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A
If you're a podcast host, listen up. This one's for you. My name is Ali Jackson. I'm the host of Finding Mr. Height, a dating and relationship podcast that I've been doing for four years now, sharing my positive and practical approach to dating that's built on my own life experience. And I wanted to share another experience that I've had, my secret behind monetizing my show. It's called Red Circle, and I was just telling my colleague about how much I love their platform. With Red Circle, not only am I getting a seamless hosting experience, but I also love the support I receive in ad sales. It's not just typical ad sales either. It's targeted opportunities based on my show and my life. And the platform is super simple. You just set your preferences, and Red Circle matches you with sponsors that align with your show. You can vet every opportunity, and their platform gives you great analytics. More recently, too, my Red Circle team has brought me opportunities outside of my podcast on social media to really augment the podcast partnerships. Bring them full circle. I just can't recommend them enough. If you want to give it a try, go to redcircle.com to get your free trial. That's redcircle.com for a free trial. Attachment theory has been around for 70, 75 years, and it's. It was outdated, so I had to do an update on it, and I started building not just the types, but the subtypes. And there's a subtype that has avoidance as the main, but it has an internal core of anxious attachment. It's from a little bit more damage, and we call it quiet disorganized. Disorganized means the blend of the two anxious and avoidant. Quiet disorganized is the one we see with a freeze response. We've got limbic system, fight, flight, flight, fawn, freeze, Right, and freeze responses. Your brain locking down, your vagus nerve tightens. You get a vagal dorsal shutdown. And Broca's area, the speech center of the brain, diminishes rapidly to almost zero, and it mutes you. You go selective mutism. What your brain is doing is saying, I don't know how to solve this, and anything I do will make it worse.
B
Okay, guys, we got Adam, Lane Smith here. Just saw an amazing interview of his on Chris Williamson, so decided to invite him on my show, and he's done this one or two times before. Thanks for coming on, man.
A
Man, Sean, thank you for having me here.
B
Yeah. We're gonna talk dating today.
A
That's awesome. I love Dating.
B
Yeah. Interesting time to date right now, right?
A
It's a horrible time to date.
B
Would you consider this one of the worst times in history to date?
A
That's an interesting question. I think that dating has actually been invented in the last hundred years. I think dating is one of the most inefficient systems for finding a mate or a partner. I think we need to do away with dating and I think that if people are serious about finding a life partner, we need to have the old courtship system come back, but with a smart upgrade.
B
Wow.
A
If people want to play around and have fun, they can continue doing dating. But most women especially are looking for a husband, not a boyfriend.
B
Wow, that is so interesting. I did not know the history of dating. It's only 100 years old.
A
You said it has not been a system that we've used for all of human history. No. Mostly what you did was get match made through your family, through your friends. Women especially prefer you to come in with references. And if you don't have references, their guard is incredibly high. They feel unsafe. The dating industry right now in the dating world is essentially sending a woman from, let's say, 10,000 years ago, right. Just after the neolithic revolution. Let's say you take a woman back, then strip her of family, friends, everything, send her a loan into a forest and say, hopefully the first man you find is kind and not going to hurt you and is a great husband. Just connect to him. Hopefully it works out.
B
Good luck.
A
Her nervous system. Yeah, her nervous system screaming at her the entire time. So she's terrified of that man. She'll have a laundry list of very specific things she has to see up front before she'll ever trust him. Right. And no man is going to meet those lists. So she's going to be afraid. It's going to be an awful experience. Guys out there, same thing. You're wandering through the woods, you're connecting with terrified, angry, scared, traumatized women. They're going to just run you through the ringer. You're going to feel alone. A lot of guys are going to be left out in the lurch. We're looking at massive rates of guys who can't even get a girlfriend, can't even have a conversation with a woman anymore. They're checking out.
B
So I was just going to ask you, who do you think has it harder, but it sounds like you think men.
A
I think it's different flavors of heart. I think our nervous systems are screaming no matter what we are. And it's screaming in different ways. We know that men are more lonely throughout the course of their life. We know that men are less likely to be able to find a partner, but we know that women report a lot higher rates of anxiety and stress and overthinking. We know that about one quarter of American women is on an antipsychic medication right now for antidepressant antianxiety. We know that our nervous systems are not doing well. It's just pick your flavor of misery.
B
Are you seeing dating trends in cities compared to rural areas? Like you're in Wisconsin.
A
I am. I wish that I could say the rural areas are doing better. I wish I could say that cities are the problem. Get out of them. But we are seeing that as people condense into cities. You know, back in the 1920s, most Americans shifted into cities, and the rural areas are smaller. We're seeing the economic hit over the last, well, let's just say several decades. We've never really recovered, even from post World War II boom. We've never really recovered properly. So we're seeing an economic destruction in the rural areas, which is driving people into the cities. A lot of loss of young people. And the ones who are left don't have many options. So I would not say that marital success is better out than the boonies right now.
B
Interesting take, because I hear some people in Miami, for example, just complaining about the dating culture out there.
A
Well, for sure. Cities like New York City, Louisiana. Miami, these are ground zero for attachment issues, not being able to connect to people. Most of my clients come from la, New York City, Miami. Right. But they're all bad. No one anywhere is really feeling absolute success. And there's. There is a specific reason for that that I can get into it a little bit.
B
If you do. Yeah, we'll dive into that. Part of me. I'm getting married next month. I feel so grateful I met my.
A
Wait a minute. You're getting married next month?
B
Yeah. I'm eight years in.
A
Congratulations. Okay.
B
Part of me so grateful that I just met her early and kind of before all the dating apps like they. Tinder just came out now I feel like I got a lot of single friends that I talk to. It is madness.
A
People in your age group are. I'm a little older. You forgive me for that? I'm gonna sound like an old man. But people in your age group largely are becoming more and more afraid of marriage because it seems like it's outdated to them.
B
I was afraid.
A
Yeah. Good. Yeah, you're doing good now, I hope.
B
I was very afraid. I mean, yeah. Eight Years. What? People would say, that's a long time to. We got engaged six years in. People would say that was a long wait. But I was afraid.
A
What made you. Let me ask this. What was it about her that made you finally give up on that fear and push through it?
B
Honestly, it wasn't her. It was me. I was so focused on work. I wanted to build a base, a safety net first before I ever thought about having kids and. And settling down.
A
Yep, that's smart. I mean, it is smart. We have to do that, especially today, because we don't have a safety net. I know you grew up in a middle class family. I was watching your reels earlier.
B
Oh, yeah.
A
Great content.
B
I do.
A
So many people today have so few resources. We're seeing women really terrified, feeling like they have to go lock in first, that they have to be the masculine provider in their own life first, and then there's no room for a man. What finally made you pull the trigger on marriage? I'm always curious when young people do this, because I love it. Oh, and I love marriage. So this is not a negative.
B
Yeah, I'm happy we're getting deep here. So my whole life, I grew up in a divorce household. I was 10 years old when my parents got divorced. Literally every day. My dad was like, never get married. He told me that as a kid, all the way from 10 to like 22 when we parted ways, when I left the house or whatever. But so that was just in my head, you know, because he went through two divorces and they were both pretty nasty. A lot of legal fees. So he was just sharing what he went through. And then I internalized that.
A
That's all he knew. So he's. He's trying to help you in the only way he did, which was to traumatize you.
B
Right. So that's my background. But then growing up, I mean, moving environments and then meeting people that had really good marriages. Seeing that, I think kind of shifted my perspective a little bit.
A
Okay. Has that been more recent? Did you pick up skills from new marriages?
B
Yeah. I'm constantly asking guests for marriage advice, parenting advice. You know what I mean? Getting ready for that.
A
Gotcha. That's. That's one thing I've come across. I was a marriage and family therapist for many years. I remember going through the schooling. They said, you will be the angel of death to every marriage that comes to you. You'll have a disastrous rate. Everyone's getting divorced. Don't take it personally. Just kind of like buckle down and get through it. That was our training as marriage therapist. So to take that and then go out into the field, what I've seen is that it's usually a skill gap. Most people don't have the skills for good relationships. They only have skills for bad relationships. So then when they get into a relationship, they just respond badly over and over and over, as if they're married to a sociopath, as if they're dating someone who is incapable of love, empathy, kindness, problem solving. So they default to doing everything with management and managing the other person instead of working together. Together as people. That's what I've seen. When we have the skills to do it, we actually get skill mastery, competence, and confidence. Sounds like that's what made a big difference to you.
