etc but I will tell you if there's ever a decision you don't want to rush this is the one and if you were looking at if you were talking to the female in this situation she was telling you this from the other side what if any advice would you give to her I would quite frankly if I got this I would I was sort of my job Nate would be - would be - as a clinical psychologist I would be very gently asking her questions about what essentially what was the center of her anxiety and the center her of her anxiety is potentially that she may feel unloved and so this may feel like actually a rejecting dynamic and she she may feel essentially insulted by this this is sort of what it sounds like now what I would do is I would continue to question her a little more deeply about what about this is so insulting and and sort of where did she where does she come up with these ideas and give me a feel for how she thinks things should be fair etc and then what we do is we we actually come up with scenarios that actually demonstrate principles by using extremes so this is a very useful way to teach people to learn things and it's also an effective strategy in the in the process of conducting science that what you want to do is you want to do things at the extremes that's why they use atom smashers and that's why they use huge telescopes is that they're trying to go to the extremes to learn things be awed and in this case what we would do is we would say okay let's suppose that let's suppose that a man had a fortune of a billion dollars okay and he's marrying someone who has nothing what should be the process by which they go about this would it be wise for him to essentially say we are partners as we go forward my interests make a hundred million dollars a year so we will you will be joining in that but if we if we split up my billion dollars is my billion dollars okay and at that point we tried to use this we try to use extreme examples to try to educate somebody about sort of the realities of fairness and we questioned them about this and I would try to tease out of her gently why it is that she feels like she's entitled to this man's net worth okay and then I would disagree with her about this and I would explain to her that actually were not entitled to anything in this world and we're certainly not entitled to anybody else's money and that if we're in a romantic relationship there are reasonable expectations that we will live in the same house as our similar financial circumstances but but entitlement to someone else's savings and fortune is something that is absolutely something that we should not expect coming into a relationship and and that's that is a that is I would be calibrating this woman about the realities of how it is that she should look at the situation and and if it turns out that that she cannot manage to be educated then that's fine but now I will have done my job just as this this man can attempt to do the job that I'm that I'm describing by making sure that he communicates that in no way was this meant to be insulting that this was just meant meant to be sort of responsible and that he would be more than fair if it turned out that things did not go well and that of course we indeed hope that everything would go well but the but we're going to be responsible about this and that that's how it is that we would need to proceed now I have no idea obviously whether or not she has the capability of absorbing and recalibrating her expectations maybe she does maybe she doesn't okay on this same vein now we have it from a female's perspective here's another live example okay so this is a female she's 25 years old and her boyfriend Pete is 30 years old so I've been seeing my boyfriend peed for six months and it's been really wonderful I really thought I'd found the one with him but after last night I feel like my worlds collapse I'm not sure I've made the right decision so if I was right never felt like this about anyone before but now it feels like my heart's been pulled out of my chest and I can't sleep so my good friend who will call Dave was my boyfriend from the age of 18 to 21 after which we broke up because we wanted different things in life we stayed good friends though because we had a great friendship and had been through so much together he currently lives in a different country at the moment but we still talk to semi-regularly online and I'm different us what's on different apps now Pete knew that Dave was a friend of mine but he didn't know he was an ex until about two weeks ago when Dave asked me to visit him in Amsterdam while he's on a work trip I live in the UK he lives in Italy now I had already agreed and booked a ticket before I told Pete because they were on sale for a ridiculously low price on the dates that he would be there so I jumped at the opportunity my boyfriend Pete seemed cool with it at first but after a few days asked me if there was any history between us I was honest and told him there was he didn't seem too bothered and eventually asked if I thought visiting ex in another country was appropriate while in a relationship I asked him how Dave and my relationship wasn't like that and that we were strictly platonic he didn't seem to really react he just gave me a look that was sarcastic I suppose would be the best way to describe it I then told him that I wouldn't be controlled and I hated men that they owned me and could tell me what to do I told him I was free to see who I wanted and that I found his lack of trust in me upsetting disrespectful and perhaps a sign of future abusiveness I now realize this may have been a bad thing to say again he didn't really react so I thought that was the end of it then last night he came around to my apartment and broke up with me I asked him why any try and tried to get him to explain himself and he told me that he was going away that that my going away to see another man was a deal breaker that he'd been in this type of situation before and wasn't going to go through it again I asked him if this was an ultimatum because I hate ultimatums and think that they are tools of abusers and he said no it's not an ultimatum I've decided to break up with you I have not presented you with any options I just came to