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Episode 24: Keys to a Successful Relationship
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last week we talked about the different approaches in psychology and about whether or not opposites attract and it really made a lot of sense with what you were saying about that relationships are value propositions so today I want to go over the keys to a successful relationship and I was looking at some very interesting videos it was a the YouTube author was called how to get your ex back so right away it's a little my ears perked up so I wanted to hear what this guy say and he went over why relationships fail but let's have a listen we're gonna analyze this there's four main things that he talks about and well let's just go one by one and just get some get some opinions from you and then go from there right right yeah it should be fun so here's our here's our guy here the dating coach hi guys Brad browning here with another video about breakups and relationships and this time I'm going to talk about why breakups happen and I'll explain four of the most common things that cause relationships to fail for most people watching this video there's a very good chance that one of these four things I'm about to discuss was the main reason behind your breakup even if your ex told you something differently now there's one very important thing you need to aware of before I go any further and that's that your ex almost certainly lied to you after your breakup ninety nine percent of the time the person who initiated the break-up will lie about why they want to end things sometimes it's more of a partial truth than a blatant lie sometimes even a subconscious lie but if your ex told you why he or she wanted to break up I can almost guarantee you that it was a lie or at the very least only partially true this is something I've learned after years of coaching and having worked with thousands of people who are recovering from a breakup so trust me on this unless it was something totally obvious that led to your breakup like your ex you know walking in on you while you were naked in the in bed with the office intern then then you probably don't really know why your ex wanted to break up because they were most likely lying alright dr. Lao so let's hear it well actually he has a point he's talking about the the situation where you you have been dumped and the other person is broken up with you and so very often when people break up with people it's uh they go to considerable lengths to essentially soften the blow as to why this is and the reason I mean sometimes they don't sometimes people are are just relatively it did this all this guy is pre 'test but it dis pre presupposes some pretty sensitive pretty decent people the the refs odd people of the world break up and they may tell people exactly why as they slam the door and walk out okay but this guy is talking about sort of more sophisticated people possibly than average and more emotionally stable people in average and more socially sensitive people in average and as a result those people will tend to this is what I call the Octopus strategy that they'll throw ink all over the water so that you can't see where they are and the reasons for this are are because the very often the reasons for rejecting people are actually fairly objective in the sense that it's an issue of one party supposing that they are essentially superior to the other party and that they can do better so at the fundamental level the reason why people break up is because all relationships are value propositions and so people are doing cost-benefit analysis on on all their potential alternatives and so if they break up with you they simply feel like they can do better and they've got reasons why they think they can do better and so that's why they're moving on and but they may not tell you this because that's a that's a essentially the most personal and most hurtful kind of feedback that somebody could give you so they will very often come up with a story that is as he says partially true because they need to have it ring true and they're doing this in order to essentially spare your feelings of the rejection so this is no different than why we tell a person who is second place for a job interview or a promotion that they were really excellent and really fine or let's say the person was fourth place out of 12 and we say they were outstanding they were right up there close to the top and it was a really tough decision we don't say actually it was a very easy decision you weren't even close to the top candidate we don't say that so by being sensitive there's no reason not to essentially give people as good a feedback as we can while we are giving them bad feedback and this is this certainly makes some sense now to the to the extent that if you did tell the person you're breaking up with some of the truths about their qualities would they even be able to change them well but the whole point here is that people make an assessment in a relationship about people are well aware of your assets and liabilities as you enter a relationship and so they may they may actually sense the possibility that they could actually change you or improve some of the liabilities or you have cloaked some of your liabilities until a few weeks have gone by and then those liabilities start coming more to the surface and so now it starts changing the value proposition so the so it is true that people will essentially people don't sort of pencil out the value of somebody in a very cold mathematical fashion across different domains of life like looks friends and personality they do it much more impressionistic aliy and they're really not they are not consciously aware of what level of goodness or competitive strength the person has to have in order to be acceptable so they may start to enter a relationship and they believe that you might be acceptable but it turns out as they get to know you better and they get a feel for what it feels like to be with