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Episode 72: Confidence, Intolerance, finding your purpose
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all right today is a week after the first day of summer longest day of the year was last year dr. Lyle house Sacramento treating you good it was within the hundreds last week but now we've calmed down into the 90s it's just great terrific excellent I was reading an article about Sacramento drivers it turns out that rated as the worst drivers in the whole country and it reminded me of of what you were saying a couple podcasts earlier when you you just had this rage when people follow you too closely behind you and I have had just imagine how stressful that might be I'm just fully justified just as we as we continue to see how accurate my nervous system is well alright speaking of which today we got titled it was called confidence and tolerance meant finding your own purpose just based on the questions that we've received this week and some of the questions we didn't get to last week but before they start with the questions and emails from our listeners I was reading an article and this was from the Illinois's news bro and I couldn't I couldn't actually get the Journal article because it was behind a pay site and of course I'm cheap so I love how you just agree with me right away okay I was trying to read this article couldn't find it but I found the news article and it's basically reviewing a journal research project where they study whether sex actually sells now I grew up thinking sex sells every every marketing article I read everything that had to do with sales always said sex sells and sex appeal is what gets viewers to buy the products but there was an analysis of about 80 advertising studies published over more than thirty years that suggests that sex actually doesn't sell and what they found was that people remember ads what sex appeals more than those that without it but they don't actually buy the brand or the product featured in the ads and so really really interesting and this was the Journal of International Journal of advertising but they found out not only we're study participants no more likely to remember the brands they were more likely to have a negative attitude towards those brands and Wow hero zero they showed no greater interest in making a purchase and here's the quote from the study lead author he said we found literally zero effect on participants as intention to buy products and ads with a sex appeal and the assumption that sex sells well know according to our study it doesn't and there's no indication there's a positive effect you know that that's very interesting and and I have to say I'm not even that surprised I I can remember as people have heard me say one of the one of the great minds in psychology today is Jeffrey Miller and his his book spent discusses essentially consumer behavior and one of the things he he he got clear for me and which was very interesting which is that you will hear around people thinking deeply about advertisement you'll you'll people will talk about how people quote identify with product and then there's some been admitted a concerted efforts to have like phallic symbols and products and so forth and I always considered that sort of thing and all of it even the concept of quote identifying with the product as being insane it never made any sense to me at all didn't make any sense to me when I was twenty-two hearing about it and it didn't make any sense to me thirty years later and Miller the I because I wasn't even paying attention because I'm not a I'm not a you know consumer psychologist or you know advertising psychologist or anything like this so none of that I wouldn't paying any attention to any of this and Miller came along and said that the concept in advertising was that sort of a person has almost like a relationship with the product and he said amazingly naive about what's actually going on in human behavior human behavior our people are interested in products to signal to other people that that is what they're doing and so the fact that that somebody sexy is holding you know some ponds cold cream it's like well that's not signaling to a third party we're not seeing how this thing would work to etc though there's a vague notion of imitation but the ponds cold cream isn't going to give you you know a great bone structure this is not going to happen and so it always seemed to me remarkably naive now I could see that the impact of imitation in in behavior and imitation is a powerful phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom so I could see that there could be you know an imitative process going on but but so some of this sort of blatant essentially the the blatant linking of a given product to theoretically that attractive people are interested in the product didn't didn't never rang true to me and now it turns out it doesn't ring true to anybody so this is really interesting that somebody went to the trouble to actually put this under the empirical magnifying glass and I'm glad they did and it it now it actually rings correct to me that they've they've now set this right good good job glad glad you found it yeah and I was I was wondering why like it made sense to me that people wouldn't necessarily associate you know buy the buy the product or brand was interesting to me is that that they actually people actually had a negative attitude yeah when what Ford's those brands and I wonder if it has to do with something we talked about when we when we did their show called the psychology of humor and it's that and people enjoy watching the person who's up there getting a lot of status when they lose status and so here we have a really pretty or good-looking person in the advertisement they've got very few jail mutations so they're obviously above us and here they are getting more status you know so right over was going to be a little nervous and upset and little jealous you know yeah there's also there's it even goes one layer deeper like like I don't even remember who