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Episode 270: Polyamory, Unvaxxed dating, Sharing mate with needy sibling, Bonding w mate w surrogate child
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because a couple of our questions have to do with um people in different lockdowns or vaccine passport you know limbo and so it's a couple of questions that come up from there but our uh are how are you doing otherwise dr hawk are you uh you're in seattle i'm good i am it's very dark and rainy here that's okay we have lots of little twinkle lights for the holidays so that you know makes up for it sounds miserable i can't can't go anywhere yeah speaking of miserable dr how's your heated pool is it is it good it's snow it's no longer warm enough to go in so we're shut down till till may but that's all right still looks good is this the chicken still wandering around there chickens are gone i got rid of the chickens oh okay yeah that's it some neighbor has a chicken now i'm i'm waiting for the instagram account devoted to the the one indoor chicken i really want that chicken to have its own instagram account and i think i think sam is just a born star you know he would just he would go viral immediately with little photos of him and that chicken actually that's really interesting he is a star he just doesn't know it oh completely yeah he just doesn't know it so yeah this this would be this would find him a girlfriend yeah it would be financial security for the clan forever i i it has to happen jen that is a remarkable concept because he i mean sam is uh how would you how would you describe his appearance jen a young dashing rescue yes who are we talking about here yeah this is uh this is uh my my s what would you call them yeah you're you're charged oh he's a he's a human or he's another chicken or a cat he's a human no he's a human okay okay sorry i was lost he's three credits short of his degree in ecology from santa cruz that that just says it all right and he looks like he's three credits short he does he really looks the part but he's he's handsome in his way he's quite handsome he's got quite a he's he's got a very uh elusive kind of charismatic mysterious aura to him yes which put you know contributes to the whole rasputin vibe yes um he has you know periodically a very long beard which is why i give her a rasputin name but all of these things make him quite instagram worthy he's he's really like like and he has this chicken that lives inside with him and so the chicken is just is just absolute instagram gold or some sort of social media you gotta monetize this whole thing because it's uh you know sort of sam's ah shucks affect combined yes the high junks of the chicken are just this is why the internet exists yep all right all right i'll think about that okay i'm trying to find a segway but i think i did so speaking of girlfriends yeah our first question good that was nicely done great thank you thank you our first our first question dear doctors the marriage of a lesbian friend of mine recently dissolved because my friend's wife decided that she wanted to pursue a polyamorous lifestyle my friend wanted the relationship to be monogamous how do you explain in the context of evolutionary psychology women who pursue polyamory it seems like they are doing a good job of beating the instructions dealt them by their genes alternatively is polyamory just the new politically correct way of cheating on your spouse and then potentially ending an unwanted relationship well you know whatever you feel like jen what it will this is sort of like you know i cleaning out the refrigerator you can kind of start anywhere you know doesn't really matter what shelf you start on i i see this this is i think they're getting to something that is close to the truth with the the second scenario here that this is you know sort of a a way of um if not getting out of the relationship sort of uh you know laying the groundwork to get out of the relationship or to go get market testing and other venues so i don't think that's always the case in um in polyamorous relationships particularly women uh seeking or pushing for the polyamory um you could just have a very high degree of openness in that uh personality which is probably always um always going to be part of the dynamic i would say it's like necessary but not sufficient for somebody to be pursuing for for a female to be pushing for the polyamory in a lesbian relationship it's a really that's a really interesting um situation and i my spidey sense would be that this woman was just not happy in the relationship and that this was pretext um and obviously i don't know that i don't know these people i don't know the specifics i don't know their personalities but i would say just anecdotally and my intuition is that that would be the case a lot of the time um and so that's you know you've got an open person who was sort of not feeling super thrilled and over rewarded in in their um in their relationship and this was a nice little cultural uh trend and narrative to latch onto which uh helped legitimize those feelings and give them space and oh you don't want that so i guess we're not right for each other so that that is going to be the case a lot of the time i don't think there's um a a fancier um more kind of you know evolutionary analysis of that of women so-called beating their genes in this way i think this is just women maximizing their utility within a relationship whatever that relationship looks like and in this case probably