you they they could actually tell you well the problem is you know your biceps just aren't big enough the they might they might actually think that that is a reason but they might not actually even know for sure and so if you said well now wait a second I can go to the gym and I can make my biceps bigger they the thing is is that essentially what they wind up with is a global rejection where their overall feel towards you is simply not up to standard of what it is that they want to continue and so it isn't one specific thing that they could put their finger on that is the glaring deficiency it is usually a more global sense and so in that way they can't they couldn't even quite tell you what the issues they could tell you what some of the issues were and they can describe they could if they wanted to coldly recount some of your deficiencies and incidentally I've heard that there are some pretty cold sad excuses for human beings who have done exactly that to two people that they'd broken up with but but in general that is not actually what's happening that the person actually is forming a global impression about how it is that they feel in a relationship with the other person and they get a feeling for whether or not intent incidentally a very interesting check on whether or not a person is truly acceptable to you is whether or not you are proud to be with them and so this defines that sometimes being an interesting thing that happens that as people get to know each other better and they've been with each other maybe a few months they get a feel with whether or not it feels when they're in the presence of third parties that are that are significant in some way whether or not they feel proud of the person that they are with that that is not something a lot of times that they can precisely anticipate how they're going to feel they just either feel it or they don't feel it okay and if they don't feel that if they're a little bit embarrassed or a little bit ashamed or there a little bit you know just essentially but it doesn't make them feel good then this is an internal guidance system that is telling them that their mind actually believes that they can do better than they're doing and they're on their way to breaking up so so yeah you yes go ahead oh say so in an interest of it in the interest of efficiency you think it's a good idea for me to have my first date at family gatherings from now on I actually actually could tell you an interesting story one of the happiest couples that I know and that is the man they were both in their mid to late 30s and so they're both experienced in life and both highly intelligent very nice-looking competent people and and the man was someone who was always very bold with women and had had a great deal of success with women and he but he he met this girl and at a lunch and it about you know in a luncheon and spoke with her for about 15 minutes before she had to leave just happen to be in a cafe and they were the only two people in the cafe and so they happened to so he and and the waitress of all things sat them very close to each other in the cafe and so this man actually you know started a conversation was hitting on the young lady got her phone number and then and then when he asked her out a couple weeks later he when he saw her and they and they spent a little bit of time together he actually drove that girl over to meet his mother and of course that was an out an incredible thing to have done at that point particularly in the middle of Los Angeles which is where this took place but he knew he literally his is he had enough intuition about who this person was and what they were going to be like but he is his mind ran through the circuits and he did an unthinkable thing to him so that that will tell you sometimes you know an awful lot and you sometimes you so in this case he knew this woman was actually acceptable but he had met his future wife she she wouldn't know for sure she wasn't that quick to figure this out but sometimes when it is outstanding and you can you can actually sense who the person is and you can sense that they meet all of your critical criteria you know and this is the psychologist Nathaniel Brendan who is one of the great teachers about romantic love process he didn't know anything about evolution and evolutionary psychology but he was a very observant person psychologist when he called this a shock of recognition and it's as if you you knew a whole bunch of things that you've been looking for your whole life and you you meet them and you see it and you recognize it and so this can happen and but but when people are dragging their feet and hiding you from their relatives and their important people that's telling you something all right well let's continue with this clip the first reason why this this speaker claims that relationships fail is moving it let's hear why yes let's hear this this is a very common trait that many people are in a relationship why why your partner may seem to think you're cute it's actually one of the biggest relationship killers yes as where does it sound studies have shown that being the queen girlfriend or boyfriend is actually a massive massive turnoff human beings need a challenge so when something becomes too easy it's just human nature to pick up and get going and this is the sort of survival mechanism this is our way of saying find a new challenge I'm bored it's ingrained people also also hate feeling a tied down and easily get frustrated when somebody is constantly pestering them or requiring their attention this toxic trait doesn't just happen to women men are almost as likely to be guilty of excessive meatiness as well yeah it's just are you there with me yep yeah okay it's just a and this is an interesting guy he is obviously very ignorant of psychology but the uh but that's that's okay that's that's fair enough he's he's sort of been around the block probably talked to a lot of people and he's probably read some pop psychology and so as a result he's making a classic error in