Conor (3:41)

Correct.

Chris Williamson (3:41)

High standards, hyper vigilance, neuroticism, obsession, drive, desire for conquer and mastery. Lots of competition, lots of comparison between myself and other people. That is a type of pressure. And that pressure causes them to set very high standards. And if they ever fall short of those standards, that causes pain. I am not enough because I have these high standards. These high standards are why I've managed to become so high functioning in the real world. I'm a hard charging sort of dude. But as fears about not being able to keep up with this work rate that I've already established for myself, my comparison group is getting better and more successful. I'm finding it hard. Like my physiology just can't keep up with the burnout level that I'm requiring of myself. All of these things build up, build up, build up. And there needs to be some sort of a release valve. One of the release valves could be learning self love, self compassion. Having somebody that you can speak to about this, a supportive partner who makes you feel safe and secure in your like vulnerabilities. But if you aren't prepared to do that or you don't have access to that, you turn to something else which is also like a pressure release valve. Is that a fair enough? That's a fair.

Conor (4:57)

I think we could probably just summarize it by saying, and this is Something that I wrote about in my book years ago, which is that in male culture it's very common that we teach strength through suppression. And for high performing men, that is way over indexed, right? So it's, I need to develop competency capability, strength, whether it's physical, emotional, mental, in the boardroom, whatever, but I'm going to do that by suppressing the unsavory parts of myself. I'm going to suppress, maybe it's empathy, I'm going to suppress that. I'm exhausted. I'm going to suppress these types of things and there's a cost to that suppression. And so, you know, part of the hallmark of being a great man in society has always been your capacity and capability of suppressing certain things in certain moments so that you could go and do the thing that nobody else wanted to do. Right. It's like Navy Seals need to suppress certain things in certain moments so that they can get a job done. Same with CEOs and executives and athletes and yada yada, yada, right. So there's merit in that skill in being able to sort of say, I'm going to put this aside for right now so that I can get this done and execute on something. But for high performers, it's usually that that is way over dialed. It's, it's over indexed. And the, the problem with that is that when some of those things that are being suppressed go undealt with then, you know, it sort of amasses a ton of psychological energy, right? And so all of a sudden you're having to keep down years of I don't really like this fucking job, or I'm disappointed in this marriage, or you know, this isn't really the like way that I thought things would play out or I feel ashamed of, you know, all of these little micro failures that aren't really a failure to external people. But for me it feels like this monstrous thing, you know. And so all of a sudden this accumulation of all these suppressed emotions and disappointments and perceived failures start to mass and that has a tremendous amount of energy which then needs to be dealt with. And the problem is that how high performing men have often been taught to deal with those things is know we've sort of had this normalized culture of, you know, drink it off or you know, go rub one off and you'll feel better. And so how we try and hit the reset button button on some of those suppression suppressed emotions is usually maladaptive behaviors. They're, they're not supportive, you know, they don't help you feel better, right? It's like you go and hire the hooker or, you know, you go and watch the porn or you go and have a bender, you know, and take some molly and go to a rave. And then the next day you're like, I feel like shit now. You know, and so it kind of compounds things over time. So a lot of high performing men will go on this arc. And I think the other thing, maybe I'll just add one more wrench into the mix here is many high performing men have built high performance off of what I call shame based motivation, dark motivation. And so part of their fuel source is they're trying to run away from the man that their father said they'd probably become. They're trying to run away from the shame or the pain that they experienced growing up. And so it's like, I don't want to be a failure at all costs, right? Or I hate myself. And so I'm going to turn myself into this absolute beast that is incredible in, you know, in many different ways. Or, you know, he was like an insecure teenager or something like that. And so what happens for a lot of high performing men is they're actually using shame as a fuel source. And how they get to a place of excellence is through self deprecation. And this is very different for women. I thought, like, women don't generally use shame as a fuel source in the same way that we do or pain in the same way that we do. A lot of men will use pain that they're carrying internally to actually motivate themselves towards a goal. And I'm sure you've seen this with so many people that have sat across from you, right, where you start to hear about their story and you're like, holy shit. I mean, the stuff that you went through, the stuff you experienced. And so for a lot of high performing men, what we do is we take that pain, we take that shame, we take that anger or that rage and we use that as a fuel source for a period of time. And eventually what happens is it starts to have a net negative outcome for there. We sort of reach a tipping point where all of a sudden, you know, I've worked with musicians where they get all the accolades and the awards and you know, they're like world famous rappers or whatever, athletes that, you know, win the super bowl and then the crash comes, you know. And why is that? Well, they've been using shame for so long to drive themselves that they've never developed an internal architecture of self recognition of Real self recognition. And so they've just tried to motivate themselves to success through shame and self deprecation. And so when the accolades come, they can't actually enjoy it. They're not able to actually recognize that they've accomplished and achieved something meaningful. And so the whole time that they've been working that they've been driving themselves and killing themselves and working towards this like, big illustrious goal, all of a sudden it comes and they're not able to actually bask in the like, wow, I actually did that. And then the collapse happens, you know, and that's when you see them just fucking crash out, you know, and you see the, you know, the TMZ stories and shit like that.

Chris Williamson (10:35)

Is it a bad thing to use your pain as fuel?

Conor (10:39)

No, I don't think so. I mean, this is, this is the kind of, this is the kind of catch 22 about it.

Chris Williamson (10:44)

It feels like a paradox.

Conor (10:45)

It is, it is very paradoxical. And I've sat with this for a long time because I, I think my own journey, this is very much the same thing. You know, I used my, my own pain, my own shame, my own sort of like rage towards the world to motivate myself for a period of time. And I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. It's. If we don't build the counter tools to support ourselves, the generative tools to be able to appreciate, acknowledge ourselves, to be able to recognize ourselves for actually doing good, to be able to receive goodness in the moments where we actually achieve, accomplish something, that's when it becomes problematic. So it's not necessarily a bad thing to allow pain or shame to drive us and to motivate us. I think for some people for a period of time, that's actually maybe necessary because they need to, to do something to disprove the internal story of I'm a piece of shit, I'm never going to amount to anything. I'm going to show that, you know, I'm going to show dad, I'm going to show mom that, you know, whatever it is, and so it's not necessarily a bad thing. However, it has a shelf life. And if we don't develop the tools that are meant to go in tandem with it, it's always destined to fail, always destined to end in some type of a collapse.

Chris Williamson (12:08)

I find this topic endlessly fascinating. I think it's so interesting. I had this one insight I've been thinking about recently, which is an infinite one rep max. So the idea that most people reach a particular Level of pain. And that level of pain is maybe before a breakdown. Like the whole point of there being warning signs is that they warn you before the catastrophe occurs, right? You slow down before you get toward the cliff. Not as you're going off the cliff and you hit the brake as you're going off the edge.

Conor (12:45)

Right? I mean, you could do that.

Chris Williamson (12:47)

It's, it's pointless, right? Like the whole point of the warning signs was to stop you from needing to go off the cliff in the first, right? And one of the things that guys are praised for, and women as well, especially meritocratic capitalist society, blah, blah, if you're able to suppress, if you're able to outwork out, suffer, be more conscientious, if you're able to put up with discomfort, basically you're able to do things that most of the people wouldn't want to do or couldn't do for longer than other people. Society rewards you. So you are praised in public for this thing. But the problem is that same skill in your private life causes you to be able to put up with a level of suffering that is maladaptive. Like if you were able to say, I can work 16 hour days, six days a week for a year, for five years to build my startup, to make my congratulations, can you switch that off when it comes to your current relationship, which is totally toxic and turning your brain inside out, and you go, no, no, no, I'm the David Goggins of suffering, right? Like fuck carrying the boats, I'll carry the whole fleet. Yeah, like give me more, load more of this onto me. And I think the interesting element here is that your capacity that you are praised for in public is toxic in private and you don't get to compartmentalize it. And the issue with this conversation online a lot of the time is that people are conflating the place that the tool gets used. The tool should be praised and is very useful in the real world. It's useful at your father's funeral, it's useful at the job interview, it's useful when the hits the fan and you need to find a new career or whatever. It is not useful when it comes to dealing with your health problems, right? It is not useful when it comes to dealing with your intimate relationships or the way that you and your friends don't ever see each other or ever open up to each other or whatever. And this again, why do high functioning men often self destruct in private? Because the same, it's, it's like having a sword and the sword having Two edges and it being really great on the fourth swing and it constantly fucking nicking you on the backswing.

Conor (15:12)

Right.

Chris Williamson (15:13)

Does that make sense?

Conor (15:13)

It makes total sense, yeah. I mean there's a. I think about this a lot that I think we as modern men have become very uni dimensional. We've become very single, single, singular dimensions that there's a kind of over indexing on these very specific skills and letting go of other skill sets that could actually support us. And I think for a lot of high performing men that is a huge part of it. And it's challenging because I think one of the things that I remember working, my wife and I have an office in Manhattan and I was working with this client years ago and he owned a hedge fund and massive hedge fund in the city. And we started to talk about some stuff that, you know, his success was starting to be impaired because he was dealing with really high levels of anxiety. And his whole life has changed. He had had kids and blah, blah, blah, blah. But he had found himself in this spot where he could cognitively see that the way he had done things up until that point was no longer going to work. And he could also cognitively see that he had been suppressing a whole bunch of stuff from his youth, stuff that he had gone through in childhood and decisions that he had made in the past and he had never really dealt or confronted with any of them. And so he could cognitively see. I know that that's having a net negative impact on me, but I'm terrified to deal with this. And this is the other thing that most high performing men have to deal with is they're terrified to deal with the things that are actually starting to crater them because they're worried that it's going to hinder their performance to deal with them.

Chris Williamson (16:59)

So good. So good, right?

Conor (17:01)

So it's like, well, how am I going to perform in my job running this hedge fund, running this venture capital firm, running this tech company, you know, in whatever it is, whatever it is that they're doing, whatever their career is how am I supposed to perform to make money, to provide for myself or my family if I start to dive into this emotional shit?