you know looking to find space in it if not to get out of it entirely yeah i totally agree the uh yeah at the end of the day folks all there is is there's gene variation and there's situational variation that's all there is so uh jen's talking about openness being the gene variation and the situational variation is how rewarded you feel so those two things are like the bass and the treble things on your stereo and so if if they're both turned up pretty high then it's going to get unstable and if they're both turned very low it's going to be very stable so that's just all there is to it there's nothing there's no fancy serpentine adaptation there um and the person isn't beating their genes or going against any program or anything else it's just openness under reward i'm out you know what i mean and that's this is a that's what it looks like to me probably is and it's uh well it was obviously because the person left the relationship so the person laid down an ultimatum yeah right right so there was there wasn't enough there wasn't enough value in it to you know etc so i think i think i think we got it figured out yeah and this could be just you know a case of somebody who really is wired for polyamory in the sense that they are very very open um and they are kind of uh restless and not suited for monogamy and this this doesn't have to be a case of being really unhappy or not being sufficiently rewarded but it very often will be the case that that those two things independently reach some sort of threshold you have to be some degree of openness and you have to be some degree of unhappy so if you have a very open person they could be pretty happy in the relationship but they just it's not enough you know it's they want they want to have some degree of openness whether it's full-fledged polyamory or um you know people people navigate this terrain in so many different ways according to the rules of every given relationship so um it's not it's not necessarily the case that somebody who wants an open um an open dynamic in their relationship is unhappy but it is going to be the case more often than not that that's true wonderful i'm good all right nathan do you think there's any um like dr lau you've been in practice for for a long time uh several decades and um now that it's a little bit more go ahead you're wise you're wise you're so wise decades and decades and practically centuries at this point that's great now what's your question with so much wisdom over this mi this long amount of time um do you think that that um uh i guess what am i trying to say um that i guess it's a little bit more accepted now than it may have been in the beginning of your practice um so would you would you expect um the the higher open people who are actually like really kind of built for polyamory to be uh like hiding it less nowadays uh than they were maybe 20 years ago i'm sure i'm sure that that would be true so but i think that um it's it's actually an interesting question that comes up about all my years and years and years of experience decades sorry about that the uh i have never seen a case or heard a case in in the thousands of people that i've talked to i've nev i happen to have never heard of a woman in a relationship that wanted it to be polyamorous that was wanted to be polyamorous but was committed and into her relationship not one okay so the uh that isn't to say that they they don't exist i'm sure they do exist but i i believe it's probably on the order of one in a thousand so it's it's the outliers that jen's gonna be talking about there the uh so i'm sure i'm sure they're out there i have no doubt maybe i'll maybe i'll get a phone maybe i'll get an email from one of them okay yeah but but i quite frankly as a clinician with with more than 30 years of clinical experience and have talked to you know several thousand women uh about their relationships in my career i have not had one okay so i've had men obviously which would make a lot of sense uh just from a straight evolutionary point of view but women no so so there you go well i've had women who were who believed that the polyamory would make the relationship satisfying right so like they they brought this to the to their partner thinking if only i can you know scratch this itch in this way and i can i can maybe i'm bisexual and i'm in a heterosexual relationship and i need to be dating some women or maybe i just need a little more variety or maybe whatever it is then yeah then you qualify totally except for that little thing and so i just need this little thing so i have seen that i have seen that you know um being sort of promoted and pursued by the female in the relationship so this is not to say that you know it's being that you're completely unhappy um but that it's there there is something missing when when women are seeking this yeah all good thank you thank you all right okay so speaking of dating uh we've got another question uh but now dr dr hawk get ready you might have to go on a political rant here in just a second hello dear doctors my question pertains to dating during covid i'm a female in my early 20s from canada currently with a vaccine mandate i can't sit inside a restaurant or even join an outdoors sports group this makes meeting people and dating rather impossible i'm well aware of the issues with dating apps but should i try my luck just to get out into the market if so should i display my vaccine status my date will find out pretty soon when i say i can only go on a hiking date or should i