B
Yeah, very interesting point. Skill gap. I haven't heard that take, but that makes a lot of sense. And I needed to work on a lot of skills to get to where I'm at now.
A
What was the biggest skill that really pushed it for you? I mean, all.
B
Conflict resolution. I'd say. Ooh, yeah.
A
What was conflict like for you before that?
B
I'm an avoidant.
A
Yeah. Okay.
B
So, like, my mom would yell, and I would go to my room and lock myself in the room. That was my attachment style.
A
Eight years dating, building a safety net first, and then getting married. That's a very avoidant pattern right there.
B
Yeah, exactly.
A
That's awesome.
B
Yeah. So that was my style. Like, I just avoided conflict, and it really hurt me in business and in dating.
A
In business, too.
B
Yeah, especially in business. Yeah. I would avoid conflict.
A
Okay. I was gonna say, most avoiding guys are excellent in business, but until they hit a certain point where relationships are everything.
B
Yeah.
A
Then they start to fall apart.
B
Well, I'm excellent in business, but me just avoiding conflict, it would build up to the point where it'd be big problems, you know, Like, I was scared to fire someone. I was scared to open up.
A
Got it.
B
Yeah.
A
A lot of my clients, they come in there are CEOs from around the world and stuff like that, and they have the same problem, like, they can build when it's a solo enterprise with solopreneurs and stuff like that. They can be the CEO. They can pull at the top, usually. But when it comes to board of directors, when it comes to other executives working on a team, man, they crumble.
B
So relatable.
A
Yeah. They don't know how to bond with the other people appropriately and solve problems. Conflict. Beautiful.
B
Yeah, man.
A
What's your method of conflict now? What's your model when you see conflict and that's not a. Not a trick question.
B
Yeah. So instead of. I guess I used to go literally mute, like when conflict arose.
A
Interesting.
B
Yeah. That was just. I would shut down. Now I'm working on it and I'll try to. So I'm so logical. So when I deal with conflict, I try to use logic to deal with it. Sometimes my fiance doesn't like that. You know what I mean?
A
I do.
B
Does that make sense?
A
It does. 100%. I'm interested in the mute thing. Is that a freeze response? Do you freeze?
B
I used to freeze, yeah.
A
Yeah. Can I. Can I tell you something?
B
Yeah.
A
So attachment theory has been around for 70, 75 years, and it's. It was outdated, so I had to do an update. Okay. And I started building not just the types, but the subtypes. And there's a subtype that has avoidance as the main, but it has an internal core of anxious attachment. It's from a little bit more damage. And we call it quiet disorganized. It's disorganized means the blend of the two. Anxious and avoidant. Quiet disorganized is the one we see with a freeze response where you've got limbic system fight. Flight. Fawn, Freeze. Right. And freeze response. As your brain locking down your vagus nerve tightens, you get a vagal dorsal shutdown. And broca's area, the speech center of the brain, diminishes rapidly to almost zero and it mutes you. You go selective mutism. What your brain is doing is saying, I don't know how to solve this and anything I do will make it worse because you're remembering childhood like nothing worked. Fight. Didn't work. Flight didn't work. Fawning, approval seeking, being kind didn't work. Freeze. So at least no more damage is done. But from the outside, you'll have a blank face. Right. You look like you don't care. You look like you're detached. People get angry at you because you appear to not care. That's usually the biggest problem.
B
Yes.
A
Does your fiance feel like you don't care? Yes. But you care more than anybody, right?
B
I do care.
A
Okay.
B
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A
That's going to be tough. So your prefrontal cortex will overdevelop and squash your emotional expression on purpose. It'll mute some of your ability to feel negative feelings, which is, in your case, good because you don't want to feel the pain. But it does mute some of your positive feelings as well, especially during stress. This can be overcome through training and experience. We can talk about that if you want to on or off the air, but quiet disorganized is what it sounds like to me. That is going to have like a blank face. You can fix that too. It's pretty much everything you want.
B
I'm just so relieved I could finally somewhat explain this to her because, like, I didn't know what was going on.
A
No, it's, it's a huge thing. It's something I've pulled out in the last year or so with me and my team. It's massive. It's game changing for most people. I'm actually quite disorganized myself, really, to be honest.
B
It's amazing. Throughout this podcast I've learned how much childhood trauma impacts us.
A
Massive.
B
Like it's everything, right?
A
I was just reading a paper, this, a research paper this morning that just came out very fresh that our serotonin receptors in our brain through childhood and adolescence, if they are not properly cultivated through high levels of cortisol and stress, that's actually correlated with attention issues, stress management issues, emotional regulation issues, relationship issues, anxiety, depression issues. Because we are flooded with cortisol during childhood and all that, our brain says I'm in a stress environment, I'm never going to be happy. So I don't need all this serotonin pathways. I'm not going to build them the proper way. I'm going to kind of build a couple. But I'll mostly focus and specialize in distress. Holy and that's what people like you and me and probably most of the people listening are dealing with right now.
B
That definitely happened to me because I feel like school was a big stress growing up.
A
School. But your family, man, look how fast you jump past that. Like, dad, like, don't get married, don't get, like, divorce, household, all this pain. Like, look how fast you jump through that into school. That's what most people do. They neglect that. Yeah, you don't have to. You don't have to have a horrible childhood where you're suffering every single day to have attachment issues. Research shows that 65% of Gen Z, at least 65% of Gen Z, have attachment issues. On top of that, minimum 10% have personality disorders, potentially up to 15 or 20%, which is the most extreme version of attachment. So we're potentially looking at 80% of Gen Z having serious attachment challenges. Maybe 20% securely attached.
B
Holy crap.
A
One out of five, baby. What? What was your generation, the millennial generation. We are lucky if it's 50. 50, right. That's optimistic, but lucky if it's 50.
B
50. So still pretty high.
A
Still pretty high. We don't have as high of a rate of the double damage, the disorganized style of anxious and avoidant, because that's more damage. Gen Z has more than that. And we don't have as high of a rate of personality disorders either, just because the damage hasn't been done. But, man, we are living in the rubble of a greater society right now, and we don't know it. Our systems are running. Everything's running. But attachment issues kick on. When society has collapsed, they are there to keep humanity alive. Not happy, but alive. And we're living with that. And Gen Z is wearing those scars every single day. And everyone just looks at you guys and says, come on, just work harder.
B
What are you doing?
A
Quit whining. Why are you so anxious? Come on, Just get off. Get off your computer. Go play outside. Go touch grass. That's what they're saying. But no, your nervous systems are cooked right now.
B
Interesting. Yeah, because the boomers are more. More that style. Right.
A
They're also tripling the divorce rates in their 70s and 80s right now with gray divorce. They're showing everybody that marriage is worthless. They're showing people that family will leave you that there's no hope. Right. They're actually continuously crushing the hopes of everyone watching them right now. So, yes, the boomers will tell you that. At the same time, they will drive that message biochemically into your brain.
B
Yeah, yeah, the whole marriage thing is very interesting. A lot of guys are speaking out against it these days. I'm sure you've seen the red pill move.
A
Oh, yes, I've. I've butted heads with many of them. Many of them hate me. And that's cool, that's fine. Because I believe wholeheartedly in marriage. But I think that we're doing marriage wrong. I've been married about 17 years with my wife. I got five kids. Got baby number six on the way right now. Happy to announce. Haven't even announced that anywhere yet. But it's marriage. Marriage is truly wonderful, but only when we do it the right way. Marriage is not meant to be an emotional experience. It's meant to be a business experience.
B
Whoa.
A
You run a marriage like a business? I teach my clients. I've developed what's called the CEO and COO model. Chief executive officer. Chief operations officer. Executive partnership divided by gender roles, but not based on value, based on specialization. Male brains are specialized. Female brains are specialized. Our nervous systems are specialized. They also integrate symbiotically. Our nervous systems, fantastically. So we are designed to work together as an executive partnership, and that's what we call marriage. It cannot be this lovey dovey based on feelings. Let's get married until one of us hates the other and then divorce.
B
Right.
A
Can't do that.
B
Okay. I want to dive into this more because my fiance is always talking about, let's keep the business separate from our relationship.
A
Interesting.
B
And you're saying no.
A
Like, how are you gonna do that?
B
Keep it all together? I try. It's really hard, honestly.