in understanding psychological process he's confusing correlation with causation here so of course if you see a relationship where one person is being very needy and and it's very likely that the other person is looking for the exit the now it isn't that that the neediness is actually causing this what we're the process the neediness is a result of the signaling systems the esteem dynamics that are taking place between the two partners guys so the what is the person needy for this guy would say well attention okay well what do we mean by attention what we mean by attention literally isn't just any sort of attention like hey you what are you doing over there hey notice me no that isn't what's going on the attention that we're talking about is that the needy person is needing and craving esteem signals they are wanting signals from the other individual through whatever communication channel is available so that it could be a needed girlfriend on the other side of the country that's on the phone all night long and all you've got to do well the only thing you can do is talk on the phone okay however it could be that someone is feeling they're living in the same house and they're feeling very needy of evidence that they are found sexually desirable so they want to be hugged and they want to be touched and they want to be caressed okay or they might be a little more verbal in the way they are work and so they want compliments the point is is that they want is signals they want signals that they are esteemed or valued when you are when you do not receive signals that your esteemed or valued you are very likely to exhibit needy behavior okay so so this is he calls this a trait neediness is not typically a trait okay neediness is a state neediness is something that arises in in the organism when it's in trouble when it's feeling deprivation and it's feeling anxiety so you are not needy for food all the time but you can get very needy for food if you don't have any for three or four days or water or a blanket okay or sleep okay or cues from your partner that you value very greatly that you are found desirable as well okay so this is a mistake so this guy's advice would be quit acting needy but the truth of the matter is the person that's acting needy I can't just quit acting needy any more than they could say quit whining about being hungry okay well if you're hungry you know you can't just tell somebody well quit being hungry you can't tell somebody just quit being needy you can't quit being meaty you are needy because you are you are in an anxious state where you feel the relationship slipping away and you are desiring reassurance from the other party party and so that is what is actually transpiring here now of course we've all met people who were quote very needy a lot there are personalities that that are you know essentially pretty what do you call it I don't know what we would call it neurotic pathetic sad sack people highly unstable etc highly neurotic individuals so of course there are such individuals we certainly aren't going to talk them out of it and it's not important that we instruct them very much on a romantic process the people that were interested in talking to you about robotic process to to be wiser and smarter about it are the normal people like us and I don't know about you Nate but in my long and very boring but practically checkered history in the romantic front I have occasionally been needy okay I've been in situations where I felt over rewarded in a relationship the woman seemed fancier than myself and I could feel that I was not getting feedback from her that that was essentially reassuring feedback and so therefore I felt needy for the positive feedback and I felt all the anxiety that we feel when we're about to get dumped and incidentally whenever I felt that I did get dumped that was that was that it was an absolute perfect correlation that anytime I was feeling that I wound up getting dumped and so this is a hopefully this clarifies this for our for our listeners that this is not a trait and it's not actually something that you can change it's actually a signal telling you that you are absolutely in the wrong place but not to worry because you're about to be kicked to the curb and so the wrong place will soon change how's that for a dose of reality there you go you see like when you say this in my mind I start to think about the pop psychology and some of the different approaches that are out there and a lot of them they don't really tell patients this what they seek to do is to tell the spouse here's how you send signals of status and and value to your partner so they don't feel quite as needy however the person who was feeling like checking out of the relationship is like well I'm not really valuing them but I can say the right words so that they can stop being upset at me yes and this can be this is a fiasco but this is this is sort of standard marital therapy where one partner is feeling ie needy and clingy because they're getting rejection kids and the other partner is hold in front of the therapist and instructed about how it is that we're going to put out this fire unquenchable thirst on the part of the person that's being rejected and they I have actually seen with my own eyes some of the most pathetic signal cues of of acceptance from the person who is actually sending rejection cues and of course that's about like having a big city sewer with a massive crack in it and you're out there with some duct tape okay there's no stopping this process and that relationship is knee-deep in shit in no time so yeah this is uh we're not going to wish these processes away when when someone is very needy and clingy there's a good reason and it's because they are effectively overvalued in the relationship the other party feels undervalued in relationship dynamics in other words they feel like they are not getting appropriate value for what it is that they have to trade in romance and they are they are essentially shopping their alternatives out there in