say goodbye before I could say or do anything more he kissed me on the forehead said goodbye and walked away he didn't seem angry just sad so I tried to call him afterwards but he just texted me some baloney about how this was for the best and that he wished me no ill-will and hopes I'll be happy he turned his phone off while I bombarded him with texts and voicemails to make matters worse I told Dave the guy in Amsterdam about what happened and he replied oh well I guess that means we can have even more fun then he didn't care about my relationship and my pain he just wanted to hook up buddy and someone to get stoned with while he was in Amsterdam now I've lost someone I love and my best friend who I was only interested in as friends oh now I've lost someone I love and my best friend who I was only interested in as friends has a different motive to me for meeting up I feel like I've lost my partner and I've lost a best friend at the same time I tried calling Pete today my boy for my ex-boyfriend now about an hour ago and he just actually answered he told me that I should look to be with someone who wasn't so abusive and he said please stop calling me this is over have a nice trip and then he blocked my number how could he do that to someone he loves is he overreacting or was I what should I do now well the nice little story here and I would say that that this is a [Music] learning opportunity for this young lady the that the so I say possible learning opportunity because I don't know if what we've got here is a personality limitation on her part or whether or not you know this is sort of young and-and-and miscalibrated about the nature of life and therefore she she messed this up pretty badly and whether or not she might be capable of doing a better job in the future the truth is is that that her position was completely and totally out of line you do not you do not six months into a romantic relationship go and visit an ex-boyfriend in another country for God's sakes the this is all just ludicrous so this is a particularly if there's any it would be one thing if you are if your relationship is so outstanding and so secure which would be very unlikely in six months but if it was sell outstanding and so secure that your partner literally could trust you and did okay that would be a very unusual set of circumstances where you would want to go see some ex-boyfriend in another country and you wouldn't you would get this ticket or whatever and wouldn't have discussed it with your boyfriend and then it turns out that he's still completely cool with it you know ludicrous this is a ludicrous situation so there's nothing abusive about this there's nothing controlling about Pete's behavior in this regard at all this in fact his response seems very measured if a young man or man is not somewhat anxious and guarding of your sexuality then he's not very interested in you so this would be a very very minimal jealousy response on the part of this young man and his response as the story is being told here is quite extraordinary and and frankly it appears that he has read some some character deficiency cues in this young lady and has basically said this is a bad deal for me I'm out of here which is a very good decision on his part so the young lady now needs to back up and understand a little bit more about human and human nature and the human nature we do not cavalierly make decisions of this magnitude with when we have when we are fortunate enough to be in a romantic relationship that is alive and well in six months most romantic relationships that start out with promise are dead by six months so if you we are fortunate enough to be one in one that is actually a live end and quite well then we should treat it very very carefully it should be treated like a very very excellent job that you want to keep or a very or a favorite possession prized possession you should be very very careful with it and not sloppy as it turns out as we find out in the story that the Pete's suspicions as to the actual dynamics of the situation turn out to be accurate it turns out the ex-boyfriend was certainly interested in nailing this girl while he was on vacation in Amsterdam and so that also becomes apparent so whether or not she was utterly and totally naive about this is really quite irrelevant she was she was young and irresponsible and miscalibrated as to the appropriate way to defend a relationship and quite frankly she got what she deserved and that's okay that's how he is sometimes you have to learn the hard way and she learned one the hard way and maybe she she takes a hard look at this and doesn't make that kind of mistake in the future and so you know over the last story you were saying that if the person is not responsible enough for conscientious enough that they that they're just not going to fare well in romantic relationships did I understand that right yeah you know Nate romantic relationships are are not for irresponsible people and they're not for gutless people yeah you got to be courageous and you have to the woman in the first story had no courage in other words somehow she was expecting to piggyback on somebody else's fortune and it was all upset about having to assume any personal financial responsibility for the rest of her life and so that was an outrageous position to be in and that sort of that sort of outrageous position is going to basically make it impossible for a romantic relationship to choose to actually grow and solidify in the end of the day you people do not wind up being consistently and interested in each other for very long if they don't admire each other as people and the problem is is that a lot of people are not very admirable as individuals and so as a result they are doomed to have inter mid intermittent intermediate-term sort of relationships but then don't work out very well and now if you are a responsible capable human being and you have a romantic relationship you are very fortunate but that guarantees nothing it doesn't mean that the spark is going to remain alive and that you're going to be interested in each other physically it may be that you will love each other tremendously if as you grow and appreciate the other person's character as you watch it