continue to avoid this mess and just focus on improving other areas of my life it's quite depressing and i'm not sure how long it will last but maybe i just need a hunker down i guess i could always play russian roulette with a vaccine too anyways i appreciate any advice i would move to the u.s harry brown style if i could but currently i'm trapped in my country what two years ago was deemed the freest country in the world by some agents formerly free state of canada yeah i actually i've talked to quite a few canadians who are in the same situation so we need to get you guys together so this is i would say uh if nothing else you know there's sort of a um we have a we don't manage it or organize it but there are kind of fans of the podcast who have set up a discord server um so you know get on there and start you know start a and start a conversation say you're looking to meet people that's one way to do it uh i've told other people that you could look for um you know fish where the fish are is always where we go with this kind of question and so looking in communities that are already sharing your sentiments and your political views so whether those are designated online communities or i know some of the dating apps do have a designation for vaccine status right there in the bio um i i know that i don't know if that's happening in canada but i was hearing about that happening in some regional markets um i would say in general i mean this is kind of it's it's up there with anything else that you're going to have to disclose at some point in a relationship and there's some sort of there's there's some mathematical equation to figure out exactly when the best time to disclose these things are based on how deal-breaking they are um but i think in most cases you know if you find a good candidate on the apps who it doesn't come up in the initial conversation it's it's worth you know going for a walk in the park do they if they still let you do that there i'm amazed that you can't join like a sporting group that's yeah imagine that an outdoor sporting group she said she's not yeah i'm surprised that that's that's banned for unvaxxed i know some of them are requiring masking but that's that's impressive but i can't imagine that you would be prevented from bundling up and walking around uh you know a lake in your town or or just going on some sort of outdoor walk um and then in that in the course of that conversation you'll discover two things whether that candidate is worth progressing as a as a romantic prospect um and if so then yeah i mean it's gonna come up covet is going to come up in conversation it'd be impossible for it not to so uh you i think this is the sort of thing you disclose on the earlier side before you you know sink a lot of time and energy into it but um i don't necessarily think you need to lead with it on your profile um apart from fishing where the fish are so if you're already in a group where you know it's not going to be an issue that's one thing if you're if you're fishing for normies on tinder and you get somebody who's who's looks really promising then you just play it by ear and you know the worst case scenario is that you went for a walk and you got some tea and the it's it's too much for the other person to deal with and so be it oh yeah that's that's how i would generally approach that but but totally i mean i've talked to multiple people uh in in canada i don't know where you are um but i you know from c to c in canada who are experiencing this and feeling really isolated and looking for community whether it's romantic or friendship um and so use us you know use the discord server use the facebook page uh definitely people who are listening to us or birds of a feather of to some degree yeah you're kind of in a rough spot in the winter in canada uh yeah it's it's going to be obviously a lot easier you're you're in some ways in a tight spot for a few months before you can meet people in outdoor situations that are going to be comfortable so yeah the uh i don't know you can also i was thinking about this put myself in those circumstances the in in my in my little dating profile at this point i probably put something like uh well uh by the way i'm not vax quite yet okay or in other words i'm not vax just yet in other words if we if we if we made a comment like that it's not argumentative okay so it's not like well i'm not vaxxed okay if we if we put a little equivocating phrase in there it's friendlier and it um and then if it turns out that the people on the other side are all hostile and weird twisted it's like well then hell with them the so but they are not all going to be that way and so that that's another that's another angle so i i mean i'm hearing jen's strategy in other words we we you want to you want to i i disclose early etc but you could also you could disclose completely right off the bat with making making sure that we signal that we're that we're not sitting on any you know partisan hostility around it and i i think you could file off that pretty well by the way that you would uh you know which it could be a throwaway comment at the end oh and by the way you know you know the uh i have i haven't got my backs yet like that that's pretty friendly and and uh and if it's taken wrong my attitude is oh well good riddance it would be my attitude it definitely forces forces the issue to predate conversation where you know if if it is going to be an issue um the other person is going to be like well i'm not comfortable going out