the world and the relationship is you know it's effectively at best on hold so is that what do you advise your patients if they come in and one person is say if the complaint is well this this person's being really needy what what do you do in that situation well I'll just tell you about a typical situation the this is this is something that has happened many times in my career so the I could I could I could give you essentially a composite example so a woman comes in been married 10 years and early in the marriage there is early in the relationship there's some sexuality not too much and it cools off but there's a great friendship that that then turns into a marriage between two relatively young people and ten years later there's been essentially no sex in this relationship there's been very little sex it's been the man has been not not interested hardly at all they've been to sex therapy you know they tried toys she's you know dinner here eighteen different ways etc there seems to be no solution and now so the person comes in you know once that once in a blue moon somebody will walk in and they literally are mystified they don't with what's interesting about this is that the person sort of knows but they sort of don't know and so it's interesting when and what I do in these situations is I'm very careful to ask very carefully about the sexual dynamics early in the relationship I want to know what that first year looked like I want to know what the first three or four months looked like the reason is that tells us a tremendous amount about whether the person could ever possibly qualify again so if I had a situation where the marriage was very hot and heavy for a year you know a year before they got married and then after they got married then it turns out that it all cooled down and that it's right now it's stone cold now we may be dead in the water but we might not be dead in the water because something may have changed fundamentally that the woman may have gained 30 pounds they the who knows she may have female problems and she may not she may be in orgasmic and it frustrated so who knows what the issues are but the issues are worth talking about if they ever had really good chemistry okay now usually they will report that they did not have very good chemistry what they had was a they had some loving processes they they feel like they're very great friends etc but the man was never heavily pursuing the female for example over the course of a year okay it's unlikely the man pursued the female heavily over the course of the year and now we have a situation where if she has not changed in her physical appearance that it's dead in the water now so very often I have these situations and when I have these situations it turns out that when I and it's not always that the female is being rejected this could absolutely be the other direction the female could be coming to me saying I have no interest in sex with my husband okay so that that also I've seen it both ways and either way the the solution is the solution to the mystery is the same and that is that somebody doesn't qualify and the and so as a therapist I explain the fact that that the nervous system essentially works very much like a bargain hunter and Macy's that you are you're there looking for something really good and if the cost is low enough and the value is high enough you can't stop yourself you've got to buy it okay it's a cost-benefit analysis and you're excited about it that's exactly what romance is it's a cost-benefit analysis it's a it's the most all-encompassing cost-benefit analysis that there is it's the biggest decision that people make in their lives and so as a result it's a very complicated cost-benefit analysis but it certainly is a cost-benefit analysis and it's going to turn out it's complicated by the fact that very often in the mail we'll be interested in up in the female because she qualifies as a casual mating partner and she may qualify as a great friend and so let's let's use some numbers here just to give to give a feel for this let's suppose these two people or a pair of eights but the male by nature is wanting to only commit to a nine because he feels like he needs to be over rewarded in the looks department which is very standard operating procedure for our species so a pair of eights meet and they're the female the female meets criteria for casual mating but she does not meet criteria for para bond strategy he's not excited enough now turns out that she's a great person and that they wind up being wonderful friends and they can tell that very early so now you have a situation where the guy if he's very stable honorable highly conscientious very decent kind of a person he can see that he qualifies as a pair bond or a long term love strategy for the female who's falling in love with him and they've had sex you know 12 or 15 times over three months or whatever the hell it is in other words it's not hot and heavy but it's there and the female is very comfortable and it's actually happy with you know allowing herself to be sexually vulnerable to this man the man was sort of interested what the heck was he didn't really start out to get his to get this deep to the wicked but he's there and so then what could happen is they feel like they've got to sort of do the right thing they don't want to lose the best friend and they go ahead and marry this girl because that's what she wants maybe the relationship drags on for another year having sex a couple a month and then at the end of a year they decide to get married and then 10 years later it's not a couple of times a month it's now four times a year okay now the I will tell people that that at that point you have to understand that you don't qualify so if you're a male and your wife is not into you then she's dodging you at every turn then you don't qualify and if you're a female and your husband is not chasing you around trying to nail you a couple of times a week you don't qualify okay and maybe maybe if you once qualified then there's a