A
Here's a. Okay, here's a way to square that circle, as they say. Your marriage, right. Your marriage itself should be the business. The business should be a subset of the over larger business itself. Your marriage is the legacy that the two of you are co creating together as a couple. What could you create together that you cannot create separately? How will you be a power couple? Is it kids? Is it grandkids? Great grandkids, right? Do you want kids?
B
Yeah.
A
How many do you want?
B
We want at least two kids.
A
At least two?
B
Yeah.
A
Let's run that out to three.
B
I want three. She wants two.
A
Build the population. We need smart kids. So let's do this. If you have three kids and they have three kids, that's nine grandkids. And they have three kids, that's 27 great grandkids. And they have three Kids, that's 81 great, great grandkids. Wow. This is about 120 biological descendants. Over the next 100, 120 years for the two of you. That's a legacy, okay? That's part of your business. That's what you're building. You're on this podcast like you got a lot of people listening to you. You got, what was it? Tens of millions? A hundred million?
B
Yeah, 200 million a month views.
A
I love that. That's part of your legacy too. Changing the world, right? You're gonna have kids. You're gonna make the world better for them. Your kids have to marry somebody. They gotta be friends with somebody, they gotta do business with somebody. So that's your legacy. You and her are co creating that together. That's the business.
B
Got it?
A
Now this business you're running is a subsidiary of that larger legacy model. You can keep that a little separate. You can run that a little bit separate from the rest. It doesn't have to just pile in. But the business you're crafting is the legacy now of that, you're the CEO of that, she's the chief operations officer. You fulfill different roles based on your specializations, not value. It's not who's better or smarter or stronger. It's about how you can operate together. I know you have questions. Ask me all of them.
B
No, that is. That is a very interesting model. I'm going to try to tell her about it later.
A
Good.
B
Course.
A
That does it. I'll give you a copy. You guys can watch it together.
B
I love it. I love it. Yeah, I was thinking more literally, I guess, with the business, but you're saying like the whole marriage is just a business.
A
Yes. Your children will be part of that business, right?
B
Yeah.
A
Your. Your mission will be part of that business. Whatever business you start. 15 businesses you start down the road, right? Energy drinks and clothing and microphones and everything you do that will weave into your larger legacy, but also your nonprofit stuff that you work when you're. When you're 55, when you're 60, you're at the peak of your power, when you are opening orphanages, when you are rescuing people, when you're training people, when you are an old gray man and people are listening to you and they have for their entire life and generations have learned from you. That's your business. And she's co creating that with you. It's not just yours. You are building that together. That is the business of marriage. And that's why marriage exists.
B
I love it when you see this take on the red pill, how men gain value as they get older. Right. Like you said, our peak is 55 to 60.
A
Yeah.
B
And they also say the opposite with women. Right. They lose value as they get older.
A
If you are purely looking at starting a courtship model that is based only on children and based on family physical and emotional pleasure, then yes, the red pill people are correct. The problem with the red pill movement, people like Rolo Tomasi and things like that. The reason they don't like me is because I say they look at women and they take all the worst traits of, let's say, borderline personality disorder. And they say every woman on the planet has borderline personality disorder. They are all sociopaths. They're monsters. They are evil, and they take from you and give you nothing in return. Now, what they're disregarding is what a woman brings to the table. Table. Biologically and biochemically, a woman brings an immense amount of joy, pleasure, safety, medical, health, all kinds of things to men. We can go into that if you ever want to. But women bring so much, but only in a safe, securely attached relationship. That's only where she can bring it.
B
That's the key point right there. Right, guys? Some guys have never experienced that.
A
No. Most. Most men are not providing the four levels of safety to a woman. So women are not able to reciprocate and provide the four levels of peace back to him. The masculine must establish the safety first so that she is free to do that. Otherwise her nervous system will stop her from doing it.
B
I love that. Yeah. She's. My fiance's provided me so much. You know what I mean? Like everything you just named.
A
Tell me, tell me.
B
Safety. She'll meet someone within two minutes and tell me if I should work with them or not. I don't even know what to explain, what to call that.
A
Intuition. Yep.
B
Yeah. Just someone to talk to. So I guess like a therapist, too. Emotional stuff. As guys, we bottle stuff in all the time. You know, that's how I grew up, at least.
A
Absolutely. Do you have a model yet for what you need from her? Do you even know how to tell her what you need? Do you even know what your needs are actually, as a man?
B
These are good questions. What do I need? Yeah, I just. I'm so in the moment.
A
Yeah.
B
Sometimes I never take the time to, like, ask myself that.
A
Well, let's even dive deeper. Quite disorganized. Attachment style. You are designed to not know what your needs are, are, because your brain will say, I'm not able to ask other people for anything. And so even wanting it is bad. When you were probably one or two years old, you Asked for stuff. Your parents put that down pretty hard and taught you never to ask again. So now your brain won't. So now your brain doesn't even have a concept of how could she help me? That's going to be a big division point for you eventually. If you guys haven't worked through it yet, she's going to be starving. To know how she can help you, what she can do for you, how to add value to. She's probably after you all the time for it, right? Yeah.
B
She's always asking me what's on my mind.
A
Yeah. Yeah.
B
I don't know how to. Yeah.
A
How can I help? What do you want? What do you want? What do you want? Want? Worst thing that we men can say is, you can do nothing for me. You are useless. Please just sit there and look pretty. That's the worst thing.
B
I say nothing all the time.
A
Yeah, nothing.
B
Even though I'm, like, hungry sometimes or I'm wanting something, I'll still say I'm. I don't want anything.
A
Let me. Let me ask you this. I'm gonna tell you a very brief story. I promise. A brief. Be brief. When I first started my business years ago, I was used to working alone. I didn't know what it was like to have an assistant. My wife and my business partner, they made me hire an assistant. I had that assistant sit there and do maybe two hours of work a week, and I paid her 40 hours of work.
B
Wow.
A
Right? And I did all the work myself because I had no idea how to use an assistant. I drove that woman nuts. She sat there for six months waiting to get fired because I wouldn't give her tasks to do. And the whole time I'm thinking, well, this is kind of cool. Like, it's cool to have someone to chat with once in a while. I had no idea she'd asked me what to do. And I would just assume I had to do everything myself because how could I hand a task off to her? It wouldn't make sense. Like, she wouldn't do it the way I did it. That ended at six months when I finally said, I guess I don't need you. And she goes, I guess you don't. My wife was furious when I told her that I. She said, what the hell is wrong with you? You're working 80, 90 hours a week, and you're paying your assistant, and you aren't even using them. Do you not know how I got another assistant? My first task for that assistant was, tell me how to use an assistant. And I Had to learn manually. This is a skill set, just like I told you earlier. A skill set to let others assist you. You. But if you're not doing that, then here's what's going to happen is your fiance is going to sit there for the rest of her life like that assistant I had at her desk, twiddling her thumbs, terrified, waiting to get fired or divorced. In this case, waiting for you to not need her and cast her aside. If you can allow her to be useful to you and really complete you and be your chief operations officer, then her calm, settled, rested self will join you in that relationship. Relationship and build with you. But until then, you will drive her nuts. Wow. Right?
B
That is good to know.
A
What does a woman bring to the table? And then you close the door in her face. Bring anything.
B
Wow, this is all mind blowing.
A
Yes, it is. We are meant to fit together. We are meant to fit.
B
Because then you see the opposite. You see these micromanagers that tell that overwhelm people.
A
Yeah, no, you're not gonna. And that's that. That would be treating your fiance like an assistant. You want to treat her like a co executive who works with you.
B
Respectfully correct.
A
An executive who works with you who has a different role than you do. Your job as the CEO is to make decisions, but her job is to help you inform those decisions so they're proper. Her job is actually getting your face tell you when you're off track. Her job is to run domestic. Her job is to run the internals. Her job is actually to detect problems. Have you ever noticed that women tend to notice problems and talk about them faster than men do?
B
Way faster.
A
It's baked into them. They're supposed to do that. Then they're supposed to bring you the problem. Knock on your office, say, hey, fellow executive, hey, CEO, I got a problem over here in this department. You don't know much about this because it's my department over here, but I need some help solving this. And you go, oh, Your job as the CEO is to say, cool, come on in, let's talk about it. Tell me what's going on. She lays out some things about what's going on. You say, I don't know that department. I'll be honest with you. Give me some more information. Help me understand. The worst thing men do at this point is start dismissing. No, you're wrong. That's not a problem. Yeah, you're stupid. Nope. Ask questions. And then you say, okay, here's what I think we can do. Here's a solution. I Propose. But you know that better than I do. That department. Tell me if you think this solution works for us. And her brain. Her brain in the back, it goes to the back to observe and back and forth across the hemispheres to analyze. And then she goes, well, that will work, but it'll cause this problem. So let's add this piece and it'll enhance this, and actually, we'll come out way ahead. So let's do this modified one. You go, great. I'm a CEO. I'm saying yes. I'm putting the stamp on it. If it goes wrong, I'm to blame for that. I'm making the decision. Let's re. Let's. Let's do this. Here's how we'll implement it. Boom, boom, boom. Let's talk again in a week and see how things are going. That's how a man and woman should make decisions together.