with you until you're vexed you know that's that will come up um and so it's it's kind of doing the work that i'm describing with the first date preemptively so it really just depends on your um yeah your conflict tolerance and how interested you are in getting into this um it's it's kind of similar to the you know the vegan issue we get a lot of people who it's like oh well yeah when do i tell the guy that i actually have this really limited diet and i don't eat like normal people and i do this sos free thing and um and so usually the recommendation there is similar to what you're saying it's kind of this oh you know just fyi i yeah well i you know i have sort of an i have some dietary limitations no big deal like i'm i'm sure whatever restaurant we pick i can find something like i.e i i have some i'm i'm a little unusual so you've been forewarned but it's really it's not anything that you need to worry about or make your problem um and then you know that that will weed out people early on who are like oh well that's that's like i had one guy who was who said something like oh don't worry i'll i'll eat enough chicken for both of us or something like okay [Laughter] like a rule out so yeah that's that's the kind of thing that you're just um you just it's it's case by case but i i would hate for you to miss out on a possibly uh really worthwhile connection by scaring them off too early um to you know before you go on the walk and you both are really googly eyed toward each other and and then it comes up and then and then the guy's got sort of a little more context for um his confusing feelings that's amazing so dr lyle thank you so it's okay so i got to change my profile because right now it says no way in hell am i vac that's what i said i got a clot shot no no clot shot for me but that's that's another strategy and that's totally fair so like that yours is more reasonable doctor hock doctor way more reasonable i didn't even realize it on a dating profile you know i don't eat dead animals or the secretions of dead animals and so you know it's like okay well i know what i'm dealing with like it's it's uh you're definitely you're narrowing the field but you're you're preventing any wasted time so just imagine what happened on that issue imagine what alan goldhamer's dating profile would look like if he was just completely you know unplugged just just put it all out there so it brings me another question like a little follow-up which is i remember a few shows or many many shows ago years and years ago um dr decades yeah decades now i think uh we were talking about um you know 60th percentile attractiveness 80th percentile track is the numbers that you know the percentile attractiveness yeah and the the insinuation was that like if if uh if someone has kids for example if they have something that brings their value down a little bit that that that may bring down a point potentially yeah so i guess my question is is when you are at the very ends of the bell curves as far or maybe not the bell curves but very ends of societal norms um you know what would you estimate that brings your value down oh you mean for something like that yeah yeah yeah actually i would say that it doesn't bring your value down at all it just narrows your market okay okay yeah that's that's what that's like the uh it's like it's like a a woman who's six feet tall it doesn't bring her value down it just narrows her market you know the uh the the it just means that you know everybody 5 10 is ruling themselves out the uh so that that's how that that looks yeah that's not a all these kinds of things i don't i don't see most of these things is dings and actually that includes you know that that was a that joke about women as children larry larry's attitude is it's two points off for the first one and then it's a point off for everyone oh jesus definitely this is not a show that i was on must have been in the decades before i joined yes but the truth is is that that's that's not really true in other words it's it it's all context dependent and it's but it it absolutely narrows market is what that does and so that's how to look at that so in nathan in los angeles you know is is in a position where you can be as disagreeable and market narrow as you want because there's the market is massive you know the uh but if you're in canada and you can't even meet at a coffee shop because you're not vast well you've got a much narrower market so such as life yeah okay well los angeles is getting close to that too oh yeah unfortunately it might be time to escape soon [Laughter] all right let's go on get into trouble all right all right very good so our next question uh dear doctors i've been in a magic 10 relationship for almost two years he treats me like a princess but what robs me of peace of mind is that he has a sister my age he's 30 i'm 26 and his sister is a single mother and she often asks him for help money babysitting at some point she even asked him to live with her he refused but he felt guilty afterwards looking at her life decisions it's easy to predict that she will need him consistently in the future even when she was in a relationship she was asking my partner for money she relies on him as she has a bad relationship with their parents and as i mentioned apart from that it is a magic ten percent in a genuine connection i'm not interested in anyone else is me sharing my man with his sister a sufficient sufficient reason to break up i can see how it is the evolutionary wiring warning against