Chris Williamson (17:22)

I'm deep in my feels, right?

Conor (17:24)

I'm deep in my feels. And it's such a real thing. It's like if I get cracked open and I start to talk about the neglect or my father's death or whatever it is, how am I going to function? And so there's this very real fear of if I started to deal with the Thing that I know is bringing me down, it's going to bring me down even faster. And for a lot of men, that's the first hurdle. That's the very first hurdle is realizing that you can still function and you can still perform with your heart involved, I guess you could say, with a kind of emotional deep dive that you go into stuff from your past, being able to go into the things that you've been carrying and. And it will be different. You know, it does alter things. It does change things. And, you know, in. There's a great Jungian psychologist named Dr. James Hollis, and he wrote this book called the Middle Passage. And it's all about how we go through this kind of turning in midlife, and we've kind of demonized it. In Western culture, we talk about the midlife crisis, right? People have a midlife crisis and, you know, dude buys a Porsche or, you know, they get divorced and he gets the, you know, the young woman and he's like, oh, midlife crisis. But the Middle Passage is really meant to be this period of time where all the things that weren't working that you've been ignoring come to the surface and you're confronted and having to deal with them. And it's an incredibly important part of maturation psychologically. But we try and bypass that in our culture. We try and get around dealing with the real unsavory parts of our life that we've just suppressed or repressed or ignored or pretend aren't really there. And it's incredibly important to go through that phase because otherwise maturation can't take place. There's a very interesting correlation between your ability to confront the unsavory truths of your life and maturation. Those two things go hand in hand. The more that you can look at things that are true, that you dislike about yourself and your life, the more that you're going to be able to mature. And for us in Western civilization and Western culture, we don't like the dissent, right? Stock market goes up, and we treat ourselves psychologically in the same way as the stock market. We should always be growing. And so any type of dissent, any type of collapse, any type of falling apart, there's not only a demonization of that, but we have devalued that period of time because it's brutal, it's hard. And when you hear people talk about it, usually what you'll hear is people have really found a deeper, truer sense of who they are by going through these almost catastrophic periods of time in their life where things Completely fall apart. Everything with the business falls apart. Their sense of self falls apart, their health falls apart, the relationship that they thought was so steady falls apart. And all of a sudden they're left with. Now I have to face the truth of what's always been there that I haven't wanted to admit. So I think that's a very important part. And for high performers, they're just better at pushing it down, you know, they're just better at ignoring it for a longer period of time and being very high functional while doing it. And then eventually it catches up to them. And usually it's in a moment where everything's come to fruition. You know, it's like everything has happened and everything's great. And they're like, yes. And then the collapse, you know, and then in alchemy, it's called the negredo, right? It's called the decay, the blackening, the falling apart. And so that's the period where we, you know, things decay and fall apart so that we can, you know, like a phoenix, rise from the ashes again and be risen anew in a certain sort of like a new way. So I feel like maybe you've gone through a little bit of that recently with the health stuff and permanently. But like, what's that been like? Because it, I mean, kind of we're, we're sort of talking about you in a way, always.

Chris Williamson (21:36)

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Conor (23:40)

I was thinking like whack a mole. Do you guys have that in the UK with like the little moles that pop up?

Chris Williamson (23:44)

No, no, no, I'm not listening to you. I'm not listening to you. I'm not listening to you. But I think the toxic fuel thing and that being the concern of, well, if I face this thing, I'm going to be less effective, maybe the world's going to abandon me. The whole reason that I started using the fuel was to get the world to accept me and want me. And now it kind of does. So you're telling me that I've got to let go of the thing that I worked to get to face the thing that I tried to run away from. It seems like a cosmic joke.

Conor (24:18)

Yep.

Chris Williamson (24:20)

It seems so unfair.

Conor (24:22)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (24:23)

Yeah.

Conor (24:23)

Well, it's, I think in many ways it's a reminder that like we can't, we just can't run from the things that, that we know we need to address and deal with. You know, there's, there's always a toll, there's always a price. And I think in a big way part of the dilemma that we all have to face as human beings is am I willing to pay the price to get that? Am I willing to pay the price to ignore that? You know, it's like I probably could be more successful in my career, but I'd have to sacrifice my kids. And I'm away from them a lot as it is. You know, I'm away from them right now to be here. And every time I leave, it's a conscious choice. And I do believe that as fathers, we need to venture out into the world and sort of show that for our kids. But there is this sort of trade off that happens. I'm curious for you as you've kind of gone through that. I mean, everything's blown up, everything's like, I can't imagine how different your life is now from the first time that we had our conversation two years ago. And. And I know you went through health issues and so what's it been like for you to have this sort of like meteoric rise and then have something just sort of like, stop you dead in your tracks and have to deal with something that was unexpected?

Chris Williamson (25:44)

It feels a little bit like being a fraud in some ways because you have this perspective of yourself. You have this expectation which you've put on you. You have this expectation that you think the world is putting on you too.

Conor (25:58)

Mm.

Chris Williamson (25:59)

And you don't really know. No one. No one actually knows why people like them. Like, no one knows from a content creator perspective. They don't. Like, your friends will say stuff like, dude, I love how fucking good of a listener you are. And like, you just always make me feel safe, regulate, rah, rah, rah. But the bit rate of feedback is too low for us to actually be able to understand. So you go, well, maybe it's because, like, he kept going. Maybe it's because he showed the consistency or the resilience. And yeah, to be completely flatlined and kicked in the nuts by something that you didn't choose to do, by something that was, you know, out of your control, felt scary. It feels like, wow, the thing that I worked my entire life for is just about to be taken away from me. It's through no choice of my own. And I've worked very hard for a long time to make myself into someone that I'm proud of and my better self slipping through my fingers through no action of my own. And again, it feels like a cosmic joke, I think. What would you say to the guy who looks at the inner child work, the mother wound, the past patterns that haven't yet been dealt with, the accumulation of sort of psychological discomfort like that and say, I think that's sort of woo, bullshit, dude. Like that. That doesn't resonate with me. I understand that if you break an arm, you need to put it in a cast. But this is just a question of overcoming suffering. It's noble to do that. It's like the sort of life that I want to live is someone who is stoic, who does like just get on with stuff. This. Yeah, maybe I've hit some sort of a wall. Maybe I'm sort of broken in pieces on the ground. But the answer to that is to just like David Goggins it and stay hard as opposed to Eckhart Tolle it and like remind myself that I'm enough already.

Conor (27:54)

Yeah, I mean, I do think that it's a, it's a bit of both, you know, I do think that part of the challenge that a lot of men have with therapy and therapy culture is that it's become hyper feminized. And so I think when men look at that, oftentimes it's like it doesn't resonate. It always feels too woo woo. It feels too sort of like soft skills. But I think it really is about a quest of knowing thyself. And, you know, for, for every man they're going to have a journey and an inflection point where they have to decide, am I going to learn about who I am through trial and error and external experiences, or am I going to put on this, you know, the psychological scuba diving mask and go in and actually see who the fuck I am. And I think it's easier for men to say, I'll just go out in the world, right? I'll just go build some shit. Because the truth is that the scariest place to be is inside of yourself. That's the truth. Most men know that, you know, barring some extreme situations and war zones and stuff like that. But for the majority of men, for a lot of the men that I've worked with, I've worked with Navy seals, I've worked with executives, I've worked with artists and athletes and every single man that I've ever worked with, the most terrifying thing for them is the truth of who they are. Because there's parts of them that they do not understand. And that's scary. There's parts of themselves that are out of control and that's terrifying. And so I think for what I would say to those men is it sounds like you're not really willing to get in the arena with yourself, period. And you can find a medium that works for you. Right. Goggins found a medium that seems to work for him, which is. That's not my medium. Right. I don't want to get up at 5am or 4am every single day and run until my knees are grinding bones against each other. This is not it for me. I want to push myself physically for sure, and I want to build things and push myself from an entrepreneurial standpoint for sure. But there is something to be said for the courage and the bravery that it takes to, to go in to who you actually are as a human being and start to discover the unsavory parts of yourself. You know, Jung had this great saying that the real work of a man is. The real work of men is to discover their own shadow. And if they can do that, they have done something meaningful for the world. And what he meant by that was, if you don't understand your own maladaptive behaviors, your own sabotage mechanisms, if you don't understand how you are harming other people, then you are. You're essentially passing on harm out into the world onto other people, inadvertently to your kids or your family members or your friends. And that's not really what. I don't know how else to say, but it's like that's not really where men find a sense of meaning and purpose. Like in many ways the archetypes of great kings and great men. They are the men that are servants to others. And how they go about doing that is by deeply understanding who they are. And so I think for a lot of men, when I hear that, I'm like, you're scared to know who you really are. You're actually just afraid, and that's okay. But don't fucking lie to me that you're just not afraid of who you actually are. Because so many times I've sat with men and I'll say, close your eyes. And the challenge that that man will have, he'll be a killer in the boardroom, he will be a killer on the football field. And I'll say, sit down, close your eyes, take a breath. Tell me what's happening inside of you. An immediate confrontation. So we as men are sculpted through confrontation. Masculinity in some ways requires confrontation. And I think change requires confrontation. Any type of psychological change requires confrontation. I think the challenge is that some men are afraid of the confrontation with themselves. What are your thoughts on that?

Chris Williamson (32:09)

I think it's superbly accurate. I think it makes for a very interesting redefinition of the word bravery, especially for men. That emotionality, tapping into yourself, being in touch with who you really are, is seen as a kind of weakness. And yet so much of that that I see among guys is like a sex based gaslighting.

Conor (32:47)

I think that's one of the things that's made you very successful. It's those little snips. Where did that even come from, Chris? Sex based gaslighting.

Chris Williamson (32:55)

Try and tell me. It doesn't fit though. It's 100% fucking perfect.

Conor (32:58)

It's great.

Chris Williamson (32:59)

It is because you're scared of what's inside of you as a man. You're terrified of working inside of yourself. You're terrified of being in touch with your emotions. You're terrified of your heart. Don't pretend like you're not. And don't pretend like the guys who are prepared to face it are somehow lesser.