B
Yeah.
A
And women are afraid because they get dismissed. They get shut down. They get shut out. The old. The old Greek myth of Cassandra, right? She was blessed with absolute perfect foresight of what was going to happen and cursed that no one would believe her. And that's most women walking around in the world right now. That's why they feel like they have to get their finances and order without a man. That's why they feel like they have to be independent, they have to work a career. Then maybe when they're 75, they'll start having children. That's women right now, too.
B
The feminist movement, Right?
A
The feminist movement, it's the opposite of the red pill. The other side is evil. Let's control them, and let's all sit in our little club and feel good about ourselves. Red pill and feminism is the same crap.
B
Yeah. Do you believe in that whole feminine, masculine energy conversation, too?
A
From the East?
B
Yeah.
A
I think that there's things that are very true about it. I do believe masculinity and femininity are real and accurate. I believe they are built into our systems. I believe they are built into our brains and our neurology. We are definitely different. No matter what anyone wants to say. We are very different creatures. As far as energy, I'd love to have that conversation with somebody who does believe in it. Yeah, I'd love to learn more.
B
To me, it makes sense. Like if a woman's working all day, to me, they're in their masculine energy.
A
This. Yes. Okay, so the masculine energy, as far as we. We call it on Tik tok. Yes. Yeah. I'm talking daoism and stuff like that. But Yes, a woman is. How do you want to do this? I'm gonna do this. I won't draw on your paper. No. Yes, actually.
B
That's perfect.
A
Thank you. Thank you. So, you taking notes and I can love it. Man, you're awesome. All right, here's what we're going to do. Here's what our hunter gatherer ancestors did, okay? The men established a perimeter of safety. That was our job, okay? We build a perimeter of safety. That's why we have bigger upper body strength. That's why our nervous system is built to dissociate from pain better. That's why we have more vasopressin receptors in our brains to solve problems and bond through solving instead of bonding through warmth and intimacy as much. Okay? There's a number of reasons. Our job is to establish safety on the perimeter, go out of the perimeter, gather resources and bring them back inside the perimeter. This is our job, okay? Masculinity, humanity as a whole. This is the male job. Perimeter out in. As we get older, there's also a mentorship compound component. We'll talk about that. But this is our job biochemically, okay? Now, the feminine job is everything inside of this perimeter when we come back in to provide warmth, nurturing, safety. Now, that sounds. Those are buzzwords, right? What does that mean? When the female nervous system is completely calm and safe. When the perimeter is established around her. A physical safety perimeter where she's physically safe. A resource perimeter where she has all the resources she needs. Even my clients, a lot of the women make more money than men. That's not the issue. If something went wrong, would he step up and get the resources for us? Right? Resource safety, emotional safety. If I have big emotions, I take them to him. He won't dismiss me or run away. I don't have to walk on eggshells, but I also have protection from his emotions. He's disciplined, he's managed. He is good. I can always predict him. He is always safe for me. And then bonding, safety. He is truly bonded to me. He will not leave me as a person. That's your wife being useful to you. We got to work on that. We'll fix that. That four levels of safety. What happens is her nervous system calms from sympathetic, which is what we call masculine sympathetic nervous system. Stress. Stress system calms down and she goes into her parasympathetic rest and digest mode. This is where she has an abundance of serotonin. Her mood's enhanced, but here's the magic. Her oxytocin receptors spring wide Open. Now, oxytocin is the bonding hormone that releases when we feel safe and belonging and warmth and love and intimacy. The more of oxytocin that we get, the more affectionate we become, the more compulsive we are for giving and nurturing to others. Then they get it, and they flow with it. When we have high oxytocin, our GABA goes up. Gamma aminobutyric acid, inhibitory neurotransmitter that shuts down the expression of cortisol, cancels out your cortisol. Your stress diminishes. Right?
B
Holy crap.
A
Absolutely. Now, as this happens, you can then take magnesium and synthesize melatonin to sleep deeper, deeper at night. As that happens, you generate more human growth hormone for wound healing. We say that the feminine has a healing energy. It literally tells us to heal. Right. We generate more serotonin in their presence. Right. The problem here is that we are not establishing safety for women, so they have to stay in their sympathetic masculine state, right? So their oxytocin receptors are shot or very, very pale and pale. But close down, they're not generating much oxytocin. Then they're not giving much oxytocin. They're in a low oxytocin, high sympathetic arousal state, stressed out all the time, low oxytocin, low gaba, high unregulated cortisol, their fertility is trashed, their estrogen down. Right. We see a 30% decrease in reproductive hormones when high stress and high trauma things are happening like that, and we're just feeling it chronically. 30% testosterone decrease. Sounds pretty familiar for most people listening because we've seen that over the last 40 years. That's correlated with high anxiety, high stress like this. The men who are supposed to hold the perimeter, go out into danger and then come back and immerse into that deep feminine energy, if you want to call it that, here in the middle, our serotonin goes up, our wounds heal, we sleep deeper. We actually extend our lifespan by about 15 years and have higher life quality for the entirety of our life. Just being around feminine, just being around deep feminine energy, we even see this effect. If your sister is the good feminine force in your life, you don't even have to have a wife if your sister is there. All of this is actually balanced out. You need a strong feminine force, but a woman needs a strong masculine force. And what we've been is massively divided. So women can't do their internal work and be the chief operations officer and run the internal systems and just Pump full of love and intimacy. This is why women are afraid to have children right now, because their nervous system is saying, I live in hell world and there's no one protecting me. I can't get get pregnant. So women are putting it off and off and off and off until they can't anymore. 90% of women who end up without children, 90% wanted children.
B
Holy crap.
A
Yes. So this is the masculine feminine dynamic right here playing out. Men must step up and establish the perimeter, go out and require, acquire resources and bring them back. And then the other levels of safety, emotional safety. Most men are failing this because we're not disciplining our emotions properly. We just shut them out. And we're not establishing bonding safety because we don't have secure attachment. And then you have to have a woman who receives that safety and actually accepts it instead of spitting in your face. Right. Or seizing control. But then she flows so much better on the inside. All over TikTok, all of Gen Z, all of the women are saying, get me out of my masculine, get me out of my masculine. This is what we're looking for. A masculine man who is securely attached so he can provide levels 3 emotional emotional safety and levels for bonding safety. You can't provide those without secure attachment. That's masculine feminine in a nutshell.
B
Thanks for sharing that. That was beautiful. We'll include an image of this on the video.
A
All right. I wish I had drawn it better.
B
It's all good. That was really insightful. So you said men are not establishing safety for women. My question is, do you need a certain financial status to provide safety for women these days, in your opinion?
A
No, it's not.
B
You can do it while you're broke.
A
It's not even about a number. You can do it while you're broke. Which is fascinating, really. It's really having a base minimum where there's predictability. Women can actually survive on almost anything, even in bad situations, as long as there is predictability for them. Because if there's predictability, their nervous system regulates and they can start predicting what they have and how much allotment they have and what's going to happen next month. If you make $50,000 one month and $10 the next month and then 50,000 the next month, your wife will not be happy. She will freak out because there is lack of predictability. If you make $5,000 every single month, the same amount, your wife's nervous system will be calm. She might gently push on you a little bit and say, hey, we need a little more we need a little more for things. But her nervous system will be calmed and regulated. Her estrogen will go up, her fertility will go up, her sex drive will go up. Right. We're finding the female sex drive is cratered right now, largely unless she's in that early cycle of please don't leave me and then she's throwing it at you. Right. But this actually fixes the female nervous system, system and the sex drive, too. This is female Viagra right here.
B
How fascinating. I'm honestly shocked.
A
It's all there. The research is beautiful.
B
That's what I like about your content. You bring the research, you bring the facts. Because I was under the notion that, like, we're in a materialistic society and women really value money.