sharing partners commitment and resources i'm not happy in this relationship but if it wasn't for his sister needing him this much i would be he says i am his priority but his sister is more in need she tried to commit suicide years ago and he is worried it will repeat it feels both it feels bad both to be in this relationship as well as to potentially end this relationship it makes me feel guilty as well because there's not much there's not much of my partner's fault is there anything that can be done it's very interesting okay so where i start with this is we we look at what the conflict is and the conflict is sitting uh the fundamental conflict is in this the the boyfriend's brain about his resource he's got resource allocation conflict and so the uh the the secondary conflict of that winds up uh impacting his relationship with our girl here and so that that puts her in conflict as she as she watches this conflict so the um and the reason why in other words normally speaking the it would be the case that he would not be in this conflict because the girlfriend in the primary relationship who is sufficiently valuable there there wouldn't be any serious resource allocation conflicts in other words she would not only be priority but her squawking would dominate his his calculus so it's interesting that we learned in this in this odyssey here about this helpless uh essentially resourceless sister who has a child so we've got effectively he's got he's got half a child there sitting underneath her wing in other words because that's a niece or a nephew and and also that she's potentially theoretically suicidal so there's there's potentially catastrophic loss and consequences uh if somehow she goes off the rails now so what's probably happening uh just on the face of it is this is a conscientious guy who is miscalibrating um the you know what would be a he's not analyzing his resource allocation very effectively so and he's agreeable enough and conscientious enough that he's in trouble um i'm i'm i could be wrong maybe our girl who's written the written the uh the note is just a hypersensitive you know selfish individual who when he when he diverts five percent of his of his variable uh excess resource time and energy it freaks her out but it doesn't sound like that it sounds like it's enough and recurrent enough and and uh essentially urgent enough that it's a really serious annoyance and it's and it's uh and it's doing exactly what she says it's signaling trouble in terms of just long-term protection and provision so i would say that what he needs is he needs some help so he he could really use an hour with jen hawk not me i i don't want i don't want to not just kidding either one of us or somebody else in other words uh one of the two of us would be a very good place to go to get to get some assistance with us the um he needs to have a third party who is who is not invested in anything other than his best interest to to walk through his mind and see whether or not there's evidence of distortions and how it is that he's analyzing the problem and if it looks like there's evidence of distortions then the therapeutic move is to to run experiments that can help us get more information to find out what it what transpires on the other end of those experiments okay so yeah i i can see this whole thing and it would be uh indeed a shame uh if if this situation if the needy sister uh essentially by virtue of his his conscientiousness and agreeableness and her uh neediness i.e disagreeable instability uh and lack of conscientiousness winds up sinking a really potentially outstanding relationship that that is a very very expensive price for those two nervous systems to pay as a result of that sister's life circumstances so that that decision needs to be analyzed uh you know very intelligently as opposed to what's going on now which is just impressionistically as he as he sort of chases one little crisis after the next and throws some time and energy and money at it uh and then go gets over until he hits until till she hits another bump in the road so that's what i think and uh so i don't know what would come out of it but i do know that from the standpoint of the person who's asking us the question uh the the answer isn't in the decision making that you would be doing the answer the mistake that's taking place isn't inside your head the mistake that is potentially in the middle of this mess is inside of his head so it's his head that needs more information and that's where that's where we would put our lever uh to move this little world yeah the she might be making a mistake if he's uh not committing as much as as much resources and time and and diversion of of all of this as she anticipates in the future so right getting her like the other thing that would be beneficial for the person who is asking this question is to really get very crystal clear about how much money is being diverted how how much it's taking from her um how often he's saying no relative to because she's signaling here in the question that he has you know denied her in the past he just feels bad about it so i read into this question a lot of um apprehension about how things are going to go in the future and you know you can't there's a lot of things you can't know about how things are going to go in the future based on how things are going now um and so if it is the case that he's you know if you total it up and he's giving a thousand dollars a year to her um and you know x number hours of time it might be