Conor (33:15)

Right, Right. It's like, you know, I do martial arts, I do Muay Thai a couple of times a week. I absolutely love it. I love knowing that I can like, you know, kick some dude in the side of the head that's like six, you know, six foot two. But I also am not afraid of how I'm feeling. And I do think that, I think this is what I was talking about before, which is that we've become so one dimensional, we've over indexed on like one specific thing. And that hasn't been, that hasn't been the truth for men throughout human history. I mean, when you look at, when you look at men from different walks of life and you know, like the, the Spartans, right, they do hand to hand combat, sword training, fighting in groups and then in the afternoon they would learn how to write poetry and dance and play music. You know, so it's, it's always been a part of, of our development as men. It's just recently in the last hundred plus years that we've sort of condensed men down into this one dimension. And it's great if you want to pop out factory workers, it's great if you want to produce armies of people, armies of men that their sole job for 10 hours a day is to put a fucking handle on an ice cream bucket. You know, it's like you don't want a human being that's thinking about how do I feel about doing this? You don't want that. Right? Because that's not useful. Because then that person's not going to be useful. So again, I think we're entering into this territory and I think this is what is causing a lot of, part of what's causing a lot of the challenges in modern dating is that women have become much broader in the sense that, you know, they still have network, they still have community, but they've learned how to compete with men. And I Think that largely we as men have not adapted and figured out how to compete with women. I think that we are terrible at competing with women because women compete far different. They compete way differently than we do as men. We, as men, we compete through competition, through competency. It's like, I'm going to outwork you. I'm going to be more competent than you. I'm going to be more capable than you. I'm going to figure out the systems and get better at it than you. And women have figured out how to do that as well. But they also have this whole other skill set of emotional intelligence, of being able to create network, of being able to social. Socialize, and along with that character, assassinate. Right. And take you out in ways that. That we just don't.

Chris Williamson (35:45)

You didn't even see coming.

Conor (35:45)

You didn't even see coming. All of a sudden you're like, wait, why is Becky from HR pulling me in and, like, reprimanding me, like, what the hell just happened? And so I think that's very intimidating for some men. I think it's very confusing because we've kind of been sold this bill of goods that if you just prioritize competency and capability, then you should rise through the ladder of culture and society and you should be able to be successful with women. And I think that that is really in jeopardy right now. I think there's this big kind of tug of war for whether or not that's going to be true or not. And you still have men that are outliers. That. That is true. That because they're so successful because they're. They have high status and yada, yada, yada, that that still works. But I think for the average guy, that's becoming harder and harder.

Chris Williamson (36:33)

Have you seen the new stats? You know, hypergamy, the word hypergamy. Favorite?

Conor (36:36)

Yep.

Chris Williamson (36:37)

Of the romantic pill. I call the red pill the romantic pill.

Conor (36:41)

Now. That's great. That's great. I like that.

Chris Williamson (36:42)

The romantic pill, because everyone that's in the red pill is a romantic. Everybody, every single guy that's in the red pill is a romantic. Some have failed, some are successful. But fundamentally, they want relationships. They want to find and be loved by a woman. Yeah, it's the romantic pill.

Conor (36:57)

That's great.

Chris Williamson (36:59)

Hypergamy. The bottom two quintiles of men in terms of earning and the top quintile in terms of women for earnings have the female as the primary breadwinner in the household. Now, that's in the U.S. so the bottom 40% of guys who earn are dating up socioeconomically, and the top 20% of women earners are dating down socioeconomically. So that is getting squeezed a lot. And how long have I been fucking screaming about this tall girl problem thing? Where again, another great meme. If women are socioeconomically successful, soon enough they're going to stand on the top of their own competence hierarchy, look across and find very few men. And the men that are there have a wealth of opportunity. So they're gonna use and discard women. Yeah. So, yeah, we are at this interesting tug of war, but I think it's not really even a tug anymore. It's like it's happened. It's happened and it's happening.

Conor (37:59)

We're fully in it, correct?

Chris Williamson (38:01)

Yeah. And we're just trying to sort of pick up the pieces. And for women, what it's felt like objectively is a lot of gain. Lots of gains. Right. I've now got degrees. There's more women getting like. I think it's creeping up into master's and doctorate degrees now as well. So it's not just that they're getting into undergrad, more degrees. They earn more than guys up to the age of 30, 31. Now that's continuing to creep up as well. And you go, that just seems like a boon. Now there are prices that women are going to pay, and those are going to be ones that are much harder to quantify quality of life. Eight out of 10 women that don't have kids and breach their reproductive window don't say that they didn't intend to not have children. Yeah, so. Or say that they didn't intend to not have children. Sorry. What this means is the prices that women and like the, the feminism problem or the femininity problem as opposed to the masculinity problem, are going to be felt later, further down the line, and they're going to be more subtle and they're going to be much more psychological or at least much more hidden, I think. But objectively, guys are already in it. Yeah, they're in it right now. In other news, you've probably heard me talk about element before, and that's because I am frankly dependent on it. And it's how I've started my day every single morning. This is the best tasting hydration drink on the market, you might think, why do I need to be more hydrated? Because proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water. It's having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to use those fluids. Each grab and go stick pack is a science backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium and magnesium. It's got no sugar, coloring, artificial ingredients, or any other junk. This plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing brain health, regulating your appetite, and curbing cravings. This orange flavor in a cold glass of water is a sweet, salty, orangey nectar. And you will genuinely feel a difference when you take it versus when you don't, which is why I keep going on about it. First of all, there's a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. Buy it, use it all, and if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back and you don't even have to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US Right now. You can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below. Heading to drinklmnt.com ModernWisdom that's drinklmnt.com Modernwisdom.

Conor (40:26)

Yeah, we're in it. I mean, the decline of men is staggering. You know, when you look at the stats and the data of, you know, there's less men going to college than ever before, by 2030, you're going to have two women graduating with degrees for every one man. Right. And when you look at the women that graduate from college, they statistically want men with college degrees. They want to date men with college degrees. Right. So we're creating a population of men that a lot of women don't, that's, they say they don't necessarily want to date on paper. Right. So you have less men going to college, you have less men in the workforce. I mean, there's, there's a huge amount of men. Something like 6 or 7 million American men are not in the workforce right now.

Chris Williamson (41:10)

Yeah, yeah.

Conor (41:11)

You have this massive exodus from the workforce. You have more young men under 30 living at home than ever before. You have more young men not dating. Right. So, like, I feel like Scott Galloway right now just, I can hear Scott just like listing off the, the stats, right? It's like, you know, 40% of men under the age of 30 haven't approached a woman in the last year and haven't had sex with women in the last year. And so I, I think that when you look socially and economically, young men really are in decline. And I think the problem with that is that when we go to talk about young men, men's problems, and how we can alter society, or create social programs for men to actually support them. It all hell breaks loose. You know, it just, it just turns into a kind of, you know, misundry fest. It's like man hate just becomes very apparent when you start to talk about men's problems and men's issues.

Chris Williamson (42:07)

But it feels like it's taking resources away from some other more deserving group. That's why it's a zero sum view of empathy and resources.

Conor (42:14)

Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that hierarchies have just shifted.

Chris Williamson (42:19)

Right.

Conor (42:19)

And so there's the power distribution is not going towards men anymore. And I think that that is very hard for a lot of people to come to terms with. I think it's also detrimental for our society and our culture. And, and I do think that young men have. I think they have a hard time. I think that as a culture, we've forgotten how hard it is to. To take a young boy and turn him into a man and to get him through that period of going through puberty, having testosterone, wanting to basically like, you know, fight, fucking feed, crash out entirely and, and get him into manhood in a functional way. And so I think we almost have like a type of amnesia with how hard it is to turn a young boy into a man. I think it's very, very challenging. And so, and then when we look at the social programs for young men and boys, they're few and far between. Right. So you have young boys that don't have father figures at home. You know, one in four kids in America don't have a father figure in the household. You have young boys that are going to go into an education system that is female dominated. So they're not going to have role models at home, not going to have role models in the school system if they go through a therapeutic vein because they're having problems, that's dominated by women as well. And so there's a kind of vacancy. There's like a male role model vacancy. And for a lot of young boys, there's that what they're looking for is a type of transmission from men around, how do I get through this process? How do I go from being this boy or being this adolescence into being somebody who can regulate, who can deal with the intensity of his anger, who can deal with the fear of the rejection of talking to a woman in a coffee shop or at the grocery store? And so I think that that absence is really crushing for a lot of young men. And then I think when you couple that with the parenting style that we've gone through in the last couple decades, which is like the helicopter parent has completely debilitated a lot of young men. The there's two simple things that the parenting data that basically, like, shows when it comes to raising a healthy child, whether it's a boy or girl, is that you need high standards and high support. You need those two things. You need really good, solid standards of. Here's what I expect from you. I want to help you develop. I want you to develop competency in these different areas, and then high support. I'm also going to help you to do those things. What a lot of young boys grow up with is extremely high standards with very little support, right? It's like, I expect you to get the high grades. I expect you to be exceptional at hockey or lacrosse or basketball, whatever it is, But I'm not actually going to teach you how to do those things. I'm not going to support you to do that. Or. In the last couple of decades, we've had the inverse, right? Where it's been like, it's okay, honey, you got 10th place. It's all right. No worries, no standards, no expectations, no nothing. And for that young man, he's like, well, fuck, is this it then? Am I just supposed to, okay, I guess I'll just play video games and jerk off watching pornhub, you know, like, nobody expects anything from me. And culture is telling me that I'm the problem, so I'm just going to check out. So I think that you have this intersection of problems that are creating a shitstorm for young men.

Chris Williamson (45:42)

What are some of the traits of an emotionally safe man?