A
These days, women with personality disorders get a lot of screen time because they're willing to say, like, come on, buddy, you got to have like, eight figures and eight inches and eight feet. Like, those women get a lot of attention. And those women do. Again, exists. And again, they've gone from about 10% up to 15 or 20. And it's not that women don't care about money. Women who have avoidant tendencies are going to care about money as a means of safety. Right. You talked about, I got to have a nest egg. I'm safe at this point. That's that thinking. Right. It's not that money doesn't matter either. Right. We want to be above poverty, but above poverty is really what we're looking at. Above poverty and stable is. Is where most women are pretty happy. Now, we do see that women are also happiest within about one bracket of the economic, social status they grew up in.
B
Got it.
A
Right. And. And even going too high actually wrecks them and destroys them.
B
Wow.
A
So one bracket is usually where they're within. One bracket is usually where they're comfortable. But, man, I came from a much lower white family than my wife did. She actually stepped down when we first got married.
B
Respect.
A
I couldn't. Yeah. Because I couldn't provide.
B
Holy crap.
A
She was a. At the time, I. I was not able to do it to that extent. And I've had to grow her help and her assistance. But I did that because I provided that those levels of safety. If there was a resource issue, I hauled ass and I took care of it.
B
Right.
A
She didn't have to get up and do it. Right. I protected us, and I've continued doing that. I was emotionally safe for her. I was bonding safe for her. I provided safety. Therefore, I was much more masculine than almost any of the other men around me. That's why I have five kids and I have six on the way right now.
B
Well done, brother. Well done. I gotta, I gotta ask. With her parents approval, was that a tough time process because at the time you were making less than her?
A
No, to be honest with you, her parents were split up and her, her dad was on his, what, his third marriage. I think it. It really was one of those things. She was like, man, like, this is not the system I want to be in. I need a protector, I need a man, and you are it. And I said, okay, here we are. Let's strap in. She. She was 19, I was 23. We got married. Yeah, that's what people tell us. We strapped in, baby. We did it. We at year 17 right now. We're loving it. It's an adventure every day.
B
I love it. Do you have an opinion when it comes to age ranges, to date, to marry and all that, or do you kind of take it case by case?
A
You know, that's a great. That is a great question. The research on this is really interesting. So about a hundred years ago, in the early 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, the marrying age was not as bad as most people. People think typically the average age most people were getting married, you know, late teens, early 20s sort of thing is what they were doing. As the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s rolled on, what we saw was a plunging in the marriage ages down into like mid teens, because people were so destitute, they were getting married just to get out and find someone else who could feed them and take care of their bills. So we saw a crash in the 1950s. 1950s is nothing compared to traditionalism. 1950s is not a model anyone should ever use for anything, by the way. But it plunged and then it went back up to late teens, early 20s. Right now we're seeing that most couples who have success are getting married maybe in their late 20s. And part of that's because it's taking so much longer to learn skills, so much longer to undo trauma, so much longer to try to get financially safe and get to a place where we can. We're delaying it from college, which adds another four to six years. We're afraid to talk to each other, so we even have to overcome that barrier. Yeah, there's so many things adding in right now, but we do do see that late 20s and early 30s is where most people right now are having a sweet spot.
B
Wow.
A
I don't think it's exactly an age number thing. I think there's A lot of variables playing in there. Worked for me and my wife because we had those variables. Someone else, they may get. They may wait till they're 40 or 50, and it won't matter because they haven't built the skills. It really is a skills thing. It's a skill issue.
B
So it's all about getting. Getting skills first.
A
Get good.
B
Yeah, get good first.
A
Get good first.
B
And can you get good being single?
A
You can, but remember that we get wounded in childhood in relationships, so you don't just go into a cave and fix yourself and then come out and you're good.
B
Right.
A
We have to get bonded in relationships. But the magic of that is we can get bonded in human relationships everywhere. So where you get better at business, you can get better at home if you generalize the skills at home. A lot of my clients, they come in there, they're older, you know, businessmen in their 50s and 60s and stuff. They have incredible skills that they've wired in for. For CEO work at the office. But they come home, they fumble everything home. Their wife can't stand them, their kids can't stand. Because he doesn't know what to say.
B
Right.
A
All we have to do is generalize. Hey, you know how you talk to your COO at work? Yeah. If you talk to your COO at work, how you talk to your wife, what would they do? They would quit. Yes. What if you talk to your wife the way you talk to your CEO and then like, this light bulb goes on, they go, oh, wow, I can do that. And I say, well, you have to do that. Oh, okay. And then they take those skills and they apply it to that relationship. Instant turnaround, like a couple weeks. And you see their marriage satisfaction go from three out of 10 to six out of 10. And six out of 10 is actually sweet spot. You don't want above, like seven or eight, by the way, Way for your nervous system. That's a whole other conversation, but it.
B
Is a fascinating topic. Some guys are such good CEOs and good at business, and then their marriage is. Is the opposite.
A
They don't. They don't let that woman step in and be a coo. Her job is to sit there and look pretty so that he provides for her. She's almost like a vending machine for children. And then she just sits there so that he can look at her in the corner while she's on the shelf. That's almost the role that he has with her.
B
Yeah.
A
And that's why it's failing.
B
And for me, like, I'll be honest. I actually do judge people based off their relationships.
A
You should.
B
Yeah, I know that's the hot take, but yeah. No, it matters a lot to me.
A
Yeah. Not are they a good or bad person. I. You don't mean that. But. I mean, maybe you do. But I. When I judge people like that, I mean, like, is this someone I should be around? Is this someone I can trust? You look at the quality of their relationships. How are they with people? Women do the same thing with men, by the way. All these guys who are out there dating, who have no friends, no family, no one to talk to. You live alone in a apartment with a lawn chair, a TV and an Xbox. And then you try to go find a girlfriend. No, she's not going to connect with you because you've proven you're incapable of human bonding.
B
Yeah.
A
The better friendships and better relationships you have, the more references you have, the more you're a walking billboard for I'm ready for marriage.
B
Absolutely. Have you seen the stats on virgin rates?
A
Oh, it's. Yeah, it's incredible.
B
Oh, my God.
A
I know, I know.
B
I can't believe it.
A
No, I know. Japan is brutal. Japan, brutal. Theirs have sought skyrocketed through the roof. South Korea is leading the way.
B
Anime. Right?
A
It's a complete reduction of human bonding in any way, shape or form, and totally withdrawing. Are you familiar with the mouse mouse utopia experience of John C. Calhoun?
B
I don't think so.
A
This is going to blow your mind. So John C. Calhoun built mouse utopia experiments. So Universe 25 was a box where he took mice. He removed every stressor they could ever experience. He gave them food, health, safety, everything that you could possibly imagine. The perfect experience. And what happened was they started breeding and reproducing and then dumping the babies in the corner and didn't care they'd abandoned them. Whoa. The mothers just wanted to go have more sex. It became a hedonistic, selfish, focused society. Now, what was even weirder was he developed inside of that a culture of what's called the beautiful ones who simply groomed themselves and got approval from the other mice who just wanted to be around them because they were so beautiful. Hello, Instagram, Right? And then what was even weirder was a few, maybe 5%, 10%, became outcasts who couldn't fit into this weird hedonistic subculture. So they were pushed to the outskirts until they would freak out from stress and go on killing sprees and kill as many other mice as they could until the other mice would put them down. Wow. Yes. So it was a hedonistic, completely destroyed culture inside Universe25, which looks an awful lot like our culture.
B
Sounds familiar, right?
A
Sounds all very familiar. What we need to do is not bring back more pain because we have enough pain. Our nervous systems are in too much screaming pain. Our lives are very convenient. Yes, that's the universe 25 piece is the convenience of our lives, but the pain is there. Men say women don't need us anymore. I think women maybe don't need you for some aspects. But women cannot provide the four levels of safety, especially emotional safety and bonding safety. They can't provide that for themselves. And having to provide physical safety and, and resource safety is massive stress for them. Women don't want to be men. Right? We tried that experiment. We try. I grew up in California in the public school system.
B
Oh God.