it might have been it might have been certainly Joe Montana and he married the girl that was the Schick Sheriff and there but there's been many other times when some very good-looking guy you know maybe you had some Cologne on or some stupid bangers hair this is shaving you know and and now we're supposed to and then a really great looking girl is coming on to him and it's like oh really the product has anything to do with this like we know the product doesn't have anything to do with this and now not only not only is this whole thing not fun really but in addition it's also the case that I can feel like you're manipulating me and you're you're sending a promise out to me about how you're going to improve my mating status and you're lying to me and so there's even it even goes deeper than just being irritated at watching somebody else when in a situation that we can't so there's a you know a lot of little pieces to this are interesting now of course I think we're going to find that you know attractive people are probably better salespeople than less attractive people so but it the message has to be subtle and and it can't be trying to hit us over the head with something that is not only not true but not pleasant to see so yeah very good good good thinking sure now we're going to get better analysis of this yeah this should be interesting I just just to your point I heard a speaker talking about something a long time ago and he basically said exactly what you said and his point was a tactic known is a tactic blown and so you got it a subtle in the way you're saying things otherwise people just see right through it yeah so so uh you know one of the things for some of the skeptics listening for who might think of an ad that they really enjoyed that actually had sex appeal in it the way they actually measure if an ad is effective or not is whether it moves product and also the way researchers figure out if an ad was wasn't effective or not would they see how quickly it took the advertising agency to change the actual commercial because I'll say when the product is moving people don't make changes so if they're noticing a company you know changing ads all the time even though it has sex appeal that's a good reason why it's not working yeah just remember where's the beef you know for those of you bitter too young you were probably too young do you remember worse than me I remember me it's what's for dinner oh no no you're too young all right so okay a way back this is probably in the 1970s yeah it was a Walter Mondale was running for president so this would have been 1984 and right about that time because he made the famous comment that sunk Gary Hart Gary Hart was a presidential frontrunner this was democratic party and in their debate Mondale said said where's the beef and it cracked up everybody and it put Gary Hart he was like a deer in the headlights about his proposals where's the beef was a there was a tiny little lady she was probably about 4 foot 10 inches tall and it was these three little old ladies and they were going out to to have their burgers and there was some fancy place and this little tiny you know lady Esther or whatever name was would pick up her thing and say where's the beef because there's some tiny little burger and some tiny little patty in it and she had the squawky little old lady's grouchy voice and and then later she did the same thing with the famous NFL Hall of Famer Dick Butkus who was towering over her and she says where's the beef and so she was just it was so successful this was for Wendy's essentially taken a swipe at McDonald's basically saying that McDonald's beef patties are really small and steam rolled out and tiny little patties and Wendy's we've got real beef well here's the problem it was so successful that they were running out of beef all over Wendy's they couldn't even they didn't have enough burgers it was actually turned into a short-term serious disaster because they've literally didn't have enough food so that that is successful ad with exactly zero sex appeal so there we go yeah yeah very interesting article all right so let's move on to some of the listener emails again we've gotten fantastic questions these are just just amazing and I really appreciate everybody emailing me and and interacting with with with our show really love the listenership here okay so a first question dear dr. Lyle I've been thinking about some people close to me I'm always so surprised when they display such levels of confidence that I sometimes feel as unwarranted for example someone who pursues a singing career but truthfully they can't sing better than a shower performance or someone who claims to be very empathetic but then complains about every person they run into how is it that people can have such a sorted sense of self this is the thing of beauty okay all right great question just wonderful very astute now what we're going to let let me back the camera out and give you an understanding of what you're looking at the the the self which is sort of one of three parts of how it is that I look at the human mind so for those that haven't heard heard us before we have the self we have the esteem meter and then we have the internal audience so we've effectively got you know this is my equivalent of the it'd go in the super-ego okay that we can trash that those ideas are 100 years old now we've got something different we've got another tripartite look at the mind we've got the self we got the esteem meter and we've got the internal audience now the self is actually that's what you sort of recognizes you the esteem meter is a device for you to pick up cues from the outside world about what they think of your displays and you are you're displaying or advertising in order to achieve relationships in work love and and friendships so we we're doing advertising displays and our our hair our clothing our resumes or houses or cars or church that we go to and everything and the music we listen to and and the paintings that we paint everything under the Sun so human beings are making displays