Conor (45:49)

Well, first, I think you need to have the ability to regulate your own nervous system. So you need to have some level of competency over your own emotional awareness. You need to have an understanding of what's happening inside of you. If you don't know or you're not able to identify what's happening inside of yourself emotionally, when you're angry, when you feel ashamed, when you feel anxious, when you feel sad, when you feel embarrassed if you don't. If you can't differentiate between those things or identify them and then be able to regulate yourself through them so that you don't lash out and get reactive and get defensive all the time, or, you know, you get rejected for a phone number at the coffee shop or whatever, and you dissolve into a puddle of like, oh, my God, I'm such a piece of shit. Which I understand. I've been there. I actually have been there. You know, I like, was that guy when I was a teenager. Rejection was brutal. But if you aren't able to understand what's happening inside of you and move yourself through it, it's going to be very, very challenging to do that for anybody else. So that's kind of like the first place, the first step. And then secondly, I think you need to have the capacity to draw out emotional content. And this is a skill set that far few men learn. I think what we learn as men is get the. Get the content logistically, get the logistical content. Like, what happened? When did it happen? What did it look like? We get all those details, but what we don't ask is what was that actually like for you? What was it like for you when your boss was pissed off or when you fucked up the presentation? What was that like for you? What happened inside of you? And so that's another skill set that I think a lot of young men need, is to be able to draw out emotional content. Tell me what that was like. What happened? How did you feel on that, that moment, you know, when. When she said that, when he did that, what was that like? And those simple things are going to create a connection, a bridge for the other person to say, oh, this, this person is interested in how I'm feeling. And so I think for a lot of men, just showing I have interest in what's happening inside of you is also the next step and then being to respond and not react. A lot of the times we personalize the shit out of, especially women's, the women that we're dating, but we personalize what other people are saying. And so you might have your girlfriend or your wife talking about something, and she's talking about how she was disappointed in her mom or some argument with you, and all of a sudden it's like, well, did I do something wrong? And how could I have done that better and what's wrong with me? And so a lot of men collapse in to a type of defensiveness or reactivity to go on the attack, to character, assassinate, to, you know, sort of just defend themselves in that moment. And so we need to be able to regulate and then respond versus just reacting from whatever emotion comes up inside of us when somebody else is talking. And sometimes that means that we have to be able to hear what somebody is saying to us and about us without becoming defensive, without becoming reactive.

Chris Williamson (49:11)

How do you do that?

Conor (49:13)

Your breath is a big part of it. Like, I think this is just a very simple thing. Like your breath is a huge piece of regulating your nervous system. And so, you know, for A lot of guys that I work with, when they. There's this moment, Viktor Frankl has this beautiful phrase which is between stimulus and response. There's a pause, and we have to be able to feel that pause. So for a lot of guys, as soon as they hear hard content, you know, it's like, you forgot something and your partner's upset and she's like, how could you have forgotten to do that? I asked you, I texted you. And all of a sudden the shame and the guilt and the, you know, the heaviness, fuck, oh, fuck, I fucked up. Or like, the defensiveness that happens. Being able to literally take some breaths so that the emotional intensity and the charge that has happened inside of you can subside a little bit. Instead of immediately reacting from that place, what most of us do as men is immediately react from that place. So we're reacting from the shame, we're reacting from the anger, we're reacting from the defensiveness and the embarrassment. And so what I teach a lot of men is just like, take three breaths before you respond. I know it sounds super simple and super. It's like so simple that it sounds dumb, but if you can just start to interrupt the pattern of reacting immediately from an emotion, you can create a new pathway of being able to take some breaths so that you can quote, unquote, down regulate your system, or at the very least, you can get some awareness of what is happening inside of me. So take a breath, understand what's happening inside of yourself, and then you can either choose to set that aside or you can voice it, right? It's like, oh, I hear you, and I feel really defensive, so I'm gonna pause, you know, or I get what you're saying, and you're right, I totally forgot to do that. I'll take care of it. So you don't personalize what's happening and you're able to actually stay with your experience.

Chris Williamson (51:12)

The mindfulness gap is what my meditation teacher referred to it as like, space. I certainly know the periods in my life where I've had that the most. There's a few incidents that were really, really funny where somebody. I got very agitated. Like this guy in a Nando's. I was in. In the uk. I was with my friends. Always use this as an example. It's so funny. And this guy sort of always.

Conor (51:36)

Nando's had him.

Chris Williamson (51:37)

I know, I know. Scum. I'm very working class. Which is why Nando's, for me, is a huge treat. I walked past his table, he kicked off at Me, because he thought that I got too close. And this was like deep, deep, deep meditation mode. Me, like, this was the peak monk mode. Three hour morning routine. Like, gratitude. This is when I was doing, I think, a thousand days sober and 500 days without caffeine at the same time. The alcohol thing's great. The caffeine thing's miserable and pointless, but was a good lesson to learn. Anyway, this guy kicks off and because I've. I don't know, he was obviously having a bad day. Like, he was obviously on the edge. He was having a bad day. And I remember, like, watching this thing unfold, and I just turned around and said, oh. And kept on walking. And he'd made this big sort of explosion. Oh, let me give you this. You're gonna fucking love this. You got into Joe Hudson yet? Have I got you into Joe? Heart of accomplishment guy. He stinks of you. So he taught me this idea called vagal authority. You already know what it means, right? Like you're in a room, somebody's nervous system is dysregulated, somebody's is regulated, or which way does the rest of the room go and which way do you go? That guy there, I held the vagal authority. Now I'm not sure if he was able to take my regulation and go back to his family and be like, I don't think I should have blown up that much. That guy just walked near my table.

Conor (53:06)

Yeah, maybe not, but.

Chris Williamson (53:08)

But the idea that I am so regulated that not only can I keep myself where I want to be while you are doing something else, but also, I maybe have so much surplus that you can kind of borrow from it. Like, my cup is so full that the saucer that overflows around it can fill yours up.

Conor (53:26)

Yes.

Chris Williamson (53:27)

And, yeah, when I think about emotional safety, that regulation piece is a huge part. But I guess a lot of guys will worry of fear. How do I build emotional range without losing my grounding or my strength or my attractiveness, my admiration from my partner and from people around me? We'll get back to talking in just one second. But first, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus, and your performance. But most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off. Which is why I partnered with Function, because I wanted a smarter and more comprehensive way to actually understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers they've got a team of expert physicians that analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. And seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted over the course of a year with actionable insights to actually improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with function, it's just $499. And right now you can get $100 off, bringing it down to 399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save that $100 by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com modernwisdom that's functionhealth.com modernwisdom well, I think.

Conor (54:51)

I think that that's when you. What I'm really talking about is a type of emotional containment, but it's containment not through suppression. It's not by cutting yourself off from what you feel. It's not about, you know, beheading your emotions or numbing yourself out from them. It's actually by gaining a mastery through deeply understanding and feeling what you're feeling in any given moment to the degree that they do not control you. For the average man, what happens is that they feel something and they become something. They feel anger and they become angry. They feel shame, and they're shameful, right? And so the emotion comes up and then they become that emotion, and then they respond from that emotion. They react from that emotion versus, oh, there's that emotion. I know that I'm feeling that emotion and I can feel that emotion, but I can still have enough space from that emotion that I can still respond in a grounded way. And this, this type of emotional containment, this type of emotional regulation is really what. When you look at people like Marcus Aurelius, when you look at really great leaders, when you look at Aragon, I did this video about, you know, the masculinity of Aragorn from Lord of the Rings, which is super fucking nerdy, but I'm kind of a ner, so I thought I would do it. It's becoming a man who is capable of dealing with the intensity and the charge within himself so that he can learn to deal with the intensity and the charge of others. That is a gift, right? That is a gift that we as men can provide, the world can provide our children can provide, our friends, can provide our family, the women in our life. And for a lot of women, that is what they're saying when they say I want safety, I want emotional attunement. Now, it's not your job to make all women safe. That's kind of impossible. It's not your job to do that. It's also not your job to, you know, help the woman that you're dating feel better all the time. That's people pleasing and codependency and all that other type of stuff. But what you can bring is containment. And sometimes that containment can look different ways. It can be, you know, your partner, your girlfriend or your wife saying something that's crossing a line, that's like a little bit of a jab or an edge and you saying, I didn't like that, don't do that again, I love you. I don't like when you talk to me like that. And it's not a threat, it's not angry, you're not blowing up, oh, why do you fucking do this to me all the time? Oh, I hate when you talk to me like that. It's just clear, grounded boundaries. But you need to have emotional connection to be able to attune to the information of, oh, that wasn't okay. That pissed me off so good. That made me feel embarrassed, that made me feel shame. And so emotions are just data. They're just data. And we as men, I think the men that become the real leaders of the future, I think the men that become really successful in the future, whether it's with women or in the business world, are going to be men that are exceptionally emotionally attuned, that are able to read the data that's happening inside of them and not be numbed out or completely disconnected, but be able to understand that there's a very real intensity inside of them. And the interesting thing is that when you look at something like the neurology and the data around emotions between men and women, it's generally that women will feel more emotions more often and men will feel singular emotions more intensely. And so men generally will stay in an emotion for a longer period of time and they'll stay in an intensity of that emotion. This is why you have guys that are like, you know, they'll stay in their depression for ages and ages and ages, right? They'll stay in their anxiety or their anger. They'll stay angry and frustrated, you know, days on end and they're holding grudges and they're not talking to anybody for days and they're cutting people off. They're just in that intensity of that emotions. So I think the more that we as men can learn how to deal with the charge inside of ourselves through the breath, through awareness of like, what is actually happening inside of me without saying something's fucking wrong with me because I have emotions or, you know, I'm like, it's emotional competency. That's what it really is. It's being able to have emotional competency and say, like, oh, you know, I. I felt angry when you said that. You know, I don't like when you did that. That wasn't okay with me. Or I really loved when you, you know, did X, Y and Z. And that type of emotional attunement to ourselves and then to others is like a superpower for men. And I think that for a lot of women, it's. It's really what they're asking for. And I'm not saying that we as men should do that to give them that. I think that we should do that because it allows us a certain level of meaning and depth that I think most men are deeply craving. You know, Deeply craving. And how are you supposed to walk through life with a sense of purpose and meaning if you're disconnected from the data of your own emotions? It's so hard. And we need those things to set boundaries, to know when things are okay and not okay. We need those things for relationships and trust and safety, but we also need those things for leadership. Like, the men that are going to be leaders of the future will have an exceptional level of emotional literacy, and they will have a very high capacity to regulate their nervous system. When you look at today's culture and society, people are fucked. Their nervous systems are fucked. And so who are people turning to? They're turning to people who have said, I'm able to navigate the shitstorm of the chaos of our times, the chaos of our social media and our culture, and the uncertainty of whether AI is going to destroy us all and climate's going to kill everything. And most people's nervous systems are so hijacked. And so if you're a man who's able to regulate your nervous system in your relationship and in a work setting in a genuine, meaningful way without needing to numb yourself out constantly and chronically through booze or weed or porn or whatever it is, and you can do it in a genuine way that is aligned with your values, you're going to be unstoppable. You're going to be unstoppable because you will be signaling to women. I have done something that most men haven't done because most women know that for the majority of men, it's extremely hard to Put on the scuba diving mask and go inside and confront the dragon within. The beast inside of ourselves. Most women know that that's something that we as men are afraid of. And so women are largely in our culture, I think, saying, I really am craving a man that has met himself, that's confronted himself, that's met his own demons and his own darkness and knows his violence and knows what makes him dangerous. That is, I think, what men are really being asked to do. And I feel bad for a lot of the young men because so many of them are either finding the sort of, like, false gods of masculinity or there's just a vacancy entirely. You know, there's just a vacancy.