A
My female school teachers would tell us that we were not as good as the girls. They would tell us that boys are stupider. They would tell us that boys are worse. They would tell us that girls are better, smarter, and they're going to be the leaders of the future and men may as well not be here. Right? We got that message. You got that messaging across everything. We still get that messaging today. I think of Kathleen Kennedy when she bought, when they Disney bought Star wars and they put her in charge and it became about, men are stupid and worthless. Your time is over. Now it's our turn. Right? We're still doing that today. But all those young women who bought into that in my generation bought into feminism and all that stuff, third wave feminism, fourth wave feminism, all that crap. They are now deeply miserable and unhappy and they hate their lives, by and large. Now you look at the younger generation, you look at Gen Z women, they're sick of it. And they're saying, no, no, no, I, I don't want to do this. I'm out. I'm, I tapped out. I'm not here to be a man. I'm not here to do this. Find me a good man that is worthy of my trust somewhere, and then I'll trust him. The problem is that they don't know how to find those men. They don't know where they are. There's a lot, not very many men stepping forward, passing the test of manhood anymore. They also don't know how to trust those men because their nervous systems are freaked out and traumatized to too. And then she doesn't know what to provide in return. All she knows is sex.
B
Yeah. And that's just one part of relationship.
A
That'S not Everything that is the culmination at the end of the relationship bonding process. That is not the beginning. You don't do that at the beginning. You do that at the end after you have bonded correctly.
B
100. But these days, people put it first. They do it at the beginning.
A
You don't even have names yet. Do it right, like, hey, we're in a dark alley somewhere. Oh, by the way, I'm Steve. Like, that's. That's what's going on right now. Yeah, the hookup culture, that's what we have trained young women isn't expected from them. So now those young women, let's go back to the woman 10,000 years ago, wandering in a dark forest. All she has is sex. So she steps out, she sees a guy step out from behind the tree. She's like, okay, here we go again. She pulls up her skirt, she's like, okay, here I am. Please don't hurt me. And that's the process. That's what women are doing in the dating world right now. You know, 98% of women report that they would prefer to only have bonded, committed, loving sex. But a lot of them are doing casual sex just because they feel like they have to.
B
Wow. 98%.
A
Massively. And it's not even close. Massively prefer sex inside, committed, loving, bonded relationships. 2% said, yeah, I prefer casual sex.
B
That is actually mind blowing to me. I would have assumed it was the opposite.
A
No, women are not really built for that. If they are severely damaged through childhood sexual abuse. Right. They may have a different take on it. Yeah, because they think that it's expected of them and they don't understand what the role of sex is or bonding. And they usually have massively extensive attachment issues. So it's very difficult for them to separate sex from any kind of relationship because it spills over and everything else because it did when they were a kid. The lines are too blurred for them. But that's not a stab at victims, by the way, at all. I work with a lot of victims of that deep respect. But we have to understand the role of actual sex, and we have to understand the female sex drive and how it's built. It is built for smart, smart women.
B
Would you say the sex drives are different because you hear the argument that men view sex physically? Right.
A
Men will view sex physically if they are more detached. Especially men are more visually stimulated and physically stimulated. We have, if you want to talk about it this way, our. Our ovulation cycle, as it is for us is roughly every 72 hours. Your testosterone spikes, you have a sex craze that comes on, and you have a generic sexual arousal. I am aroused. What will I do with this?
B
Right.
A
That's roughly every 72 hours for us. For women, it's every 28 to 30 days.
B
Whoa.
A
When they go into their ovulation phase. Right. Think be glad we're not like a deer or something, where it's three days out of the year. Be grateful. But once a month, women have that same process, and it actually changes their desire for the man that they're with. It's an interesting process, but the female sex drive is not only in heat during that period. The female sex drive is designed especially for deep warmth and intimacy. When her oxytocin levels are high, she gets drunk on oxytocin and desires you. It's not I'm aroused. Let's do it. It's. Wow, you are really ringing my bells right now. Let's go find some. Some steady furniture to lean against.
B
Right.
A
That's the female sex drive. When you get her deeply into her feminine. However, in the first year, and especially if she's insecurely attached, her system says, this is all I have to attract him. I need to keep him around for a period of time. So I will amp up my sex drive artificially to try to keep him going. It's not a conscious thing. It's a physical thing.
B
Yeah.
A
This is the please don't leave me performative sex at the beginning of the relationship.
B
How much of attraction do you think is conscious for subconscious? Because they're doing these studies now on pheromones and how they. Have you seen this?
A
Oh, yeah. These are fascinating.
B
Interesting.
A
Pheromones are very real. They just. They just plain are. So anyone who says they're not is fooling themselves. Attraction is deeply unconscious, but we can make it conscious. We can learn from it. We can understand what we're doing and why. We can actually shape and reshape our attraction. Most of the clients that come into me, they are attracted to the wrong partners.
B
Right.
A
They're attracted to people who are avoidant. She's anxiously attached. She feels like she's worthless. She finds a man who treats her like she's worthless and then sets out on a life journey to prove him wrong and make him turn it around. And she will spend the next 40 years miserable, hoping that he will eventually say, yes, okay, you're worth it, because she's got to prove dad wrong through this guy. That's a big part of the process where you can turn that you can shift that. First you have to be understood. Understanding why you're attracted to the people you are and what it is that's doing it.
B
Yeah, I've heard that you are attracted, like men are attracted to their mothers and women are attracted to their fathers a little bit.
A
The way that we learned to interact with our mother. The way we learned to interact with our father. Right. The way that you learn to interact with your mother is probably the way you learn to interact with your fiance. That's how you interact with women. If you got along by pleasing your mother, you will try to please your fiance. If you got along by distancing yourself and managing your. Your mother kind of thing, you will distance yourself and manage your fiance. That's more what we tend to see. So if your dad, as a woman. Woman. Had no desire to be around you, you will assume most men have no desire to be around you. So you have to invent a reason, sex, nudity, to try to get his attention and then hopefully over time do enough for him that he agrees to hire you full time and keep you on.
B
So there is some truth to the daddy issues and the mommy issues.
A
Tremendous truth to it. It's just we need a larger picture of it, right?
B
Yeah. Some people will just label it and blanket statement, right?
A
Yeah. Right. And then we look down on those people, oh, she's got daddy issues. She's pathetic. Mommy issues. Let's just throw him over there in the corner. Who cares? He's worthless. Yeah, right. We call them all kinds of names. We mistreat men and women who have attachment issues and we look down on them and we have a lot of contempt for them. And it's. We shouldn't, because number one, it's like 80% of Gen Z right now. 65 at least. And number two, these are people who are suffering.
B
Right?
A
Right. It's you, it's me. This is us. It's. It could have been us. Let's work together to fix it. Because that's the magic. We can fix this.
B
Yeah.
A
This is fixable. All of this.
B
You think so? Even with the divorce rate at 50, 60%.
A
Yes. I have zero doubt that this is fixable.
B
Wow.
A
I know. I. I'm on a quest right now. My mission, the reason I'm doing this is 1 billion people changed from insecure to secure.
B
You think you could do that?
A
I know I will. But not alone. I'm going to do it with my team. I'm going to do it with people like you having this conversation. People listening. They're involved. My wife, my kids, everybody around me is involved in this mission because that's the magic of it. That's the. That's the business that my wife and I are building, is one.
B
I love that mission. Well, I'll take the test. I'll probably pop up insecure at the moment, but I'll retake it in a year from now, and hopefully I'm secure.
A
Hey, I'll be there. I'll be there with you, my friend. Let's get your marriage beautiful, because I want you to have 10 fat, happy babies. I want them to have 10 fat, happy babies. I want your legacy huge. Bigger than you could imagine. But I want your wife to feel calmed and regulated in your presence so she knows what you need from her, so her nervous system calms down, because that. That can build her an incredible life of experience.
B
I'd love that for her. Like, what you said earlier really resonated because some months I'll make a loss, some months I'll lose money. And it's just like, for her, I didn't even think about how that impacts her, you know?
A
Yep. You need to make sure that she has an amount that's set. If that means you put aside a safety amount for her. A nest egg. Right. Actually, what's funny, men used to do this. This is the. The process of buying jewelry for women.
B
Yeah.
A
Every anniversary, you buy her wearable money and give her money that she can wear. And for the rest of her life, she has money that you have given her.
B
Wow.
A
Men today don't have to buy her money. You can put aside money into a savings account for her where she has a guaranteed retirement account. If you die early, you divorce her, you do anything. You can build this in as a prenup. I think prenups are mandatory today. But not to take money away from women or men. It's to protect both sides. What will we be doing? How will we handle money? How will we build stuff. Safety for you as a woman? How will we build safety for me as a man? I think that's mandatory. Interesting. We need to give women safety and nest eggs. That's our job. So as you're climbing the money mountain, my friend, make sure that she has an account. You can both have access to it, but make sure there's an account, a deep savings account, where you lock in a set amount of money for her every year, and she can watch that grow because that's her safety. Then your income can fluctuate every month. Who cares? I love that she's Always got this natural nesting that's always there. She never has to be afraid again.