in order to secure transactions of various kinds and in that process that's a competitive process we have an internal excuse me we have an esteem meter that's picking up cues from outside people about whether they think well of us or think poor of us supportive us and we our feelings are largely a derivative of the feedback that we get from other people and then finally we have an internal audience that is watching us from within as if we they were outside people and they are also giving us feedback but they're giving us feedback on our private demonstrations or our private efforts as we try to make ourselves beautiful or handsome where we try to work on a cool song on the guitar we are watching ourselves and listening to ourselves and then the internal audience gives us positive or negative feedback depending upon the displays that we make in front of no one except ourselves so these are the three components but the self here is what's involved so the self you might say well what is that well what it is largely is a set of a set of comparative analyses about our capabilities relative to other people and the reason why it's important to have the set of analysis is that you're essentially going to assess what kinds of competitions you should be getting into and what kinds you shouldn't so if someone comes some some 40 year old lady comes to me and says well she looks like she's going to lose her job and she's not sure what she's going to do about it what I don't says I don't say well the LA Rams have a job at quarterback that's open and they pay 20 million a year she would immediately herself knows that that's absurd that is not a competition that she's interested in now maybe she's a CPA and she just got laid off from big five firm or whatever and and I say well no problem there's a job at Starbucks right down the street what's the problem no she's fancier than that so your your designed by nature to essentially assess what you are capable of competing for and you're designed to set your goals in accordance with what it is that that you have comparative evidence that you think that you could achieve so your this is what Albert bandura terms self efficacy so what you self-efficacy is built upon or self confidence which is the the feeling that derives from a self efficacy computation what your yourself bandura swore up and down his whole life that self-efficacy is not the same thing as self confidence now he really wasn't splitting hairs but the truth of the matter is is the two are intimately related the self-efficacy judgment is a is a computation about what you think you're capable of doing the self confidence is M we can remove the term self if we want its the confident it's what you feel so the those two are completely related to each other one is the feeling one is the thought that drives the feeling so the thought that drives the feeling is the self-efficacy judgment which is it's computed by comparing yourself to relevant others in the domain so two guys that are both working to get that starting quarterback job on LA Rams they're watching each other and competing with each other and trying to decide whether or not they think they can be the starter so you you use relevant others as you compete for ecological niches that's what happens so an aging actress who's 65 is not looking for the lead role of the beauty in some in some you know movie that it's going to star you know some 35 year old heartthrob that's not that doesn't make sense so people compete within these psychological niches and the selfs job is to run these computations and to try to figure out what on what do we think I'm capable of doing now this is where it gets interesting with respect to this question and the issue is is that we we have evidence that the human so the self is gener reading goals is what it's doing it essentially says I think that this is the competitive reach of what it is that we can do now we have evidence that suggests that in general human beings estimates of what they're capable of doing are overages so they tend to think more of themselves than is true now this makes sense if you think about how this would have evolved in an evolutionary fashion let's suppose that you are a girl and you are a seven okay so in essence your mating market is going to be somewhere around a seven now it would be probably clever of evolution to have you think that urinate and the reason that would be true is you don't want to be too quick to make a deal that is not quite as good a deal as you can get you should in fact set the system up to be a little bit narcissistic okay a little bit full of yourself so that you can find out from experience whether or not you've overrated it if you can imagine you can imagine the disaster that would take place if someone underrated themselves then they would be essentially trading for mates friends and in trade in a way that would be disadvantageous now you might say why doesn't the system get it accurately and the reason is is that because of the subjective nature of value on the other side of the equation on the heads of other people trading with us we aren't exactly sure what we're worth okay so they don't hand you a number and they say you're a 70th percentile looking 22 year old female they don't tell you that they tell you your interactions with other people tell you about where you stand but it would make sense for you to be a little narcissistic about it because of the subjective values on the other side some people think your innate some people think you're a six so if you think you're an eight then your going to be a little tougher in negotiating and get more out of the negotiation if you're a little bit narcissistic okay does that make sense yeah yeah other way the agreeable people get suckered into things that's exactly correct okay so that's why the I believe the incidentally I don't know that anybody else has written this analysis so I think this is going in my book but I believe that that the human being is essentially calibrated at what I call fifty five forty five so if we