possibility that we can we can do some remedial work on what has happened in terms of sex appeal on everybody's part and maybe we can change that but if it was never their strong early that it's never going to be there and so and so I will tell people and like I said I've had this conversation many times and and I will explain to people when I heal to hear their story oh you don't qualify okay and that's just the way it is you qualify to be a great friend you qualify to be a lifetime friend you may qualify to be the most trusted business partner you may qualify to be a fabulous mother to the guy's children for God's sake but you may have had three of them but you don't qualify to be a romantic love okay and if you don't qualify to be among romantic love you don't and no amount of stop stomping our foot at reality or insisting that things are going to be different or that we're going to do marriage therapy or sexual counseling or sexual instruction is none of it's going to help because these these issues of whether or not we qualify or don't qualify are the most right brain intuitive absolutely involuntary responses that there are they are essentially the same wrist sponses as whether or not you like a piece of pizza okay you either like the piece of pizza or you don't like the piece of pizza you know I cannot stand cilantro and I I can I can remember a woman on match.com that was writing about yourself and she said and by the way I can't understand why anybody would ever want to eat cilantro and I I thought that way there's my soul mate okay see how I feel about cilantro if there's a slightest business cilantro in my tostada or my taco I push it away I'm not going to eat it okay there's and yet somebody else it's a much loved spice fair enough okay the bottom line is we can't make ourselves you know the Bonnie Raitt song said it better than it's ever been said I can't make you love me if you want okay you can't make your heart feel something it won't that's just how it is and so so that's what I tell people I tell them gently and I tell them intelligently and I explain it but that you know that is the story yeah one of these days we're going to have to get you up at a karaoke bar and have you sing that song for us not likely [Laughter] yeah you know when I was when I was much younger I went on a went on a first date with a girl and I'd been maybe after that I went on a couple more dates and I was talking to my grandparents who I consider pretty wise and they've been together for 60 years and they're exactly what you talked about my I still catch my grandpa my grandma will be in the kitchen like cooking something and I'll catch him pinching her behind as a joke and and she does the same thing they just got this beautiful relationship that you can tell there's still passion there but I was talking about about this girl that I had been dating for a couple of dates and I said grandpa you know I like her she's cute but our conversations is just awkward so I'm thinking maybe it'll take a little bit of time to get to know her and then it won't be quite so awkward and he said you know what don't worry about it if it's awkward from the first five seconds it will always be awkward yeah yeah there's a there's a there's an an old wise man that has seen an awful lot of human nature play up and and I would say that obviously the great Jane Austen novel Pride and Prejudice is is a contradiction of what he's saying but I would say my my my friend that told that I tell the story of that met the girl in the restaurant he actually has a saying about his his history and relationships and he says when it's good you know it and when it's not good you know it and that's uh and you you can you know a date to if it if everything is not it is not good on day two we're in trouble so the system is designed actually to give people the benefit of the doubt I mean particularly if you're a male and so the system is absolutely designed for the benefit of the doubt and so we should be excited and hopeful and actually probably looking past some red flags that we very may well see you know six weeks from now that we're not seeing now so yeah I think I would give your uncle a 90 percent accurate on that on that comment what we're going to reserve 10% for rare events will give them a third date you know they've gotten a lot of solid objective characteristics and there's an awful lot of value there it's a fine person but it's not the right flavor give it a little bit more time but then you know when you know it you know it mm-hmm alright so move let's move on along to the to the next section of this this dating coach the next our reason why relationships fail in his mind is jealousy so here we go hmm okay yes this is another big reason why relationships don't work out being too controlling over your partner will actually give you less control in the end typically the more controlling a partner gets the more the other partner will try and break free and eventually when that happens there's almost no turning back so if you were fewer guilty of this you need to learn to manage your jealousy it's a huge sign of insecurity and it's never going to actually have any benefit or positive outcome jealousy is a natural emotion all humans have will feel unless you're you know a sociopath so the key is controlling that jealousy rather than controlling your partner well this sort of up sort of so so pathetic comment so let's uh let's look at the facts the facts are that jealousy is a signal that your relationship is under threat from a competitor the if you are it's a designed neural circuit that says he says it's natural these are these neural circuits work slightly different in males and females it's going to turn out that this this distinction between male and female the circuitry with respect to the jealousy mechanism was first discovered by dr. David buss now at the University of Texas and probably the world's leading authority on human mating behavior any of you that are interested and reading more about dr. buses work you