Chris Williamson (62:36)

The choice is between extreme and void.

Conor (62:39)

Yeah, yeah. And you're gonna take extreme every single.

Chris Williamson (62:41)

Time because it's better to be given some advice that sounds right, but may not be the no advice at all. Because that sounds like that feels like being lost.

Conor (62:52)

It's my biggest problem with progressive liberal talking points around masculinity in men is that there's no target, there's no aim. It's a continuous laundry list of the things that you should not do. So there's no actual aim or definition. There's no trajectory that you can point yourself towards and say, I want to become that. I want to move in that direction. That is something that I can ascend towards.

Chris Williamson (63:27)

The vagal decapitation that you were talking about, that, like, you know, person who only lives above the neck. Yeah, I'm gonna keep going. I've had my new tonic today, dude. I'm gonna keep.

Conor (63:38)

I'm gonna start taking those.

Chris Williamson (63:39)

You keep naming shit that you came up with. Hey, do you want one for your. The turning or whatever it was. The narrow path. The turning thing.

Conor (63:46)

Yes, yes.

Chris Williamson (63:47)

Manopause.

Conor (63:48)

Oh, manopause. Yeah, that's good.

Chris Williamson (63:50)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Works on many levels.

Conor (63:53)

It's true.

Chris Williamson (63:56)

The thing that comes to mind, and what I'm particularly fascinated about is almost objection handling some of the stuff that comes up that will come up for guys that I've seen online a lot. I think one of the first objections earlier on is, well, that toxic fuel has helped me to be successful also. I turned that toxic fuel. I alchemized that bad thing into something good. Is that not something I should be proud of? Another element might be. In order for me to delve into this, I feel like my real world performance is going to dip, and it very well may do. Tiger woods had this issue with his swing that he developed As a young golfer that he needed to purposefully go back and fix. So he needed to adjust his hand position, adjust his backswing, because it was. There's too many variables in there. Why are you grinning?

Conor (64:42)

You said Tiger Wentz had a problem. I was like, with Swedish bikini models.

Chris Williamson (64:45)

Yeah, yeah, he had many problems. This is before that. This is before that. This was in the confines of his sport. He had to basically unlearn, which is 100 times harder than learning. He had to unlearn and then relearn in order to get to the next level. But that required a false peak. He got to as good as he was going to be with this. He had to go back and then come back up. So I think even if you do go, well, look, you might. Real world effectiveness might be reduced if you crack yourself open in this sort.

Conor (65:15)

Of a way for a period of time.

Chris Williamson (65:17)

Yes, correct. Yeah. And in my experience, that's true. That's true. I just need to put it out there. I know that you said, you know, you can show up in an open hearted way in a blah, blah, blah. The first couple of years of trying to feel feelings fucking blow, dude. I mean, I'm just gonna be upfront about it.

Conor (65:33)

I get it, I get it. But.

Chris Williamson (65:34)

But another one of the objections is the world to me, seems to be split largely into two groups. People who know that they should be feeling emotions and either are or are not, and people who just don't feel emotions that deeply or are so good at repressing them that functionally it's the same thing. And these two groups constantly argue between each other. The second group, the group that doesn't necessarily feel emotions quite so deeply, the Tim Kennedys of the world, for instance. Right. I actually think that David Goggins is a bad example of this because I think he does feel things very deeply. He does, which is what's caused him to go and do something so extreme as a mechanism for him to be able to alchemize it. Tim Kendi would be an example of somebody who, at least in my experience, slightly less so. If you're a sniper, Green Beret, all that stuff that tends to not be your archetype for them when they start to talk about, well, the opening up of emotions. I don't even know what you're talking about. Tapping into inner child wounds, doing the shadow work, alchemy, things falling apart, the phoenix, all this stuff. I just. It doesn't resonate that much with me. And also on the female side of this are the sort of Women who would see a man opening up in that way and think less of him. Who would see a man that wants to try and have a deeply connected, heartfelt, emotionally aware, emotionally mature relationship that not only experiences emotions, but talks about them and works on them together to transcend and include them. That group of people who are would be wonderful for them all to just get together. But unfortunately, sometimes they cross over and you have the guys that don't feel with the girls that do and the guys who do feel with the girls that don't or don't take it in the manner that they want it to. And I think just identifying, hey, if you are a dude who has the horrible affliction of actually feeling things, as far as I can see, you have two choices. The first one is to actually open the bank account of this emotional inheritance and have a look at what's inside of it and do the work on it. The second one is to be floating above your life like a hovercraft for the rest of time. It's like being a poltergeist. You're like haunting your own existence. You never actually come into contact with your own life fully. That advice is not for the group of guys that don't feel stuff quite so deeply.

Conor (68:08)

Correct.

Chris Williamson (68:09)

And it's that group, I think, that often tends to throw shit. Well, maybe it's not. Maybe it is the I don't want to have to feel the thing that I know I should feel. Perhaps it comes from both directions, but this is like trying to speak Arabic to a dog or something. You know, a dog that doesn't speak Arabic as well. It's just never going to work on that second group. But I think what I'm trying to say is if you are the sort of guy who really feels things very deeply, I think that you have a beautiful adventure ahead of you, but it's fucking terrifying. And you have a. Almost like a burden or a cost to pay or a demon to slay that some of the guys might not. And they've got other ones.

Conor (68:51)

Yes.

Chris Williamson (68:52)

But your one is to put the scuba mask on and go diving.

Conor (68:55)

Yeah. If you're the guy that. And I really do. It feels like a curse, you know, at first to have such a soft heart, you know, it does. When, like when I was a. When I was a boy, I mean, I. I had such a soft heart, you know, I was just, you know, my parents got divorced when I was three. I remember so many nights just crying because my dad was gone. And I look back and I was like, man, I was a really big feeling kid, you know, and life had a way of hardening me up. But I think for a lot of men, we look at that, we look at that and we say, oh, if I'm a big feeler, either there's something wrong with me or that's a curse that I have to deal with. So let me numb it out. And numbness is not a sign of emotional vacancy. For the majority of men, numbness is a sign of emotional fullness that you are over capacity. Numbness is not emotional vacancy, it is emotional fullness. It's that your system has become overridden with too much emotions. And so your brain's only way to deal with that is to say, let me just turn off the sensor. Let me shut down the, like inflow of information of everything that's going on down there.

Chris Williamson (70:19)

Hit the dashboard, get the warning.

Conor (70:20)

Yeah, hit the dashboard, get the warning light off. Right. So I think you have to start to look at it as whether or not you're going to choose to go on that journey and confront that truth about yourself and learn how to deal with this gift that exists inside of you. It really is a beautiful gift.

Chris Williamson (70:38)

How do you think about guys who have that disposition? Where do you think they find their self worth from? Because it seems to me, especially in the modern world, the group that doesn't feel is able to trade on their masculinity publicly in a different way. It's much more observable, it's much more obvious, it's more classic accomplishment.

Conor (71:02)

Doing archetypal.

Chris Williamson (71:05)

Again, the objection of, well, not only is it going to maybe make me worse for a little while and I've got to feel all of these things and it's going to be really hard. And I've managed to survive so long without doing it. And the stuff that I alchemized was from me avoiding it, not me diving into it. And now you're gonna say that maybe the world's gonna laugh at me a little bit too. How do you think about building self esteem as holding onto self esteem, holding on to things to be proud of in a world that doesn't. Especially in the messy middle bit, which is where presumably most guys get stuck.

Conor (71:39)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (71:40)

Before you've got to Marcus Aurelius level where everyone goes, oh my God, the vagal authority in the guy, he's so fucking. He's. I don't know what it is. He just makes me feel like calm and secure when I'm around him. I don't really know what's going on. But there's something before you get to that, you're this dude that's like trying to decode the fucking like da Vinci project here.

Conor (72:01)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (72:03)

How should guys think about finding that self esteem and that sort of pride on the journey?

Conor (72:09)

There's a very simple truth and equation around developing worth, which is confronting and doing hard things that you know are hard, that you know you need to do. Always develop a sense of worth and value. And so if you are a man that has, you're just a big feeler, you know, you're a big softie inside and you have this, you know, beautiful treasure trove of emotions that no one's really ever ushered you into understanding. No one's really ever taught you what to do with them, how to handle them, how to deal with that intensity that lives inside of you. You have to choose whether or not you're going to address them. And I think what you said is accurate, that if you don't, you'll always kind of be a ghost floating around in your own body, you know, because you will have, you will be cutting yourself off from a part of who you actually are. You'll literally be disassociating from a part of who you are.