looked at the middle of the bell curve on agreeable disagreeable we would find that people are not fifty-fifty traders okay people are actually on average the smack middle of the bell curve is fifty five forty five which means it's actually 10% slanted your direction so when you get 10% more than you got coming to you ie you get fifty five percent of a transaction it feels totally fair and even to you that that is my eyeball observation of human nature and and my eyeball observation of human nature is that when it is fair they do not feel like it's fair the the we can tell this by looking at sports fans sports fans routinely feel like their team gets the worst end of the reffering which is of course objectively impossible okay so the we can see that they are not so unreasonable that they cannot watch a game in other words if you if you were so incensed that the refereeing was just absolutely abhorrent you couldn't even watch okay and you just be murderously angry and you'd be trashing your television set and you'd be referees slaughtered now that happens occasionally in soccer you know around the world but the point is is a bit of general yeah the but in general what you're going to see is that people are biased by a modest degree on average and this is exactly what this person is observing so people are essentially and if god forbid that you are a little bit on the disagreeable side of the bell curve so let's suppose you're a 6535 trader which I'm going to assume is not that uncommon so the people that you we would simply say have quote a strong sense of self and quote assertive and quote note not easy to push around we aren't saying that they're jerks or narcissistic freaks we're just simply saying they're pretty and they have a sense of self well that's a 6535 trader okay that's probably a standard deviation you know towards the disagreeable side not so disagreeable not unreasonable that's just a tough manager good solid attorney you know what I mean that doesn't give anything away etc well a person is moderately disagreeable so that person now it is very likely part of the concept here is that they are over rating what it is that they have coming to them well in order to do that you're going to have to overrate what it is that you have to give to the coalition generally relative to other people so now we start finding out about why the person that thinks that they should be a singer can't get only sing in the shower and that's because they've got themselves overrated by a chunk and they're built that way okay so now is everybody built that way everybody's built that way probably a little bit in other words an average human now some people are not so you will find people that are inherently very agreeable that are sitting over there as 3070 traders and guess what remarkably they never demonstrate these characteristics so you'll never find it okay in fact if you compliment them they'll they'll pull their horns in and feel bashful and disagree with you okay so we can we can watch this process but but this individual has definitely seen as we all have we've seen individuals that are just remarkably obtuse when it comes to understanding that they are overrating the hell out of themselves and what they are anticipating feedback from the world is not going to happen and so that's what you're saying you're essentially seeing a a on average there's a little bit of built-in narcissism in two people but it's not extreme it's just modest but it's in there and it's in there I believe in order to make sure we take advantage of the subjective values that are sitting on the other side of the tables because it's very possible if we're a little bit patient we can get a substantially better deal and so that's I think that's in the system in order to defend against making too quick deals but the other side of it is it doesn't take us very long to walk our way out on the bell curve of of a little bit more disagreeable and pretty soon we're getting you know Sinatra in the shower you know and think pursuing a career behind it and essentially having to crash and burn I know a kid right now that thinks he's going to be a rapper and he's been at this for six or seven years and he's effectively doesn't have a hard enough work ethic to actually go get a job and learn how to do air conditioning and heating repair out here in Sacramento which is exactly what he should be doing okay but what he's doing instead is he's following his evolutionary nose to what he he looks around he looks at rappers and what do we know about rappers folks have a lot of girls around you yeah well here's another thing we know they don't have any singing talent okay so there are people that can rap I suppose and they're pretty cool and how they do it but I could rap pretty well if you give me 47 takes on something I could say some pretty cool stuff to could rhyme and that'd be cute etc so in other words it doesn't take a remarkable set of chips in order to be a rapper if you need to be Frank Sinatra good luck to you okay and so you know let's hear the voice we're going to find out if women or swooning in the aisles first time they hear it because that actually happened to Sinatra but in this guy's case nobody's swooning in the aisles they have some shows together I'm sure he's getting some some local decent feedback occasionally from some females but the pot you know that are high but the bottom line is is that there is no way in hell this guy is going to make you know thirty eight dollars an hour as a rapper but he's going to do it anyway why this is the chip okay so there's there's a narcissistic chip in there there's just enough narcissism in there to keep pushing this thing along as he looks around at his competitors and says well I'm just as good as the guy on TV and you know what he probably is that guy on TV got lucky as hell so luck plays an enormous factor in something like this now so this is this is what why I think you're going to see quite a bit surprising narcissism maybe not some some grossly disagreeable and disgusting degree but a surprising