can his classic it's called the evolution of desire and it's it's a it's a you know encyclopedic kind of sort of expose on on how human beings work now what what buss found was that male sexual jealousy and female sexual jealousy are quite different it turns out that males are much more obsess about infidelity than females and that is because of the different biological cost genetic costs that are in play you have to understand that these mechanism the mechanisms the neural circuits that give rise to the experience of jealousy were shaped under ancestral conditions in Africa in the last 2 million years and so the when this species became a pair bond species when the male started investing in offspring this is when jealousy would have started to become a part of human evolution the there is no jealousy there is no sexual jealousy when an animal won in one wolf or one Fox meat mates with another Fox in the woods and then walks off and then the female may mate with some other Fox you know two days later there's no jealousy mechanism because the male is not intending to use some of his lifeblood and work and invest in the offspring that he may have he may have created when you have a para bond species when a male is going to stick around with the female and invest in her and feed her and protect her and feed her offspring then if that's going to happen you were going to get jealousy mechanisms evolving in that species and you do so it's not just in humans you'll see this you know essentially all over nature and so the you'll also see some sexual jealousy and interesting other species that are not pair bond species but the this clearly is a para bond species type of situation so human beings exhibit this and males exhibited in a tremendous anger and in fact they're maximun very often is to leave the relationship okay so they're they're essentially the cost-benefit is if I cannot know that the child is going to be mine I'm sure as hell not going to stick around and defend you and feed you and then feed your offspring if there's a good chance it's not my offspring so the males tend to be much more dramatic in their willingness to break off a relationship than a female now a female has a I'm not saying the females don't feel that way and they don't behave that way but I'm just telling you that they do not have the same level resolution when this happens as males do that is because females face a different adaptive problem so if a man is in a relationships relationship with a female and then it turns out he's also having a sexual relationship with another female then what the female actually has is a rival for that males time and energy and attention she does not have a problem that this may not be her child that he is creating by having sex with her it is absolutely her child and he's absolutely the father and so her problem is more about fighting over resources than it is literally the entire enchilada so it's about how many of his resources is she going to get if he's still willing to quote come home with her come home to her that she may be able to quote fight for him and win him away from the rival then he's still absolutely worth having because no other male on earth will be as invested in her offspring as this guy who is the father and so as a result females reaction to infidelity is quite a bit different than males reaction to Philadelphia leti they may act like they're gonna break off a relationship but they're tenday tend to not do so they name a storm and scream and yell and cry and they may throw a big fuss but the bottom line is is if the guys willing to come home they'll probably take him back okay that is because the cost-benefit in the situation in essentially the stone-age dynamics that are running this are dictating that that is probably the best option for her so as a result that's so now so now we're going to back up and see if quote jealousy is the cause of relationships demise like this this young man thinks they are it is not the cause of the demise relationships this is a mistake as once again they are mistaking correlation with causation so if you see a relationship that is full of jealousy processes it is not the jealousy processes that are causing the relationships demise it is in fact the fact that there is one individual in that relationship that is exhibiting behavior that indicates that there defect okay that is causing the other individual to feel jealous today so their response the jealousy mechanism is a protective mechanism for that individual situation and they are essentially trying to to threaten and negotiate etcetera their partner that's what they're trying to do females when they become jealous actually are recognizing that they have sexual competitors that are more enticing than they are and it turns out that they start working on their looks they start losing weight they start going to the gym they start painting their nails they start sharpening up their clothes they start getting their hair tented etc in other words they tried strive to be more competitive while it is that they're signaling that they're jealous okay the whereas males if they have a sexual competitor in the situation they're likely to be walking out jumping in their truck and leaving okay so that that is so etc now they may there may be obviously more dynamics and yelling and some some very as they say you know what's going to you know what's this kind of a joke is what's the same thing as a torn net tornado in Oklahoma divorce you know somebody's losing a mobile home and you know when it's all there's a big drama things are things are made there may be some eggs flying around the room etc but it isn't the jealousy process that is causing the problem the jealousy process is a symptom of the problem now one last caveat obviously if we have a highly disagreeable narcissistic controlling net case of a male okay that is that has a female who loves him and honors him and only has sex with him and only has eyes for him and yet he feels so over awarded and it's so naturally