Chris Williamson (73:14)

You'll feel like you got shunted to the side of the road of your own life.

Conor (73:17)

Correct.

Chris Williamson (73:17)

Yeah.

Conor (73:18)

And a basic psychological principle is that when we fracture off from something that is true, it creates mental suffering.

Chris Williamson (73:25)

So that's interesting. Tell me more about that.

Conor (73:28)

Well, if you're in, if you're in great shape and you look in the mirror and you look at your body and you think, fuck, I look like shit. But objectively and even subjectively, there's a part of yourself that knows like, actually I'm in great shape. You start to suffer because you are fractured off from a sense of truth. If anxiety is another version of this, right. All of a sudden in a moment where you're just like your body's pinging off, the alarm bells are going off inside of your body and you're like sitting at home watching Netflix and you're like, I should be safe, I am objectively safe, but my body is telling me that I'm not. So you're fractured off from the truth of your reality. So coherence and congruency.

Chris Williamson (74:13)

Yeah, I love that one.

Conor (74:14)

Coherence and congruency are mental well being. The more you can align yourself objectively and subjectively with what is true, the more that you actually develop mental wellness. So if you have a lot of Emotions inside of you and you are ignoring those emotions. How you feel about things and the intensity with which you feel about those things. You are going to create more and more suffering by ignoring those. It's just that's a fundamental truth of our psychological well being and our emotional well being. And you're going to have to deploy a disproportionate amount of energy to try and ignore what you're feeling internally. So you're going to cut yourself off at the knees in some way. Shape, shape or form, whether you will, you know, chronically be confused. This is a case that I see for a lot of men. They have big emotions, they ignore their emotions, but then they're chronically confused about whether or not a relationship was right for them, whether or not the career is right for them, whether or not they're moving in the right direction. They're just, they're just generally lost. And there's like an ambiguity and a haze that shows up for them psychologically. Why? Well, because they've cut themselves off from a huge amount of data and information of what is true in themselves and in their life. So they can never find clarity because they don't have any emotional clarity. So they're just lost because they're trying to find the truth of their life purely through rationale and logic, completely ignoring emotional truth and data. So they can never find truth, they can never find a path forward, they can never find meaning and purpose because they've over indexed on rationality. So we have to move more towards coherence and congruency. And as we do that, as we get more in alignment with what is true, then we produce more psychological well being. That's the outcome. So if what's true is that you have a lot of emotions and you feel incompetent at dealing with those emotions then or you are just ignoring those emotions and pretending like they're not there. You're going to create emotional dis ease and discomfort and suffering within yourself. But if you acknowledge and you say, you know what, I have all these emotions, they're super intense. Sometimes I'm anxious, sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm this. But I have really intense emotions. And what's true is I fucking suck at dealing with them. And what I was taught growing up was just to disassociate from them. Well, now you have a truth. The truth is I need to become more competent at feeling my feelings and moving through them so that they don't take charge of my life because there's something important There and then you have a pathway forward. And that is a form of confrontation, but it's a form of aligning yourself with the truth. For the other guys that don't have the big emotions, you know, they probably land on the scale of being likely having higher levels of the dark triad, higher levels of psychopathy, lower levels of empathy, lower levels of agreeableness, extremely disagreeable. And we could talk about why that may or may not have happened. It may be a psychological disposition predisposition, or it could just be that that's neurologically how they were designed and their nervous system was designed. And there's just not a real connection between what's happening in their bodies and their emotional bodies and their mind. Those men, those men will either get to a place in their life where they realize that the void of empathy is so catastrophic that they have to address it, and then go about the journey of understanding how to develop a different sense of empathy, a different sense of compassion. And maybe they don't feel the full spectrum of emotions that are there and there's. But I think that these cases are fewer and far between. I think that generally speaking, more men have more intense emotions inside of them that they just are ill equipped to deal with. And they don't want to admit that because admitting a lack of competency as a man, especially a high performing man, is like the worst fucking thing that we could do. And so we don't want to do that. But I think that for, for the other men that genuinely are just like, I don't feel a lot. And I don't believe that it's because of childhood trauma or, you know, something that caused this, this maladaptive way of, of moving through. And I just have higher levels of, I don't give a. And I just go forward. It's not to say that that's bad or wrong or that it's worse or anything else. It's just that at some point in your life, you will likely have to develop and work hard on developing empathy and compassion. And either you can proactively do it, or you will systematically destroy enough relationships and opportunities in your life that you will come to the point where you will be forced into a kind of submission, into a kind of like knee lock or an arm bar where you're like, oh, look at the wake of destruction that I have left. I'm four marriages deep. Shit, I wonder why. Or like, I've destroyed five business relationships and imploded two companies and all of my former employees fucking hate me. I should probably figure this out before we continue.

Chris Williamson (79:43)

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Conor (81:05)

Coping mechanisms or addictions that don't look like them?

Chris Williamson (81:08)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they are. But upfront, the guy who is incessantly using alcohol on a nighttime, for instance would be one that's pretty obvious. Even if they can't necessarily see it themselves, eventually they probably will. For instance, a switch out for that, which I think people kid themselves over is sleeping pills. I think using an Rx to go to sleep if you need a stimulant to get you up in the morning and an RX to get you to sleep at night, that's probably the closest or the earliest warning sign that burnout is en route. Because you literally can't start without assistance and you can't stop without assistance either. You're having to use a fucking firework to get you up in the morning and a hammer to get you to sleep. But, but it's the sort of thing. Well, everybody uses caffeine, you know. Everybody. Yeah, you know, like, okay, I use a bit of Adderall, dude, like, whatever.

Conor (82:03)

Like, yeah, but if you're, if you're slamming like, you know, eight 9 milligram nicotine pouches every single day, I mean, that's become a common one. Right. I mean, I've seen all the videos of the guys, like, flipping the nicotine pouches in and. Have you seen those?

Chris Williamson (82:20)

No. What?

Conor (82:20)

Okay, some. Somebody in the comments section will have my back.

Chris Williamson (82:23)

All right?

Conor (82:24)

There's a bunch of guys that have, like. Like, they take the nicotine pouches and they. They toss it in in, like, a really magical way, and they're like. And they'll do this thing. And there's a whole culture around it.

Chris Williamson (82:33)

Okay.

Conor (82:35)

So. But yeah, I mean, you know, nicotine pouches are. Are a big one.

Chris Williamson (82:40)

I think video games screams.

Conor (82:42)

Video games work, you know, I think is a very socially acceptable one.

Chris Williamson (82:46)

Right?

Conor (82:47)

It's like, the more that you work, that's sort of like this. This addiction that's socially acceptable. And I think just being busy, just being like the chronically busy person, you know, it's like, how are you? I'm so busy. Let me stroke myself while I tell you how busy I am, you know, and, like, all the things. But that's part of our culture, right? It's very socially acceptable. It doesn't look like an addiction, but I think that many of us are addicted to being busy. You know, sometimes I'll give my clients an assignment of doing nothing for a day. I'll say, put your phone at home and go do nothing. No plan, no agenda, no tasks, no outcome. Nothing for you to do. Go and do nothing. And the first question that most guys say is, but what am I supposed to do? And I'm like, that's it, right? You're literally, I want you to go and do nothing. But they're so addicted to waking up in the morning, emails, notifications starting, you know, getting the days. You know, they're working all day long and crush. Crushing and accomplishing that. There's no off switch for that.

Chris Williamson (83:53)

Justin, my friend, worked with a coach who got him to. He had to start a hobby that he promised he wouldn't try to get better at, which it sticks with my mind. He told me my birthday, like, three years ago. It still sticks in my mind now. It's such an insanely difficult thing to think about doing. And he said, what did he take up? Was that water? Watercoloring, I think. I used to be a musician. I'd like to, you know, learn to make paintings. Wouldn't that be cool? And as soon as he does it and he thinks, well, that was, you know, that was all right. He wants to go on YouTube and look at tutorials. He wants to research what's the best Watercoloring set. He wants to start optimizing the canvas. How do I master this exactly? And his coach said to him, no, you're not allowed to try and get better. Yeah, you just have to do it for the enjoyment of doing it. And is it telic and exotelic, the difference between done for its own sake and done because of the reward that you get externally for having done it?

Conor (84:54)

Right.

Chris Williamson (84:55)

And I think that the desire for progress a lot of the time is you sacrificing the telic for the exotelic. It's like, well, if I get better at this, then people would be real impressed.

Conor (85:06)

Well, I think that this speaks to again. I mean, one of the things that I've been talking about lately is that how we as men versus women develop a sense of identity. And we as men are so culturally and socially conditioned to develop identity through competition based efforts, activities, through doing things that are about achievements and accomplishments and competency. And that's largely there because we as men will usually coordinate ourselves in a hierarchical way and we're okay with doing that. You know, it's, it's, that's part of the equation for the majority of men is that there's this either spoken or unspoken hierarchy that starts to form within friend groups, within high schools and colleges and on the sports team. There's like this jockeying for position that naturally happens. And even in friend groups today, usually for a lot of men, it's like, you know, how successful you are, how much you're doing, how much you're accomplishing, you know, that kind of stuff.

Chris Williamson (86:06)

I've been in rooms with guys who are super successful and one of the subtle ways that this happens is everybody always turns their chairs to angle slightly toward the person who's like the head of the table. Even on a circular or a rectangular table, everybody slightly does that. Or when that person starts speaking, more people shut up. Most people or all of them shut up, up.

Conor (86:24)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (86:25)

I've been in rooms with certain guys where if they fart, the rest of the room will decide to be quiet. It's like, no, no, no, he wasn't talking. It's okay. And that's this kind of respect that guys want from other men, and rightly so. Like, wow, I'm the top of the tree. Like, isn't this great? I've spare resources, I've got assistance when I need that. Women are going to see me because I'm at the top of my competence hierarchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, that's true.

Conor (86:51)

But I think that largely women Coordinate in different ways. They coordinate through network, you know, through community, through relationships. And it's almost way harder. It's almost full.