through time so a lot of people wind up with that that problem that's an extremely common problem but the first problem of irresponsibility that we see in both of these scenarios from my standpoint these individuals are essentially doomed unless they do an awful lot of learning and they discover some courage and the nature of personal responsibility that is required to have relationships that are this potentially conflicted and this potential potentially tricky to manage so romantic relationships are special and they're not for children and they're not for flakes and they are not for selfish people they are for really remarkable people and and so these these two people that have the two women in this case in these last two scenarios have not been sufficiently remarkable we might hope that they may grow into that if they're lucky and so what advice do you have for people if they feel like they're like if you know how does somebody become not gutless my assumption is is the more disagreeable someone is the less gutless they are but it seems like that's not actually the case yeah there's uh what when I talk about gutless there is courage there's conscientiousness as a component of this and as well as as some degree of some degree of disagree ability if you are to you're overly agreeable and very conscientious life can be very hard for you you may be a marvelous human being but it's it's going to be you're going to have to be lucky in a romantic relationship to not be hooked up with somebody that's going to exploit you and then there's going to be trouble but in any event the probably the most fundamental issue here is going to be conscientiousness and that that's for people that haven't heard me talk about this before this is kind of what we would call character okay it's uh it is a it said it's a tendency to do things the right way to do things appropriately and to to be reasonable with other people about the rules and expectations of our behavior and theirs and so the people that are lower in conscientiousness are going to tend to have trouble in this area for the following reason that if you if you can imagine two business people that make a deal with each other on a handshake at 23 years old and if we then follow these people the next 50 years and we find out that they're still doing business together 50 years later what we're seeing is we're seeing a couple of people that that were stable and responsible and could be trusted okay and there might have been times when one of the two of them had to make an adjustment and it was might have been some hard hard things that they had to explain as they might have had to renegotiate things but if they're still doing business together 50 years later that tells us a tremendous amount about their sense of fair play and they're essentially their honor the same thing is true with two people who really care about who it is the other as a person and the day to meet at 25 years old and they're still together 50 years later and they still love that other individual and they're still trading with them in life romances are trades okay they are they are the most complex trade that human beings do we trade more time and energy more of our life with our romantic partner than with anybody else and so if people are inherently good traders then they are potentially inherently good romantic partners and if they are inherently lousy traders show me somebody that's a lousy employee that was a there was an irresponsible student and allows the employee and manages their money poorly and is upset and angry and always wanting more out of some deal and feels like they're being treated unfairly by the world you show me that individual and I will my Ouija board tells me that a a long term happy romantic relationship is fundamentally impossible for that individual and so this is this is we are talking at people in this podcast that have the capability of doing what needs to be done in order to to qualify and remain in anok relationships and their there are problems and there are challenges but these two situations that we've talked about tonight simply expose the limitations of the individuals that were involved and people can fake conscientiousness and all that character for quite a long time from from what I gather reading all a lot of these stories here they can fake it for ya there can they can fake it for a while and a good person that's highly motivated that that is determined enough might might fake it long enough to get a ring on her finger or to get a girl to say us and so I've seen that happen before I've actually seen a salesperson very effectively cover up his alcoholism for more than two years in a courtship and then as soon as he he got his prized bride then then we saw the truth and it was a fiasco so people are capable of this this is why I'm never upset when we're when we're heading towards the wedding or were hit you we've been in a situation long term and we've agreed to get married and then all hell breaks loose then then something happens and there's a big fiasco like these two incidences we talked about those are beautiful those actually finally stress people enough that we got to see their character more clearly and those are very illuminating and important incidences great people in great romances don't let a little crap like this ever get in their way mm well speaking of which we've got another example here so this is from a 21 year old female and her acquaintance is 23 year old male so Jason and I knew each other back in high school but we were never close we texts occasionally but that's about it about a month back he asked me to meet up and I agreed because I hadn't seen him in a while and I had just broken up with my boyfriend so I figured it might be good to get out there so at this point he's my to my knowledge he's single so we meet up start talking one thing led to another and we slept together afterwards he suggested being friends with benefits but I wasn't interested so I told him that today I met up with another acquaintance who knows Jason and he mentioned that Jason has a girlfriend that he's been with for two years I felt like absolute crap when I heard that I just helped him cheat well I find out what her facebook