insecure and touchy that he feels like other men are going to get into her pants when she goes to the store and he acts all very controlling and like a nutcase then can he caused the demise of the relationship of course but the demise of that relationship was inevitable okay we're not going to instruct him out of that situation because that's who that guy is okay so once again to instruct people that jealousy is the cause of a problem of relationship is absurd it is not the cause it is the effect of problems in the relationship and furthermore it turns out that the actual scientific research on this topic very clearly indicates that couples that have occasional bouts of jealousy are actually the couples that are in fact the happiest couples the it turns out that if you value your partner so much that it turns out that if they get some attention from other people it causes you anxiety that you feel the upsetedness of having to protect your relationship from rivals that's a good thing okay this is a this is in fact a great test for people out there that wonder if they are sort of in a flat relationship and that their best friend it didn't married 14 years but you know I don't know am I really in the right place ask yourself this question ask yourself if your partner slept with somebody else what would you think and if the answer is oh boy that'd be great that's that sounds ok how about it knock yourself out the answer that comes out in your nervous system then we know a tremendous amount about where your relationship is at yeah it's um it reminds me again same-same grandparents he gave me that advice about the awkwardness with that beautiful relationship whenever they used to argue one of they would always compete as to who could leave the other and get more mates mm-hmm yes I very clearly remember them doing this and my grandpa says something about how he could go and get dates you know anytime he wanted and she goes and of course this is my grandmother at 65 years old she goes look at this body I could go outside and get any younger man [Laughter] and that's great so you're seeing the sort of repent you're seeing a recurrent a recurrent theme of occasional jealousy and anxiety about about their partner's work and in the world the competitors and that's a wonderful thing that hopefully people don't see it too often in relationship but they'll if they never see it if they never see it then that's probably not actually the best sign I'm not saying that you can't have a relationship and never have that experience but I would consider that to be unusual for our species alright next one is falling into a boring routine yes okay let's let's hear the genius both men and women have an equal desire for fun and excitement the need for adventure and excitement varies from person to person but nobody wants to be stuck in the same boring routine forever every relationship needs to have some elements of fun and excitement you don't think of skydiving every week or you know we're ridiculous cost you when you have sex with your partner but you do need to keep things interesting and avoid being too complacent often when the spark fades in a relationship stops being you know new and exciting neither partner will make any real effort to keep things interesting and that's a huge mistake you need to make sure that your partner is having fun and maintains their interest in you and your relationship and I hate to be the bearer of bad news here but even the best relationships require some maintenance to work so if you want to live happily ever after then both you and your better half need to put in the work to avoid to keep the spark alive and avoid falling into a boring passionless routine let me let me I understand what he's trying to say and I understand sort of timeless advice that he's giving us that that it seems to be something that couldn't possibly be wrong so it seems like the safe kind of health advice that we hear about drink two or three more glasses of water a day I can't possibly hurt you and can only do you good but I would say that it's fundamentally wrong what he's telling this now why the people that eat for example very healthy food they do not get tired very healthy 50 they get satiated to the point where they're not hungry for a while and then what happens is that the homeostatic drive mechanisms that exist inside of people will then cause them to be hungry again and the same thing is true with your sleep mechanism so your sleep mechanism will actually you will feel tired as you get further on the day and then you will get very sleepy and then you will sleep and if you sleep dissociation you wake up the next morning we cannot get you to sleep it's not possible we have to do some brain damage of some kind hit you on the head give you a drug etc but there's no way that you can take a fully satiated brand asleep satiated brain and put it to sleep you can't do it okay because you have homeostatic drive mechanisms that are driving these behaviors now it's going to turn out that if you qualify for your mate and your mate qualifies for you then what's going to happen is is that there's going to be homeostatic drive mechanisms that are going to rise up and make sex a priority now let's let's back up because it actually isn't boring routine that will get in the way of people's sex lives it's actually getting overwhelmed with too many ancillary projects will get in the way so if you have too many things tugging at your attention and you are working very hard to rise in dominance hierarchies and get more resources so that you can have fancier displays or that you're having to push your children very very hard because you want them to get better grades so they can get to a better school so that they can then have a fancy etc in other words the normal human relentless push for trying to display their gene quality can lead to people being you know essentially exhausted overwhelmed etcetera now it's going to turn out that the job of the nervous system is to guide behavior along two general