Chris Williamson (87:00)

Way harder, dude. Fucking so not cool. So not fucking easy to understand. This is why the movie Mean Girls was made.

Conor (87:12)

That's right.

Chris Williamson (87:13)

That is how women compete. Yeah.

Conor (87:16)

And it's totally foreign.

Chris Williamson (87:19)

Underdog is how men compete.

Conor (87:23)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (87:23)

By punching each other in the face and working out who won and then being friends after.

Conor (87:26)

Totally. But I think that part of being a girl, dude, part of the challenge that I think a lot of men are having is that, you know, we are used to competing in hierarchies. We're used to that system. But now our culture and society has moved towards a network based form of competition. And I think for a lot of men, they don't know how to compete in that environment because it's completely different rules.

Chris Williamson (87:49)

And what is that? Is that who you know, friendships, allegiances.

Conor (87:56)

You almost never want to profess that you are better than anybody else.

Chris Williamson (88:03)

So it's this female minimization of competency.

Conor (88:06)

That's right.

Chris Williamson (88:07)

They come out of the exam and they go, you're gonna have done so well. No, no, no, me, like, you know.

Conor (88:13)

It'S like the women hanging out and it's like, you know, Becky clearly doesn't look great and she's put on a lot of weight. But it's like, you're so beautiful. You're the most beautiful one, Becky. It's like you can't admit any type of hierarchy. It's a faux pas within the network organization. And I think for men, that's not how we operate. You know, it's like, dude, what's happened? You're like, you've put on some pounds. Hey, you know, like, what's going on? I thought you said you're going to hit the gym. Like, what's happening? So I think for a lot of guys it's, there's in the, in the workplace that's showing up, but I also think in relationships that's showing up because there's just like these, these skill sets that we don't. That are not sort of like second nature to us, that we're having to learn. And I think in, in a lot of ways, like the school systems are not teaching us that. So, you know, there's like a, again, there's like a vacancy there.

Chris Williamson (89:05)

How many men have mommy issues?

Conor (89:10)

I don't know what percentage, but I mean, I think that, I think that for a lot of guys, if you're a people pleaser, if You're a nice guy. You, you know, you have mommy issues. And for a lot of guys that. Have you ever heard of the Madonna whore complex?

Chris Williamson (89:26)

Yeah, I thought that was disproven, but yeah, go ahead.

Conor (89:29)

The Madonna horror complex.

Chris Williamson (89:30)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At least from an EP perspective. The only reason. The only reason I say this, I first read it in. Not Steve Stewart Williams Robert Wright's the moral animal from 1993. And I remember one of my EP friends saying that that didn't show up in the data. But I was like, but every single guy would say that it does.

Conor (89:58)

Yeah. That it. Well, I think it's more of. This is where I think things like evolutionary psychology are challenging. Because part of our psychology is there's a lot of research coming out around, right. Brain development and the development in the unconscious. There's a guy named Alan Shore who has done some phenomenal, phenomenal work. He's got a book called Right Brain Psychology and got it at home developmentally unconscious. And it is astounding when you see how our unconscious mind, which is a huge part of how we identify, but a huge part of how we relate to others, is actually developed and formed. And a lot of it is within the first three years. But the main part of it is that your unconscious doesn't work like your conscious mind does. It works through archetypes and myths and stories and symbolism. And for a lot of men, they do fall into this kind of Madonna whore complex because they have gonna have.

Chris Williamson (90:59)

To explain what it is.

Conor (91:00)

Madonna whore complex is when the sort of Coles notes of it or Cliff Notes, I don't remember what they have here in America, but the short version of it is that you fall in love with a woman and you project the kind of puritanical, idealistic version and view of a woman onto her. Jung would say that you project the purest version of your anima, of your own feminine within your psyche onto her. And you start to treat her as this very sort of perfect, pure, wonderful version of the feminine that you never want to sully, you never want to mistreat, you never want to any of those things. And so what happens is that you sort of bifurcate your vision of that woman. And you never interact with her by bringing maybe the truth of disappointment to her or when you're upset or when she's done something that you didn't like. And so resentment starts to build and you bifurcate your own sexual desires for her. This is the big part of the Madonna whore complex that for a lot of men, they will find a woman that they love and that they really want to be with, but they find themselves not being able to bring the sort of sexual vitality that they've had in past relationships to this woman that they really love and that they really admire. And this is where a lot of infidelity happens, is that a man will be with a woman that he wants to have kids with and marry and that he really loves and yada, yada, yada, yada. But he takes the primal sexual nature within himself, how he wants to actually be in the bedroom and does not bring that to the Madonna.

Chris Williamson (92:43)

Why?

Conor (92:43)

Because that would be. That would be. I don't know what a word I could use, but, like sullying or bringing down. Desecrating the, you know, the Virgin Mary. Right. Desecrating the Madonna. Desecrating this image of this very pure, loving, kind, nurturing embodiment of the feminine.

Chris Williamson (93:06)

What's the genesis of that?

Conor (93:08)

Great question. So you can grow up with a mother that you held in that esteem. Right. If you grew up in an environment where you had this mother that, you know, she was maybe a single mom and your dad wasn't in the picture, and so she was your only primary attachment, and she was very loving and nurturing and kind. And so you kind of idolized her. And there's this idolization that happened, or the inverse is usually very common. Right. Mom was disconnected, she neglected you, she was abandoning, she was harmful or abusive. And so you created a kind of caricature or an archetype in your mind of the ideal woman that you wanted to be with. If only mom was like this, I'd be happy. If only mom was just loving and kind, I'd be happy. And so that. That archetype exists inside of your unconscious, and it lives inside of there. And you kind of walk through the world looking at women saying, I wonder which one is going to fulfill this. And then you project that onto the women that you start to date. And eventually you find a woman that's like, she meets all the right requirements and it just goes heavy, you know, gets projected onto her really heavily. And so this sort of. This projection of the idealistic woman gets layered over top of the woman that's actually in front of you.

Chris Williamson (94:28)

It's a very specific type of idealistic woman. Right. Because you could say, I want an ideal woman in the bedroom, and that would be on the other side, right?

Conor (94:36)

Yeah. And so what a lot of men end up doing is that they find these types of. They find this woman, they Fall in love. It's like everything that they've ever wanted, but there's parts of themselves that they never bring into the relationship. So they're usually, some of the characteristics are like, they're usually completely annihilated. Whenever that woman is disappointed, right, she's disappointed, she's upset, he's done something, it's like catastrophic for that man. She's usually on a pedestal. So you have this like one up, one down type of dynamic where she's the, you know, over functioning and he's the chronic under functioner. Right? Everything that's wrong in the relationship is because of him. And, you know, he's always doing something wrong.

Chris Williamson (95:20)

This is his perspective.

Conor (95:21)

That's his perspective, right? It might not be her perspective. And slowly he'll start to withhold parts of himself. He'll withhold maybe the more aggressive part of himself or he'll withhold his boundaries. He'll withhold his wants and needs and desires. So he'll withhold all these things. This is like classic people pleasers and nice guys. And they'll withhold all these parts, but they'll also withhold those like primal sexual energy. So the ways that they want to engage sexually with that woman, they'll withhold those and then it has nowhere to go. And then they'll, they'll find a whore, right? They'll find an archetype of the whore, whether it's through pornography and OnlyFans Girl, the porn that they're watching, or, you know, somebody that they start to idolize online or somebody that they actually find. And so I see a lot of men that are unfaithful that have gone through this cycle is that they've bifurcated their vision or they've separated out their, their vision of the woman that they're with and they've taken parts of themselves that they would normally want to bring into the relationship and either tried to kill them off, like, oh, that's not okay. That, that primal way that I want to be with that woman, I'm gonna try and kill that off. Or they, they just have a different place that they get that need met.

Chris Williamson (96:40)

Right?

Conor (96:40)

Porn onlyfans, et cetera.

Chris Williamson (96:42)

How do guys combine the two?

Conor (96:46)

It's pretty uncomfortable. You have to start to bring those more usually primal elements that you would bring to a one night stand. Yeah, to a one night stand or you know, to a woman that like you weren't in love with or, you know, or, or even just the more primal elements of admitting that you're disappointed or that you're upset or that you're angry. So you have to start to take up some more territory. You have to start to have needs, you have to have, have some desires. You have to let those needs and those desires be known within the relationship and start to say, you know what, I've never actually told you what I want. I've never actually told you what my expectations are. I've never actually told you what it is that I desire, you know, in the bedroom. And so I'm going to start to expose some of these things and bring them forward. And you start to do that slowly and incrementally and consistently. And you start to bring that more shadow oriented or primal self back into the relationship. And it can be challenging because what starts to happen is that that woman slowly comes off the pedestal and your projections of the feminine start to, you know, get taken off of her. Because for a lot of men what happens is that they, they project onto the women the parts of themselves that they feel deficient in, right? So she's so compassionate, she's so loving. And meanwhile inside of him he lacks self compassion. He's not loving to himself at all. He's ripping himself a new asshole every single time he fucks up. So we start to dismantle this pure, perfect image of that woman. And the funny thing is that if that man stays with that woman for long enough, stays with the Madonna for long enough, she will slowly turn into Medusa. Seriously, she'll slowly turn into this embodiment of, of what he resents and what he hates and he'll kind of become bitter and she'll become this archetype of something that he has disdain for and contempt towards. And a lot of that is because he hasn't brought forward his needs, wants and desires, his expectations. So he starts to see her, this Madonna, he starts to see her as the embodiment of everything that refuses to meet his needs. When it's actually him refusing to bring forward what he needs, wants and desires.

Chris Williamson (99:13)

Yeah, you haven't asked. How could you expect this person to deliver you to that fucking Neil Straussy? It's always Neil Strauss. Always, always, always, always unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. It always is.

Conor (99:26)

Yes.

Chris Williamson (99:26)

And it just completely captures the issue of poor communication. But poor communication is just the end result of, well, maybe you didn't have the bravery to look at your emotions. Well, maybe you're so busy that you don't have time to feel your emotions. Well, maybe you're so sedated that you don't have time, you know, like go back down the stack to find where the genesis of this was. So yeah, when people talk about, you know, good communication is important, it's like, yeah, but you don't fix that by just communicating more.