name is and I'm thinking about messaging her but I don't know if that's wise what should I do yeah I wouldn't do it I wouldn't get anywhere near a mess like that what you feel fortunate that you have found out that this was that you are a casual mating strategy target for this young man and once again the young lady asked for it the intelligent way to defend yourself against casual mating strategy which is for both of those of listeners that have not listened to previous podcasts human beings have two primary mating strategies one we're going to call para bond strategy or what we call true love strategy and the other is going to be what we call casual mating strategy or short-term mating strategy the and as as the way this works males are designed by nature early in relationships to push for short-term mating in order to to set essentially accomplish the following goal if they if they are able to have sex early very early with a minimum of investment then that likely signal that the female actually thinks that the male is so fancy that it is worth going to bed with him without any evidence of long-term commitment so this is a signal to the male that the female considers him genetically superior and therefore the male then very very like we will lose interest quite quickly because even if he might have been more interested in the female he's now less interested in the female as a long-term partner so the females job here uh is to if she's interested if he's truly interested in a guy the right move is to not be so quick to be sleeping with them 21 year olds can be excused for this kind of mistake of course anyone could but what I'm saying is this is a this is a typical young adult Stone Age brain decision and if you want to make better decisions than what you do is you don't sleep with anybody until he's paid for you on multiple occasions on dates paid so we actually had to provision you we didn't just go out and hang out okay I I tell women in my practice I tell them that the guys should pay ten times there should be ten paid dates before he gets to your sexual Treasury your sexual Treasury is female in the Stone Age is very very expensive every sex act in in nature between humans would result in a 5% chance of pregnancy even though we defend that today with birth control we can't defend the psychological consequences of it so sexual activity is biologically expensive for females and it is psychologically expensive for females and so there are four you'll get females actually talking as if as they say every man they sleep with takes a little piece of their soul and of course that's ridiculous but the point is is that there's a there can be a feeling that you had been had that you've been used and if you don't want to have that feeling then defend your sexuality was ten paid dates or another reasonable strategy like that now in terms of retaliating and cattle tailing and signaling the girlfriend that she's been cheating on this is the cheated on this is their course ridiculous there's no reason to do anything of the kind that relationship is going to spin out however it's going to spin out and we don't need to be part of a justice situation in order to intervene in that in that fiasco just move on learn the lesson and make better decisions in the future and of course in future dates don't tell the guy that you're wait 10 days because then you've just set a goal for him that I'm kept forces yeah you completely cryptic I remember a friend of mine had had heard you talk about this exact topic in and so she decided that she was going to be upfront and honest with with a man she was dating that she's going to be waiting 10 dates and of course by date 12 he was out of there and it was I I can't believe anybody missed the point of this but you know sometimes for just a joke can't be too explicit in your instruction all jokes aside though I kind of brought this up to to a couple of female friends and and female relatives this kind of concept of holding out until the guy pays and and one comment that was consistently made was well and this was actually males and females made this as well isn't that like treating like a girl like a prostitute if you're basically wait till the guy pays for you and then you sleep with them that's that that's a ludicrous thing here's the here's with the point the point is is that the we are looking for esteem signals from the male does the male value the female enough that he is actually seeing in as he gets to know her that his interest in her is indefinite and so therefore of course he's attracted to her and of course he would like to have sex with her but he is patient and he is signaling that patients as well as his is intention to provision her indefinitely as in the next 25 years okay so we are looking for axilla were really looking for his Stone Age signal inside of his head where he has shunted her in terms of his decision-making completely out of also mating strategy target into pair bond strategy now there's nothing prostitution about this at all the what's going on here is the the the female is not obligated to sleep with this guy at all she's vetting him she is actually taking herself off the market for this period of time in all probability and she is seeing him probably exclusively over a period of several weeks where she's trying to decide whether or not this is worth risking a stone-age pregnancy for god sakes which is a pretty big deal psychologically for a lot of females now it's not for all females some females are sort of unusually easy as far as that goes but most females are actually relatively conservative and so they would they would just as soon smoke out trouble and not have had sex with the male and that would be a better decision-making strategy for them than to jump in quick then find out two or three weeks later it's not working out and then having he has another notch on his buccal and she has the stone-age psychology have actually had this lingering stone age anxiety that she could be pregnant with somebody that she's not going to have long-term relationship with so these are these are what it is that we're doing and I I'm I'm confused that anyone could see this is in any way prostitution 'el the guy is not buying