calming to your nervous system the person who's asking this question to actually get really clear about that and oh it's not as much as i thought and i can live with this and this is reasonable the other big moving moving piece that is impossible to predict is that she's single she's 26 and she i would presume is you know searching for someone to date um and if she were to find somebody who occupies that position in her world um and she you know asks him for this type of support and and redirects all of that energy into that relationship then that would take a lot of stress off of your relationship and so kind of having a better idea of what that looks like what her prospects look like how interested she is um that that's an important piece to understand too yeah all become yeah it's also not a bad idea for the for the listener to talk to us as well to one of us because for for the very same reasons and that yeah what were what's got what what's causing the cognitive dissonance is a lack of precision over the estimation of the parameters yeah so that that's just a lot of yeah apprehension yeah that's right and so sometimes getting a computer check um from people who are some much older and wiser much decades decades decades decades older and wiser like multiples multiples yeah but by doing that that can be super useful so i can i can think of i there's been at least you know 500 times in my career where the person was sort of swirling around and kind of upset and not sure how upset they should be about some some you know exchange and price process in their uh in their situation and i said hey no they're being totally reasonable and it's a lot of times they had been data fishing in their in their coalition and their coalition had been saying oh no the people on the other side of that thing are being very unreasonable you should be treated so much better and when they bring it to me i'm like no actually that's completely reasonable oh well now they don't feel so essentially insulted or they're not as anxious about that they're not that valuable because what's actually taking place from a third party's view is actually reasonable so that's why yeah every i'm glad jen brought brought up the other side of that so there's the the uh this is all about the uh trying to get a feel for you know what the truth is how much does he value you house how chronic is the long-term situation and you know what is he responding to in terms of what's you know why are the resources going the way they are and how urgent it is and how chronic it's going to be and what does that mean etc these are all parametric estimation problems and and and our feelings are derivatives of those of the estimates of those parameters and a lot of times a lot of times they are worst case scenario estimates so that that's and that's why yeah go ahead jen you know especially to go back to your earlier point if if your coalition your your friend network is encouraging those worst case scenario um estimates so you know you're you're bringing this problem to your immediate coalition they're like oh my god you're so right this is so this is going to be a disaster down the road and you know this is totally it means he doesn't care about you enough and you're getting this kind of feedback from immediate coalition which is um doubling down on the distortion that might exist there yeah yeah great really good question and you know we we we're here to uh not only just in general frame this thing as a as a process of trying to get you know parameter estimates as you can but also that that's also what we do is uh we we we try to help people figure out what they can do what little experiments they can run in order to get information uh that that feels solid and therefore uh that that way your your nervous system feels appropriately relative to the the variables that you're facing and um yeah because you you i could see i could see this going you know multiple ways very completely opposite directions if i heard one story at the end of it i'd be like well god this guy's just way too agreeable so he's effectively a co-dependent tar pit it's going to be a nightmare okay i could say that or i could say no this is a stand-up guy who is just being overly responsible needs a little bit of guidance about what limits he can set with his sister and otherwise this is great this guy is this he's a superstar so there's uh you know that that's a that's a large variance there and and no wonder this could be a puzzling problem wonderful well it's a good time to uh to bring up that um if listeners want to book consults i can't imagine they don't know where to go but i'm going to tell them anyway which is the steamdynamics.com and just a little spoiler alert i just read one of the one of the chapters that you guys released out into the wild of the living wisdom library which was amazing so i i'm addicted and i can't wait for more that is the the one chapter of the book the the book that you guys are both writing so again yeah that's on our it's on our website for members yes and i've had a few people email me and and say that they've heard us mention this and they can't find it on the website if you're logged in in the members section it's under the resources um there's sort of a resources tab uh but you have to be logged in uh because it's in the members library so it's called the mysterious visitor yes and i don't know about anybody else but i her i read that chapter and heard dr lyle's voice you know just all right all right our