B
I will definitely do that. You go. We were planning on doing a. What do you think of joint bank accounts? You a fan of that?
A
I think that they are usually mandatory.
B
Really?
A
There's times where maybe you. You don't bother putting her on some, but I think that they're actually important. Okay, maybe your business accounts. You don't put her on if she's not involved in the business side kind of thing. But I think that it's. It's good for her to have an understanding of everything as it goes now. Only. Only if that woman is worthy of trust. That's the other side of it too. Only if she's worthy of trust. And I think that's one other reason prenups are important, is because she needs to know what she's signing on for. But a man needs to know too.
B
Yeah.
A
Both sides need that financial peace of mind. I don't think that we can go forward without prenups.
B
I'm sure a lot of the clients you're dealing with have nasty divorce stories.
A
They do. A lot of them try to rush in and do a post nup during the divorce, which is brutal. A lot of the guys do that because they freak out and they're terrified. I think the worst thing that we can do is tell women that prenups are bad. I think prenups protect women and it needs to be in there of what will happen to you and how will you be safe? Not, you get nothing. I get everything. Haha. You're an idiot. It's. How will you guarantee her safety so that she doesn't have to be afraid? But what's fascinating, and here's what's great. 70% of divorces are initiated by women, but a lot of those don't go to completion.
B
Oh really?
A
Once you begin the process, people see how awful it is and then they start having a conversation. Once someone pulls the trigger and says, okay, I'm thinking about divorce, this is too much for me. Now that begins a conversation. Now it can begin negotiation. Not always. Not always. I have a lot of clients where the wife has been emotionally divorced for five years from her husband and then she files kind of thing. But you know, we need to see what's going to happen. We don't need to be divorced. Like, oh, it's going to be this great magical experience. The woman will get the house and all the kids and all the money and ha ha ha. No, she needs to know the Dark reality of what's going to happen. Right. Spell it out on paper before you sign the business. What do you think of business contracts that don't include a termination section?
B
That's silly. Right?
A
Right. What do you think of business contracts that don't explain how you're going to divide assets right now while you're calm so that when you're angry, you don't have to worry about it?
B
It's necessary.
A
It's mandatory. A lawyer would scream at you for not including that. That has to be in a prenup. But, you know, it doesn't have to be in the prenup or you know what? Doesn't have to stop just in the prenup. It's not just how we're going to end. A prenup is not how we're going to end our relationship. A prenup is how will we build a business together? And one part of it is how would we end it? But how will we do it? Every month, we will set aside, you know, every. Every year, we will set aside 5% of our total income into a joint savings account. If the marriage ends, the wife claims that entire amount.
B
Cool.
A
There we go. There's some safety, right? If something happens to her, she gets 5% of yearly income year after year after year. Well, she could probably hold on for another three years. And you know what could happen? You guys can do couples therapy during that time or couples coaching. Couples coaching is often more effective than couples therapy I found in the research.
B
But couples coaching.
A
Couples coaching is actually more effective. Usually couples therapy quite often it actually makes things worse.
B
Whoa.
A
Reasons.
B
Thanks for the heads up.
A
Yes. I say that as a former former marriage and family therapist myself, I split from that industry because I saw a lot of those stats and I wanted to do coaching instead, which is highly more effective for most people. Coaching is very, very distinct. Right. Let's solve the problem. Let's rehash the problem and take the woman's side and beat up on the man. Most women don't even like the experience of couples therapy because it's just beating up on the man endlessly and ruining the marriage in front of you.
B
Wow.
A
So, yeah, couples therapy is not usually the approach we want it to be. But with that in mind, that's. I'll pause there.
B
No, thanks for all of that. I. I'm really. I'm doing. In therapy right now, and I was considering couples therapy, so thanks for that heads up.
A
I would. Yes, I would sit down with her. I mean, does she know that you're thinking of couples therapy.
B
I've mentioned. Well, the therapist wanted to bring her in for some sessions, so.
A
Okay, yeah, that can be helpful just to get her perspective. But don't. I wouldn't turn it into couples therapy. Yeah, it'll be really weird for her to step in because you've already got the thing. But if you guys want to do skill training together, that would be a beautiful idea. Most people go to couples therapy proactively for skill training, and what they get is a lot of guilt, a lot of rehashing of problems, a lot of anger. The woman articulates better than the man does, so then the therapist just takes her side. And then the woman gets upset that the relationship's getting worse. And then you go couples therapy, shop to another couple's therapist, and another one never ends. I usually have couples come in who have seen four or five, five couple steps. By the time they get to me and they say, adam, we've wasted years. We are miserable. They made it worse. Please don't do this to us. And I say, cool, let's get you turned around. Usually with about six sessions, I can turn couples around from edge of divorce to happy having sex fulfilled. No more fights.
B
That's impressive.
A
Sessions.
B
Six sessions.
A
So six hours, six sessions, split up over about every two weeks.
B
That's impressive.
A
It's. It's a good thing. I love it.
B
Well done. Are you seeing a lot of infidelity? A lot of sexless marriages?
A
Oh, my gosh. Both. Oh, my word. Both. Some. Some. If I told you some of the affairs that I've worked on, the paint would peel off these walls just from it. But, yeah, a lot of. A lot of couples where even the man doesn't want to have sex and the wife is chasing him, begging him for it.
B
Wow.
A
Marriages where the wife hasn't had sex with the man in a year or more. I had one couple where they had said had sex once a year for 10 years, the last 10 years. And I asked him why, and he looked at her and she said, well, he doesn't ask me for it.
B
That's why. Wow.
A
That was why. That was a big piece of why. Like, he wouldn't pursue. He was passive aggressive about it. He was just sad. He assumed the worst. She had some medical issues going on, and they got out of the habit of it, and they never really talked about it. They couldn't have the confrontation about it. They couldn't cooperate. They couldn't build this stuff together. They couldn't do it. So they just didn't for ten years.
B
Geez.
A
They came into me sex three times a week. Two months.
B
That's awesome.
A
Two months it took him to get to sex three times a week, and she was loving it.
B
That's awesome. Yeah. For infidelity specifically, is there coming back to that, in your opinion?
A
Couples can come back from an infidelity, usually. To do that, the person who committed the infidelity needs to have an almost. Almost religious style conversion. Not to an actual religion, mind you, but the way they live their life, the way that they follow their ethics or don't. The way that they live with external accountability and visibility. They need to have a full conversion of their life into an almost new person and be living so distinctly that their partner can look at them and say, I don't have to trust that you're different, because you are different. With every human around you, you're different. You have such accountability. You have such desire for openness and intimacy and trust. You share details. You share everything with me, and I can finally let go and trust you. And then your brain does something magical. It's called differentiation. It draws a line between who you were and the new person and says, these are different people. Let's not worry about old things, because that was someone else.
B
Wow.
A
And then the partner can truly let go. It's a whole process. That one. That takes me about eight sessions with most of my clients.
B
That's still fast, in my opinion. Eight sessions, differentiation.
A
Wow.
B
The more I know. Yeah. You've changed a lot of my opinions today. I will admit I was scared to ask for the prenup. I think there's a lot of shame. Well, I guess just the way media portrays it. Right.
A
Okay. How would you. If you were gonna pretend I'm with her, we're gonna have a prenup conversation. What's. What's your opening sentence for a prenup?
B
Babe, I'd love to get a prenup. I think it would protect both of us.
A
Babe, I'd love to get a prenup. There's the. There's the problem. There's the problem.
B
Not a good opener.
A
No, no, no, no, no. Are you cool if I teach you a story? Okay. I always ask before I do. There's something called front loading context. Okay. If I was going to talk to my wife and say, and we were going to get married, here's how I would do it. Sweetheart, I'm really serious about us and the marriage that we're going to be building. I want to make sure we do it right. And I want to do it in a way that protects both of us in a smart way. Now, I want to have a conversation with you about something that I believe is good for us. This is not me demanding that we do this, but I think it's a good move, and I want to get your take on it, and I want to move forward as a couple.
B
I love that.
A
Here's what we're going to do. I would love to discuss this thing called a prenup. Now, you might have heard about it before. Maybe that's stressing you out already. I want to tell you that I have a different view on it than everybody else does, and I think it's going to be good for you. This is not me trying to sell it to you. Let's talk about why it's good for both of us, cards on the table, and see what we can do here. And that's at the end of this. Let's both feel safe.