degree and I think you'll you'll find it fairly often and it what will happen a lot of times is that experience and repeated failure will shake some of it out and if it doesn't god help you you just a disagreeable to our system yes yes you commit or about how it is that you didn't rule the world yeah you just gave me an idea maybe maybe in one of the future shows I can mix some music and you and I can try our hand at freestyle rap you know oh boy yeah I don't know we'll talk about it alright yeah let's move on alright next question well I do dr. Lao why do friend groups consist of people with the same or very similar attractive attractiveness levels hetero sexual women in a female friend group aren't trying to mate with each other but are usually the same level of attractiveness is there an evolutionary explanation for this and also sometimes there's one person in the friend group who's significantly less attractive than the others and what's the reason for that the it's sort of a I don't think that we can pick our way through and answer specifically any given combination that somebody sees but what we can do is we can back the camera up and realize that all decisions are being made on cost-benefit analysis so cost-benefit analysis are is the dynamic that is driving these decisions so let's let's look at whether or not first of all we don't know that this is true now it almost certainly is true and I believe it is so let's let's start to think about why that would be true let's suppose that I'm a female and I'm a seven and I have a great gal that is really fun and funny and I like her and she's a nine is this going to be a problem well yes it is going to be a problem because if you if you have a mate that mate would likely obviously prefer your friend so if the two if you're trying to hang out around your mate with your friend you've got a problem okay so this is a so-so it's going to make sense for people to be relatively careful about this and to not be trying to have their mates hanging around a friends of theirs who are objectively superior to them so this this makes perfect sense that the game theory would tell us that probably the best move is to make sure that your friends are not too different than you now let's suppose that you have somebody that's quite a bit quite a bit less attractive let's say a five with a pack of nines well now the five is not her mate is not really threat you know he eat her friends are not a threat to her pair bond because her guy is a five and there's no possible way that unless he's got too much of the narcissistic chip we just talked about to think that he's going to get anywhere with these nines so that's a little bit of a safer situation but it's also a tough situation and so it's probably not a situation that would happen that often so probably there because there's significant costs going to be associated with having a contrast effect between three good-looking girls and then one that's not very good-looking that's going to be hard on the not very good-looking one she's going to look probably even comparatively worse than she really is what we're really talking about is a deep principle in perception that's called I forget what it's called it's called accommodation and gosh I can't remember what it is in other words if there's a perception in cognitive psychology they've shown that if you have let's suppose you have five girls to our eights and there's a girl who's seven well it's going to turn out that people will sort of rate to seven as closer to the eights because essentially it gets pulled into that mean whereas if it turns out that there's four eights and then there's a five then there's a contrast effect okay so as a result now the five actually looks like she may be more than read points away from the mean of the eights so this this principle of essentially contrast versus a accommodation I forget what it's called I think they both start with a these are principles in cognitive psychology that this is this is how this would work it's essentially a contrast effect threat so people are going to be probably aware of this very dramatically yeah what tell me what that and what that means well just searching as you basically like when you see faces and groups it makes them appear kind of like an average of all the faces together oh yeah I think that's uh I think there's probably very very much something to that and turns out nothing you can yeah that's very good and it's also you can see that there would be attraction to trying to be with a group that might be a little more attractive and you may be to try to essentially have you in some sense you could be advertising that these are relatives of yours because it's very likely that they would have been in a Stone Edge and so as a result it could essentially sort of pull up the indication of your gene of your gene quality so I think there's a lot of probably little circuits in here and a lot of little gamesmanship that is being played and but I think that I think the the the basic the basic issues are number one these decisions are made by cost-benefit dynamics that friends impose costs on you and they also confer benefits and so as a result you are analyzing what is the cost-benefit dynamic you could I have had people I've had women whose were we're not as attractive as they're attractive friends and yet they were in extremely stable pair bonds and their husbands were very into them and they did not feel threatened by their more attractive friends I have had that situation in my practice in my career I have also had situations more commonly where a friendship between for example two women one who is more attractive one who is what's attractive literally could not survive despite their best efforts and their attempts at being mature in very reasonable people that it really couldn't survive under the heat that was being that was being put on on the less attractive persons relationship because of the spouse is interested in the more attractive friend so I've seen that dynamic repeatedly in my career so there's