next question dear doctors does having a surrogate mother uh versus having a natural birth drive a subconscious rift between husband and wife because certain neural networks were not tripped in the female brain and if that's true is there any solution treatment maybe hormones or something that can trip these circuits so that the natural attachments are made but without putting that female through that pain and causing them to go through the physiological changes well what the what the person is referring to i'm gonna assume that this is the the the woman's eggs are put into a surrogate and so it's the it's the couple's natural child both of them are biological yeah i think we we have to assume that yeah otherwise it's a whole different question yeah of course non-genetic relationship to the kid right so the question would be uh i mean it is known that when women go through uh not women but when animals go through childbirth if you will block the the the pain of childbirth uh you will you can cause some animals to not be attached to their children uh their their offspring and so there there's a uh so now the question would be if they're your children but you didn't go through that you know do you are you gonna be missing a bit of the of the innate attachment that would take place from doing that um i would have to say that that that is in an entirely empirical question and we have no idea we have no idea and i don't believe that there is any such mechanism um in humans i mean it just doesn't make a lot of sense to me i i see uh human beings are uh are extraordinarily attached to their children um and so if you're not maybe it's possible that you know the female literally somehow so it's it's actually talking about this resentment between husband and wife i'm not sure about what exactly what she's asking but i'm assuming that the root of this is the idea that if i'm not 100 sure that these are my kids do i feel like i'm raising some other woman's kids is that what how you interpret this jen yeah or that there was some kind of um going back to the animal studies that you're talking about i didn't i didn't know that i hadn't heard that before but maybe that there's some sort of um you know bonding process that they missed out on going through this this difficult process together so you know he he wasn't there holding her hand while she was having the child and therefore they didn't have this force that brought them together they missed out on that so i think she's the the suggesting that there might be some sort of hormonal solution to that that you know there's some kind of way that you could flood the system artificially to create that feeling of bondedness that they're otherwise missing out on i think that's unlikely but again we don't we don't know i don't think that this has ever been looked at in any sort of rigorous way yeah no there wouldn't be some bizarre bonding process of the male being there for the childbirth the bonding process would be between the female and her children okay yeah and that um i don't i don't think that in all of the epidurals that have been given to females in the last 50 years you know i don't think that there's any indication that um that there's any less attachment to their children so uh or to their spouse yeah or to their spouse yeah right so and and for and for most of human history well i don't know most of modern human history men are not allowed in the delivery room right so they're outside smoking their cigars and this is a this is a process that the women are dealing with and i think that i i obviously there are exceptions in hunter-gatherer societies but certainly for for many many many decades of human history yeah and even centuries this is this is a women's midwifing this is this is women's business men don't have anything to do with the child birthing process so um they're they're banned from the the whole domain so yeah the idea that the that something would be lacking in the relationship with your spouse because he was not there as part of the process doesn't sit quite right with me um but it hasn't been has been tested yeah whatever if if there is anything to this question it's going to be a very small effect size yeah so that that's how we would look at that so uh more likely if if this questioner is talking about their own life um then probably what there is is there's just some low-grade conflict between the husband and wife yeah such as life and a new baby a new baby causing a lot of oh my god totally yeah phil cowan and his wife at berkeley 50 years ago established that that that first year of of you know the first year or two of raising children is the most conflicted time between uh and it's the most likely time for them to break up yeah you know so such as welcome to reality you're both seeing new facets of each other's personality that was not previously visible to you you're discovering things about this person that you may not like very much and and you're plugging that into your whole matrix of expectations for the future and and not liking the cb in new ways that you didn't before so that's uh that's gonna be going on in any kind of new parenting situation and so you're looking around for some good reason to explain that and you can't blame uh postpartum and so you sort of were looking at this well this was an unusual childbirth process um and so maybe we're missing something maybe there's a wedge driven here because of this but the the wedge is the child itself yeah um and and sort of the new context