B
Wow.
A
Front loading with context. The outcome. You tell them the outcome you're trying to reach. You tell them that this is not the end of a relationship. It's to. It's to do better. You tell them you're not making a decision at them. You tell them that's going to be a conversation. You tell them, hey, it's a little stressful. It's a prenup. I know. It's weird. You own that and then you move forward and say, let's do this together. It might still be stressful. It's still going to be a conflict. But conflict is just a series of questions. Do we want different things? And if so, do we have to fight about it, or can we work together? If you can answer those as yes, you go into cooperation mode. That's what secure attachment is. It just moves automatically from conflict into cooperation. If you don't have secure attachment, your brain will say, we can't do those things. And no one will ever work with me, so I have to make things work, work. So your brain will either fight and attack. Some people get really aggressive and open, moving and posturing and angry. Some people fawn and say, okay, I will only get 30%. Please don't hurt me immediately. As soon as the conversation starts, some people run away and say, I can't have this conversation. Some people try to sneak and manipulate people, do different things. That's leading into what we call confrontation. You conflict to confrontation. No, conflict to cooperation. So invite her into cooperation. Be the CEO. That's you as the CEO, going to your executive partner and Saying, hey, look, chief operations, hey, we're going to have to put a contract in place. It's going to be great for both of us. Here's why. This is what we're going to do. And then tell me your thoughts, right? I'm not throwing the contract on the table. Let's talk about this and build this contract together. And then here's when she says, well, how does it protect me? Well, you have guaranteed safety, guaranteed financial safety, babe. I want it in there that you will have guaranteed financial safety, safety so that if anything bad ever happens, you don't have to fight for a cent. You have everything. I want us to have a rolling savings account that every year I deposit money into so that you always have a nest egg that you can always rely on. And if you choose to share that with me, cool. But if not, if we ever split, that's yours, Cash in hand, right? If we have kids, I want us to build in a custody agreement right now that we will take care of each other because we love each other. We'll do 50, 50. I want that so we don't fight about that. I also want in there that maybe if, if you're taking care of the kids, I add extra financial incentive to your thing, right? A lot of celebrities do this. I want to beef that up. And I want to reward you for your diligence because I'm going to be making the money, but you're helping me achieve that. I can't hit those highs without you, right? So I want a contract that shows your value on paper and makes you safe. And at the same time, if anything bad ever happens, I don't want to have to fight with you when we're mad at each other. I want us to have a good contract and a good, good peace of mind so we always know. And then I want us to look at that contract and look at how serious the consequences would be to both of us and never go down that road of separation, ever. I want us to use that as incentive to stick together. And then one last piece. I want part of our prenup, even a non binding legal side. I want part of our prenup to be a contract about how we will conduct ourselves as a couple, how we will work as a team, what we're building. This is probably not a legal side that a lawyer's drafting. This is you guys doing it on your own. But that's an additional aspect. This is the marriage contract. What's fascinating in, in ancient Jewish culture, actually, this is really cool. Is they would build a marriage contract, and then they would, like, frame it and color it and go and set it in the bedroom of the couple. Beautiful displayed of this is our contract and how we will live inside our marriage. That's something that couples can be doing. I highly recommend doing this.
B
Much better spoken than me.
A
Well, I've had a lot more time to do, that's all. We'll get there.
B
Well done. Yeah, Sometimes I'm. I'm very blunt, and people take that personally, if that makes sense.
A
You. Okay. You probably are blunt because you're not adding context.
B
Right.
A
If you're blunt with no context, their brain fills context. And if you have 65% insecure rate, their context will be negative. So then they'll say, why is he saying this to me? Like this. Why is he hurting me like this? Like this. Why is he scaring me? Oh, because he doesn't care about me.
B
Right.
A
Then they get angry. That's what they're doing. More context, my friend.
B
More context. Some more context helps that. That's good to know.
A
Your brain stops you from adding context because when you were a kid, if you added context, you get criticized and hurt because of the context. So you learned to cut out context and minimize it so people couldn't use it against you. Wow. So now you don't do it, and now people get mad at you.
B
Yeah. I was a very shy kid growing up, scared to speak out.
A
There's reasons for that. You weren't born that way. You're not born shy.
B
You think we're all born, like, a clean slate, man.
A
I got five kids that. You are born with a personality, but then your experiences shape the best or worst version of that personality. The trauma and pain and experiences that you have shape you and teach you what's allowed and what's not allowed, what's safe and not safe. You learned that shyness kept you safe.
B
I love that. Yeah, that's well spoken. I'm very fascinated how twins end up different people.
A
Yep, they do.
B
It's all environment, right?
A
It's. We are again, man. We're born. My. My oldest son came out, like, hot and ready and screaming and yelling, and so he was sucking both thumbs and bossing people around, like, moment one. And my second, my. My first daughter, she came out so peaceful and gentle and sweet, and she still is. Even if she's got her mischievous days. She is. But their personalities are. Are informed in. In many ways. But, man, you. The. The version of that personality that you get is then shaped. We hammer it. We shape it, we cut pieces off, we, we burn pieces out, we add pieces for safety, we, we give them that and that's our job as parents, is to give them the best version of what they were born with.
B
I love it. Well, congrats on number six on the way in, my man.
A
I appreciate that.
B
That's way above average, I'd imagine these.
A
Days it's a little above. But what I tell people who don't have kids is, hey, for every kid you don't have, I'm gonna have six.
B
I love it. Where can people learn from you and get coached and all that, man?
A
Thank you. Best place is my website, adamlanesmith.com we have coaching on there for people who want an accelerated program of skill training. We have self paced courses on there. I have group coaching where I do a lot of skill training every week to my group. I have a retreat that I run. I have everything on my website. People who don't do websites, that's cool. Instagram is great. I'm attachmentadam. I'm on TikTok at attachment, bro. I'm on YouTube. I have over 100 YouTube videos, longs and shorts. Got a lot of material to learn from right now to get those skills going.
B
Check them out guys. Thanks for your time.
A
Thank you, Mark.
B
Yep. See you guys. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.
Episode Title: Attachment Styles Are Ruining Modern Relationships (DSH #1751)
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Adam Lane Smith (Attachment specialist, former marriage and family therapist, author)
Release Date: January 13, 2026
In this incisive and candid episode, Sean Kelly sits down with renowned attachment specialist Adam Lane Smith to explore the rising crisis in modern relationships. Their conversation dives deep into attachment styles, the struggles of Gen Z and Millennials, how masculinity and femininity play into relationship dynamics, why dating is so dysfunctional today, and why marriage needs a strategic, partnership-focused reboot. They touch on practical solutions, personal stories, and robust research—offering listeners a roadmap to build healthier, more resilient bonds.
On why ‘dating’ is failing:
“The dating industry is essentially sending a woman... alone into a forest and saying, hopefully the first man you find is kind.” – Adam [02:36]
On the emotional freeze response:
“Your brain is doing is saying, I don't know how to solve this, and anything I do will make it worse.” – Adam [00:00 & 10:22]
On generational wounds:
“We are living in the rubble of a greater society... Attachment issues kick on when society has collapsed; they are there to keep humanity alive. Not happy—alive.” – Adam [15:00]
On masculine/feminine synergy:
“We are meant to fit together. We are meant to fit.” – Adam [24:36]
On what a woman brings to the table:
“Biologically and biochemically, a woman brings an immense amount of joy, pleasure, safety, medical, health—all kinds of things to men. But only in a safe, securely attached relationship.” – Adam [21:04]
On why business skills matter at home:
“If you talk to your COO at work how you talk to your wife, what would they do? They’d quit. Yes. So talk to your wife the way you talk to your COO.” – Adam [38:54]
On the necessity and philosophy of prenups:
“A prenup is not how we’re going to end our relationship. A prenup is how will we build a business together?” – Adam [53:51]
Adam Lane Smith is blunt, practical, and data-driven. He weaves in science, evolutionary theory, and personal anecdotes with warmth and urgency. Sean Kelly is curious, open, and relatable as he shares his own background and asks direct, sometimes vulnerable questions.
This episode is a must-listen for anyone frustrated with dating, interested in marriage, or curious about the deep roots of human connection. It demystifies attachment, reframes the entire concept of partnership, and offers concrete tools for healing and success in love and life.