his way into the eggs he is allowing himself to be vetted okay if at a later point she is she's convinced that this is a very appropriate place for her to be sexual then how about it it's all good but don't rush it and set up a mental place where we are essentially pushing his patients if in fact he's playing casual mating you will find out pretty quickly the guys playing council meeting and he will turn and run probably by date five and be all pissed and bent about it which is just fine then he told you everything that you needed to know okay and and I've never had the following experience but I have talked to acquaintances just in passing with these type of examples and getting into conversations that that that there is some experience out there with these acquaintances where they data woman with the intention of pair-bonding but at the same time she's actually casually mating with a guy who I guess she perceives as extremely attractive on the side or on the other vein where where they're actually the guy who's on the side he's they're the he-man and she's you know not sleeping with a guy that she considers a pair bond material I kind of look at it like this is just so far unusual for a very low conscientious woman but I'm not sure yeah that's low conscientious female behavior that is not that is not typical female behavior and females that would that would play those kinds of strategies are not females that are very likely to have long-term romantic love relationships so those may be scheming females that wind up married to some poor schmuck with a good job and they're lazy flake with a pretty face or a good figure for a while till they get fat so they're there that that that game has been played a billion times on this planet and in the last 10 years so that that is no issue and that's really not what I'm interested in I'm not interested in such individuals I'm interested in and the the very noble and exquisite pursuit of romantic love and that means two people finding each other that they really they really dig each other's humanity but they really find each other a person to be fascinating and they're sexually attracted to each other and they feel like they have enough commonality about how they view the world and how they view their futures that they want to make a life together that's what I'm interested in and anything else is you know is certainly part of human nature and part of the drama of human nature but to me that's not what it is that I'm interested in figuring out how to help people seek alright and on that same vein we've it looks like our final situation our final life example is a couple that seems to have found this type of situation for themselves as they they are beautifully in love and have a wonderful city in here where the man is 34 his girlfriend is 37 but she has a daughter who's 9 years old so he says I have really no idea what to do my girlfriend and I have been together for 8 years I love her and her daughter who I consider my own I honestly can't imagine my life without them that said things have gotten really tough with the daughter recently who her name is Milly for as long as we've been together it's always been hard to be seen in public with Milly alone she is blond with blue eyes and clearly not biologically mine I'm a very dark-skinned Indian man and I wear a turban because I'm Sikh whenever we're in public alone together we get stopped and questioned a lot for the last few years I've been stopped in questioned by the police at least once a month with Milly it's the same time every time they separate us ask me some bullshit questions and now that she's old enough to speak her mind they grill Milly about me and how she knows me when Milly was too young to understand things and express herself clearly there was an incident where I was arrested after taking her into a family bathroom to change her diaper and Milly was placed into steak air for several hours until the cops could reach her mom to sort things out the justification they used was that Milly was really upset and crying when we came out of the bathroom and even after her mom sorted things out she was visited by a social worker for a few months nothing that bad has happened since Milly started talking but the questioning by the police hasn't stopped it's gotten to the point where Milly now actively avoids going out in public with me alone and has asked her mom if she can hire a white nanny to pick her up from camp and drop her off this summer so I won't have to I honestly don't know what to do I know that Milly loves me and that she still wants to spend time with me but I just don't know how I should respond to her requests to me Milly is my daughter I've been around since she was a baby and I've been active in raising her I know that she's still too young to understand things but I can't help but feel terrible at her request since she asked last night I haven't been able to sleep I don't want to I don't want her to grow up hating the fact that I look different than her I don't want her to be afraid of going out with me I don't really know what advice I need but anything is helpful I just don't know what to do yeah that's actually a very interesting type of a situation my my first I have this little this little unit needs to solve this problem and they're going to need to and solving this problem what we what we actually have here is we have some interesting conflicts and so we have a conflict of a man that's wearing a turban in the United States and he's yet he is with what is likely to be a Caucasian love and her Caucasian blond-haired blue-eyed daughter and so as a result of this we can all do an awe about how human nature shouldn't be prejudiced or upset about this but but reality is reality and so and particularly given the antipathy that exists between the the Middle East and the Middle East Islamic religion and in the United States and and conventional American life here and so as a result you can expect now in terms of being stopped once a month by police that seems like hyperbole and I'd like to see the records on that it's probably it might have happened three times for months and I doubt that it has happened 28 times in 28 months that would be outrageous however