that it has cast on your relationship most most likely yeah you gave birth to a little communist government it's just going to take all the resources you're you're formerly free people trading and having a great you know great exchange and then you just got a massive tax imposed on you and you're both looking at each other like well we're not going to get it out of that thing so i'm short i saw this wonderful meme wonderful meme of side by side dogs with like little tilted cocked heads and in the in the first one the it's like this you know looks looks like moe um has a don't don't tread on me flag and um you know i was waving an american flag and the caption says my dog when he's eating and then the next frame is there's a there's a communist flag and there's a che guevara hat there's like a marx t-shirt my dog when i'm eating that's it i love it that's beautiful that's just great totally perfect so yeah this is what this is what has been introduced into your family unit is redistribu intense redistribution of resources yes so so i guess the the lesson is to to get over rewarded as a buffer for all the things you might find out about the person yeah sure you're gonna find a lot of lessons yeah you're what's that instantly gonna put i mean that's where that's where you find out in in relationships on all kinds in all kinds of ways where relationships get stressed is you you find out you know sort of how valuable you are and you also find out in your own reactions to resource uh constriction uh how valuable they are and so to you in other words so stress is a you know is a great you know uh detective for finding out what we you know how valuable these relationships really are and so no surprise that when we put a relationship under tremendous stress like a like a young child that we're going to we're going to find a lot of ripples in that lake you know what i mean and that's that's situation normal the uh yeah disagreements about about you know how to raise the kid how to discipline the kid uh sleep deprivation uh all you know all these components are totally it's i i always recommend that um new relationships you know test test themselves with a road trip this is like a road trip on steroids i mean you're really you're you're watching people under great stress and and totally relocating yourself in in the space around them to figure out where you fit in yep wonderful well let's do you guys are ready for we always want to do one more question it's about raising a child yeah we'll do it well quick one why not okay let it rip your doctor my husband and i are planning to start trying to get pregnant in two years as an hcnc i've been diligently studying and preparing for all the aspects of pregnancy birth postpartum and child rearing but i've now learned about the harsh realities of being a new parent and the incredible lack of sleep involved breastfeeding alone is needed every two to four hours around the clock for many months dr lyle has previously discussed the importance of sleep and so my question is if sleep is so vital why would nature design such intense sleep deprivation for mothers even stay-at-home moms when raising young children it seems so counterintuitive well nature didn't have us in modern suburban america yeah this is not how it is so you know the famous phrase from africa is that it takes a village to raise a child so there's all kinds of help around and all kinds of distribution of labor with respect to these things and so it would be interesting to know from some anthropologists view if we were to go into these villages and find out whether the mothers were particularly sl sleep deprived my guess is is that they're not uh my guess is is that they get to dump those kids to their kid sister you know the man who's one yeah the many sisters and the cousins everybody so and every woman in the village is lactating you know because everybody's like their whole life is is having kids and so they're just swapping these kids around and it's not it's not like the baby is completely dependent on any one female for nourishment um and so yeah i think i think this really gets chalked up to the certainly the family and the the women in that family playing a much larger role in raising those babies yep yep i think that's end of the mystery good question wow that's uh all right i love it dr hawk dr lyle thank you so much we had some fun and um we went back down memory lane of how many years we've been doing the podcast no offense intended yeah i'm now i'm just thinking about my cats now with little hats with little no i can't no it's so funny it's like i just they're so perfect this is like a melee in particular belly just squeezed out her hat yes oh my god it's priceless barrel of a gun totally got her little che guevara hat on i'm going to go down right now and i'm going to feed those two cats to each according to ability to each according to my need my need for kibble that's it that's it yeah all right all right well uh for the listeners trapped in their very respective countries we wish you the best we will keep answering your questions and for you know well we'll look forward as long as it's allowed as long as it's allowed yeah yeah i know i wonder when they'll cancel beat your genes in different countries so who knows well hope not wow we're we're small potatoes we fly under the radar yeah when they get to us it'll be so obvious that you know it'll be too late it's too late for everybody exactly you
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