lines the first goal is survival and the second goal is reflection and so it's going to turn out that it the goals are always in that order it is survival first and then reproduction so it's going to turn out you you better not be doing reproductive behavior unless we can make sure we could survive bad that's way too risky so as a result of there we can essentially expand out a lot of survival behavior and get an awful lot of irons in the fire to the point where there seems to be no time left over for reproductive behavior and then we've made a mistake okay so I would not say that you have to do things to quote keep your relationship alive and keep things interesting and new I think this is ludicrous can you imagine people in the Stone Age saying oh I don't know sure wish you had some purple lingerie you know I'm saying of course not I'm saying maybe we should change up the music okay of course not there is no way that this is true okay the the issue is do we have enough leisure where people are well rested enough healthy enough fit enough okay are they a good rendition of themselves and do they still qualify for their partner if that's true and they they have enough time and energy and that they've made essentially the the romantic time in their in their lives where they are just together and it's quiet and they're not overwhelmed etc then sexual impulses arise spontaneously in the system and nothing fancy needs to happen any more than we need to doctor up our food to like it a lot okay so again the a little bit there of a misunderstanding about what is actually going wrong in human relationships but you know I don't I can't beat him up too much for that for those mistakes but it actually he's indicating a lack of understanding of how this really works I had a couple that that clearly had a great love relationship and the first eight years of their relationship they were very spontaneous and sexual and yet it to quote the woman she says well things have changed now after we've had two children we don't do it in other people's bathrooms anymore so this was very spontaneous people okay and very very much into each other etc and so they they did not go on a vacation and spend overnight together for more than ten years after they had their after their first child so their first child by the time their first child was about ten and the second trial was eight was the first time they allowed themselves to park those children with relatives and they then at my instigation actually in my encouragement they went down to the Caribbean and they had a week by themselves and I heard back from her she said it was exactly as you had anticipated it that it took us a day or two to catch up on her sleep and then when that happened our sexuality came back very very strong and remained that way beautifully for the whole week okay so that in other words they still qualified for each other and what was getting in the way it wasn't that the relationship was was without sexuality but it was much muted because these two very hard-working highly conscientious people were had had just too many irons in the fire to allow sex to be a priority in relationship and so as soon as they got a break it it came back as all the survival problems were solved on vacation there's nothing to think about and no work to be done it rose back into the middle of the relationship just like we would anticipate so that that is the prescription that I would give people if you qualify and your partner qualifies you know for goodness sakes you need to know that that is very special it's not typical of human beings and if you have that situation you should protect it against all the ambitious nonsense that goes on with people in our modern world so when we're looking for beautiful relationships you are sometimes a partner will say one thing but they'll mean something completely different so what I'm going to play is a couple of humorous clips and if you second swap where the female relationship and she says one thing and then she actually says exactly what she's thinking they were just get a quick reaction from you sure hey what are you thinking I'm just bored analyzing you is fun very good yeah so hopefully some of this is can be useful for people as they as they think about some things the I think some of the most important things to know is that that if you're if you're in actually something a relationship that's quite healthy where you feel attraction to your partner and a to you and you're also very good friends then this is special and it should be defended should be defended very intelligently because in with a lot of with a lot of assertiveness against the outside world and as well as the ambitions from within and so and if you're not if you're not in that situation it isn't to say and in this and when I speak about these things this isn't to say the two people that are married together and they've been made marrying for 20-25 years and we've had two or three children etc and there's really no chemistry left in their lives but they're good friends but this is you know I'm not I'm not telling you to get a divorce or kiss your mother goodbye what I'm what I am saying is that these are choices and there are consequences and the consequences are likely to be that your nervous system has a greater upside to life experience than the one that you're experiencing now and it you may never find it there's no guarantees it may not be worth it in terms of the cost-benefit for you and there's nothing in the world wrong with people living in relationships with the best friend who is no longer a lover ah the what I'm interested in personally is not so much that situation I'm interested in in the intelligent seeking the optimal experiences the human beings can have and so that's why the dynamics of romance and romantic love and sex and sexuality how these things all play in to human nature and human nature's potential is infinitely set fascinating and to me of great importance
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