the even if it was outrageous well one would think that one would start to think about how one looks in public and whether or not that turban is worth it okay so we start to get questions about what we are bringing to the situation and what we have control over and and as far as I'm concerned someone's religion is between them and their own belief structure or doesn't have to be something that's advertised to anybody and so if you want to advertise that and you want to deal with the social consequences of that then that's a choice that that individual is going to have to make the now there's also there are also things that the you could do so if the family unit wanted to the way both the girlfriend and the girl dressed could be much more could actually look much more like our writer here so there would be ways that they could dress themselves that when when he and she were Republic that would make her look for example a little bit more Middle Eastern and a little bit more dramatic essentially putting her in costume and if she if there's such love in this little family they ought to be you that the little girl may very well be willing to do this and this would completely eliminate any Bologna from cross-examination about anybody anywhere in sight so I think that that that would be a very strong signal to the social world that this child and this man are very tight they're bonded and that they are you know essentially on the same team so two ways that you can go you can you can costume her or you can you can walk away from some of your own some of your own expressions of your own religion in public and you can look much more conventional and by looking much more conventional I guarantee you if you're walking around the United States and very conventional clothes with a little blonde girl nobody's going to say a word to you so we have to understand that you are bringing some of this on yourself and those are choices and some interesting choices that that that individual is going to have to going to have to deal with mm-hmm now I read this and I thought I guess I started thinking that the problem here is him having to prove that she's actually his daughter or you know his stepdaughter I thought why don't they just take a family picture that he keeps in his wallet and if anybody else tops them you could just show them and say you know there's there's her mother there's me and that's that's her actually with that that's excellent that's excellent I think yeah I think anything like that is good but I also think these other sort of costume markings are very powerful for people and I think that that would that would keep everybody shut up in everybody away if they were to do that and certainly this is a this is absolutely a personal choice on the part of this man that he he is he is essentially asking for this kind of scrutiny and he can he can walk away from the scrutiny at any time and in my judgment any any signals that one has to show their religion is that is not something that you were signaling God or all or anybody else you are signaling that to other people okay and so you have to decide whether or not you want to signal that to other people and you want the consequences of that signal and and so it's important that we keep the values very straight here and that we look clearly at the cost-benefit of these choices and that we realize that it is unreasonable for us to ask the world to ignore our signals when those signals are part of a broader sociological myth truly that those signals are part of the biggest sociological problem that our world currently faces okay and and so what you're saying is that that people really can't expect other people to change just because we wish that they would know you know this is a very important principle and one of the one of the finest books I ever read in self-help was a book called how I found freedom in an unfree world by the actually the investment advisor economist Harry Brown really quite a philosopher and Harry Brown was actually the candidate for president of the United States for the Libertarian Party I think twice which largely on the stature of this book and the the book isn't particularly political it's a it's a statement about how to look at the world and he makes very clear the following issue and that is that there are things that we're going to call direct alternatives that you can do things and nobody else can stop you and you can change your life and then there are what we're going to call indirect alternatives where you have to change everybody else in the world so that they'll do things so that things are done the way that you would like them okay now the the this this scenario is setting up a classic frustration around the indle indirect alternative like gee I wish everybody would let me send my signal about my religion and not give me any hassle about it at the same time okay well they won't okay and experience has shown that this is going to be a problem so you now have a direct alternative that you can just fix it and so we may not like direct alternatives but it is incredibly important to understand when you are in power and you can change your circumstances and when you are not in power and you can't this is a beautiful example of it this if this man wants this love relationship to thrive and he wants to be with this little family and he feels like he has the psychological gold the human being so desperately seek then he should respect the fact that sometimes that involves some sacrifices and and he has in front of him a beautiful direct alternative that he could that he could use and he could have a very fine life with a very small price as far as I'm concerned I now have another book to read thank you dr. Lao dead that's right I love that that one is one of the great ones I love the title it's I love the title well that that's going to wrap it for this week thank you again there's a phenomenal insight as always again you know I always say this shouldn't be called evolutionary psychology it should be called revolutionary psychology yes yeah this is a whole new way of looking at things and and with it gives us a lot of power over our overall happiness and our well-being
Back to the top
🏃     👖




Artist