there's no question people could be missing that as a threat and that is why you're going to pretend to see packs of people who are reasonably similar in their attractiveness okay all right yeah I looked this up this is called the it's an ebbing house illusion and so they have to kind of apply this to when that people seem more attractive in a group than they do apart so it's kind of what you're talking about but maybe not exactly not exactly something else they're talking about something else there it's very interesting it's interesting that they would be more attractive in a group it's it may be some kind of subconscious concept that the group has has actually is signaling to third parties that are watching it they are signaling that these people are in fact acceptable to each other and so especially the unseen wuterich turistic s-- exactly are must be acceptable or they wouldn't be in a happy little group okay so in other words how much of a psychopathic nut can that girl be if she's got three other friends with her that her laughing and having a good time right okay so if they have some personality stuff yeah yes it's probably and it probably it finds its way into aesthetic I have no doubt that guys and groups are probably seen as more attractive and safer than than the lone wolf and probably for the very same reason mm-hmm yeah they're saying that it might be likely due to the brain averaging out of unattractive idiosyncrasies when they're all together so yeah it's possible yes very interesting all right so next next question okay all right dear dr. Lyle is it possible the one's about diet and lifestyle looks like okay okay is it possible for a person to be mentally healthy if they don't have close family and friends but sticks to a health promoting diet exercise daily and gets enough sleep I've observed many folks who pay the price of their health and well-being in order to have a marriage romantic partner kids in essence a village this is the trade that the trade off that they've chosen but for myself I'd rather be alone and have full freedom to do what's best for my health than be with family and friends who want me to compromise my dietary views what say you dr. Lau well there's a there's a little there's a thread of disagree ability that's coming in this question and that doesn't that's not a bad thing it's just an interesting thing the and I have seen people that were in situations where the family friends etc were just kind of ridiculous in militantly anti health and so it was a it was a problem and obviously underneath those underneath those problems are some esteem dynamics that may be able to be fixed and may not be able to be fixed but once again all relationships carry costs and benefits and in my in my estimation people close to you should not be imposing health costs on you that that makes no sense to me in other words they shouldn't be acting as deterrence and naysayers and objectors to to you doing things that are help promoting for you physically and if they are they had they had only better be in your village if they come with very very high benefits relative to their costs it is not easy to live a life that is directed towards a high standard of health you have to make different dietary choices and the average people you're going to pass up smoking you're going to have to drink moderately or not at all you're you're going to essentially have to have a commitment and to living in such a way repeatedly and often that is that where you're making good decisions not necessarily perfect decisions but good decisions and if you have someone close to you that is essentially throwing dirt on that decision-making strategy and and essentially disparaging you and and and threatening to kick you out of the village because you're not you're not joining in a self-destructive party then then of course the right move is the answer the question is you can be absolutely mentally healthy and not have any close friends that are going to behave that way the good news is is that there are people out in the world there's quite a quite a lot of them that are very reasonable and very intelligent and reasonably open and flexible about about essentially live and let live the and would even join with you to a moderate degree on whatever path it is that you're headed in terms of health behavior that doesn't mean that they're going to agree with everything that we think and it doesn't mean that they're going to do everything that we're going to do and we don't need them to what we need them to be is to be friends to be to be sexy to be fun to be informative to be good partners in different ways in other words we need them to be good people and then not to get in our way when this particular path is important to us and so that's that's how I see it and we so we treat people with different opinions about how important these issues are with respect but we are not in no way do we do we essentially condemn ourselves to health and fitness mediocrity because other people are intimidating us with some kind of you know with some kind of negative feedback forget it yeah yeah and I always wonder too what about the friends or family members that they don't they don't they're not disagreeable about it but they tempt you you're like oh here I made this just for you or are you sure you don't want one so they're not actively there there may be unintentionally sabotaging and of course with me I don't sometimes have the willpower and I'm like oh okay and then it becomes well I just got to be careful either got to not go to their place because I know I'm going to be tempted I'm going to fail or I've got to figure something else out which is your scheme strategy you know yeah I mean there's things that I talked about and I've done a video on this called getting along without going along but probably find somewhere because I'm sure you can find a version of this on the internet on John MacDougall's website the but the point of the whole thing is that we don't have to be perfect and we don't always have to hold up to social pressure of that kind we can you can you can dabble in and make little foibles and that's fine that's not the point the point is any blend who is sort of systematically attacking our position and our efforts on this that's got to go that needs to be addressed and possibly gently and warmly and intelligently confronted and and if they can't sort of get their act together and and give us space then then essentially we're going to get the disagreeable distance between us and them and we are going to fade fade our participation in that relationship down to a level that is sane and reasonable and still fits into our lives mmm-hmm all right all right we are moving right along in this is a nice little flow here so this next question is with regards to possessive and controlling males so dear dr. Lisle without getting too specific about my situation I'm curious as to what causes this behavior is it possible that my mate has overestimated my value and sexual attractiveness in the marketplace or have I overestimated his value is this a Karass characteristic common in males who are in recovery from addiction are there character traits and males that typically drive this type of behavior I learned a lot over the past few months about addiction and have completely new perspective on it but I'm not really certain what my thoughts are on this it's very interesting the and where this can get confusing for females is that the sometimes the controlling nature of a male can be a signal that the female is very valuable and therefore it actually tells them that they're in a good spot this is a good spot to be impregnated because this guy really cares about me okay so you can let's think about the opposite signal I don't really care who you're talking to I don't really care where you're going I don't care who you're hanging out with and hey I'll be back here at you know I'll be back here at 7 or 8 o'clock tonight name I'll see if I do and if I don't that's cool whoa that's the other side of this okay so we can see that if the male is not signaling any kind of jealousy or controlling us at all that the female recognizes she's in trouble and she's not very valuable on the other hand if he's signaling too hard then the question is wait a second do I have some controlling nut on my hand who is going to be a serious problem okay so the so what this is about is whether or not the relationship actually has a balance that works now one of the interesting things about David bus's research is he has shown that relationships that are the best actually the most satisfying relationships are the ones where there's some mutual jealousy that gets activated you know periodically so if that doesn't happen I'm not saying that you have a lousy relationship I'm just saying that statistically relationships among humans where there is periodic waves of jealous anxiety and some jealous irritation those are the relationships that are statistically the most satisfying that makes sense the reason it makes sense is it for exactly the sorts of reasons that this woman is hypothesizing and that is the following it's impossible that quote my mate has overestimated my value or her attractiveness in other words he is feeling threatened by competition he's anxious about it he feels essentially rewarded and therefore he needs to protect his his win yeah okay that is uh that's exactly what if you're essentially a normal human you would like to feel a bit over rewarded and with it comes the anxiety and so and on the other hand her her other her other concern is wait a second have I actually misread this guy and and maybe I really am that much better than him and his anxiety here is completely legitimate it's just that I've over read his value and he's reading the situation correctly and I'm likely to run into a competitor that outshines him and therefore he's got to control me so you can see you can see the problem that if you if you happen to be very possessive and jealous your mate almost by definition has to be making inferences that maybe that maybe you're not such a great deal okay this is that you're too anxious to buy the guy's car and he starts thinking we'll wait a second maybe I'm selling it too cheap so the the question or the way that I would answer this individual would be really a much more right brained sort of question in response which is how happy are you how how satisfying is this relationship does it visit is it warm and sexy and loving and interesting does it have excitement periodically it is this a really good spot if if it comes with some some jealousy and some controlling us hey well you may have just got yourself a somewhat disagreeable animal that thinks it's over rewarded and as long as it continues and it's relatively steady and not crazy that's not necessarily a bad place as long as you happen to be happy with it underneath this to the extent that its noxious we are looking at two possible characteristics that could be a problem in terms of the person's true mate value which is how disagreeable are they and how emotionally unstable are they okay so those two characteristics put together are are or potentially exciting to some extent because they can signal to to a female that you are very much wanted and you're very important so and no you can't go with so-and-so it's like that can almost feel like music to a female's ear like ooh wow my important boys he all upset about the idea of losing me you can see how on the one hand that can be a very exciting inference and on the other hand if this is actually essentially a fairly stable characteristic of this person's personality they could be a real pain in the ass okay and and this could get very old pretty soon and if it is and if your quote really not that happy and it it doesn't have enough joy in it and you're still seeing this disagreeable and instability then those are that's that's a sign that we have a that we've got a personality that is not you know that is going to bring substantial costs to the emotional quality of this relationship
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