Conor (99:55)

Right.

Chris Williamson (99:55)

Because the communication needs to say something and where's the origin of the thing that you're going to say?

Conor (99:59)

Yeah, it's done there, it's in there.

Chris Williamson (100:01)

It's done there.

Conor (100:02)

Yeah. And so you have to, again, there's no change without confrontation. Right. So for a lot of men, they have to confront the truth that's inside of them. They have to confront, here's the need that I have, here's the want that I have, here's the expectation, the desire that I have that I've been just chronically withholding from the relationship. And then to start to slowly bring that forward, knowing that it's going to alter the image that you have of that woman.

Chris Williamson (100:29)

What if in doing that, I certainly see stories from guys online about I had this girl on a pedestal, I learned about her past and it was sort of an ick to me. I sort of almost have a fear of this Madonna being sullied into a whore by somebody that isn't me. It's a kind of fragility around that perspective or of bringing this in and of maybe not seeing her as the perfect embodiment. White as snow, managing the transition from Madonna to amateur singer. How do guys deal with that pivot there? It's going from being goddess to mortal. Might be another way to look at it.

Conor (101:17)

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it is for those men you are pedestaling that woman because you are used to being in a subservient position with women. You're not used to being on equal ground. So for a lot of these men.

Chris Williamson (101:36)

If you're emotionally, if you care, if you're emotionally intimate with them, you're happy to be on the pedestal, but only if you're going to discard them afterward.

Conor (101:46)

That's right. Yeah. So what men will, what will often do, and I see this so, so often, it's wild, is that we'll toggle back and forth between this, right. We'll have the women that are like the one night stands or that, you know, that we're friends with, benefits with, and there's no real emotional connection, there's no desire for a relationship there. It's fun, it's exciting, you can express whatever the hell you want sexually. There's a complete sexual freedom. And then there's the women that you fall in love with and all of that shit's out the window, right? And it's like there's a huge challenge which, with bridging the gap and actually having a relationship with a woman where both of those things coincide. And there's this very strange, like, inverse relationship between the more that you pedestal a woman, the less that you feel worthy of her, right? It's like the saying, like, when you pedestal a woman, don't be surprised when you find her looking down on you. But that usually is because a man has grown up as a young boy, either needing to idolize his mother, or he created an image of the ideal mother that did not exist in his life. That he had a mother who, you know, was an addict or she was abusive, or, you know, she was cycling through men and she was just unsafe or whatever it was, right? And so he had to create the image of an ideal mother that he ultimately needed. And then what happens is he falls in love with a woman and he projects that image of that ideal mother unintentionally onto her. And of course you don't want to fuck your mother, right? So. So what ends up happening is there's a type of like, impotency that starts to show up in those types of relationships. And it's not true intim impotency in the sense that he, you know, can't get it up ever, or whatever. But he's not bringing his own potency. Whether it's here's my boundary or I'm upset with you, or I didn't like that, or that's not okay, or here's what I need, you know, here are my expectations in the relationship or here's what I want to explore sexually in the bedroom, those things get completely omitted and he finds himself in a more subservient relationship.

Chris Williamson (104:01)

Such an interesting dynamic. One other one that causes that impotency that I see a lot of guys talking about is navigating the transition from honeymoon phase to up from like passionate love to companionate love, and the sort of deceleration in drive sexually that comes from familiarity, kind of knowing all of the tricks.

Conor (104:26)

Complacency killer.

Chris Williamson (104:27)

Okay, so how do guys navigate the nine month hump, 18 month hump of going from this girl's hot as fuck and all I want to do is horrendous things to the lower half of her body to now? I don't know, man, I'm a bit tired tonight.

Conor (104:49)

Couple of things. The first thing is bringing what I call expectationless desire back into your relationship. So a lot of times when a relationship exits that, that honeymoon phase where it's like hot and heavy and it's super intense, and then you kind of get into a groove and complacency starts to set in. And all of a sudden, you know, it's seven, eight o' clock at night, you both have your sweatpants on and the TV's on and you're just chilling out. That type of complacency really erodes sexual intimacy and polarity in charge over time. Over time, because comfort, comfort and safety, it's like you do want safety. A lot of the times when you, you know, when you want sexual polarity, there has to be some level of safety there. But comfort over time can be a killer because you really fall into grooves that lead to complacency. So for a lot of men, what, what I talk about is bringing expectationless desire to the table, which means that you just start to bring, whenever you, you know, look at her, that, like, little bit of excitement of like, oh, she looks really good today, or like, we haven't had sex in a while or whatever, that you bring that to her, whether it's through, you know, a look, a touch, a comment, and you start to bring that to her without the expectation that it needs to lead to sex. What ends up happening when a lot of couples get into this complacency state where desire has completely dropped, is that men, we stop, we stopped, stop making those comments, we stop initiating those types of pieces, we stop bringing this, like, I'm aroused by you, or I desire you, or, you know, I find you exciting. And we also start to really fall back into this complacency place where maybe we want the other person to initiate or, you know, some resentment has started to build up or, you know, the mask of who they were has started fallen. And we see them for, you know, see them in a different way, but we stop bringing these, like, little pieces of excitement and desire into the relationship. And that simple act of just bringing expectationless desire so that you're not expecting sex to happen right in that moment can really refuel things. Because when complacency sets in, what happens is it pressurizes when sex is going to happen. So it slowly, over time, it's like, it's been two days, it's been three days, it's been four days. And then what happens for a lot of guys is like, oh, when is this going to happen? And they start to track, right? And the, like, calendar comes out and like, I've had guys that, you know, it's like they've done the math. They've got a spreadsheet of like, when.

Chris Williamson (107:33)

Rejection happened, 320 hours since the last time I asked.

Conor (107:36)

Exactly.

Chris Williamson (107:36)

500 hours since.

Conor (107:37)

Exactly. But there's been, you know, every time they've brought desire, expectation to, you know, their girlfriend or their wife, every time that they've brought desire or arousal to them, it's like there's this really big expectation that it needs to go somewhere. It's like, okay, I'm gonna make this effort. I'm gonna make this effort so that we have sex. And for women, what, what happens is for a lot of women, they have, you know, like receptive desire. We as men usually have spontaneous desire. So guys can, you know, most men can look at, you know, see their partner in a certain outfit and it's like, oh, I'm aroused. Oh, I'm turned on. And for a lot of women, it's the inverse. Some women do have spontaneous desire where they just will look at us in the gray sweatpants and they're like that right now. But for most women, it's a receiving. They need to receive and kind of get the battery charged up in some way, shape or form.

Chris Williamson (108:33)

I disagreed with Esther Perel on this. She came on the show and she was saying, what woman do you know that is aroused by a man being aroused at her? I'm like, lots. Every one, like is being desired. Not one of the biggest turn ons for a woman. I think I might have needed to just ask her a different sort of an angle. Maybe I misunderstood what she said, but that was phenomenal conversation. I think she's fucking great at what she does.

Conor (108:57)

Yes.

Chris Williamson (108:58)

But that was one angle where I thought, I think you need to update your data on that one.

Conor (109:04)

Yeah, I think, I mean, look at us talking about what women want.

Chris Williamson (109:09)

Mansplaining our way, mansplaining.

Conor (109:10)

But I do think that part of that, you know, when that period of time happens is just bringing this like little spontaneous, unscheduled, uncalculated, non expecting form of arousal into the relationship and re.

Chris Williamson (109:25)

Injecting it depressurizes the.

Conor (109:28)

It depressurizes it. And I think for a lot of women, when they get into that relationship and there's like complacency that sets in, then there's like, oh, when he brings desire to me, there's like an expectation that now I have to perform, now I have to put out.

Chris Williamson (109:42)

And she will have also had some sort of a pivot too, I'm guessing. So yeah, you're. Now you're adding pressure on both sides. One thing I was thinking as you were talking there, the complacency comfort thing, which is like safety on steroids. It's very sort of. It's like toxic safety, I suppose, at least toxic to the bedroom room. I wonder how much the working from home revolution has been cancerous to this terrible one of my. Dude, I was away. It was George Mack's birthday this year, and one of the guys was sat around the table at dinner. We were in Corner bar here in Austin, and we were talking about working from home, which I still currently am until the office and studio gets built. And he was saying, I can't fucking bear working from home and it's got nothing to do. I would much sooner work from home, but I feel like such a cuck being in the next room. And my girlfriend, if she asks me how my day went, it's like, you fucking know how my day went. You heard it. I was sat in there. I was sat in there like a degenerate with my shirt on and my sweatpants because I couldn't be bothered to get changed. And he said, I need to leave the house. I need to create some sense of mystery, some sense of absence and intrigue. Not just for her, but for me as well.

Conor (110:56)

Totally.

Chris Williamson (110:56)

And, yeah, I wonder how much the working from home revolution has caused some dead bedroom because while the guy hasn't gone out and killed any deer, maybe he managed to do it from his laptop in the dining room. But there's no intrigue, there's no mystery.

Conor (111:12)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I do think that's a big piece of the equation, you know, that if you're around each other too much, that complacency just starts to set in. Right. It's like. Like there's nothing to talk about. There's nothing new, there's nothing exciting. And, you know, like, even after my wife gave birth to our second child, I mean, I've traveled a number of times since then, and some of that's been pretty hard, but a lot of it is just creating some separation, creating some space, you know, and so it's like, I didn't need to. I didn't need to come out here, you know, like, you and I could have done this virtually, but I wanted to. And I wanted to create a little bit of space and separation. And I think it's good for kids, but it's also good for marriage, you know, it's good for relationship to have space because otherwise you're just on top of each other constantly. And, you know, it's like you. You do have to have really great relationships, have a couple things. Number one is that that really great relationships have zero guesswork. So I never want to have to guess around what it is that you want, need, expect, or desire. Those types of things should be communicated. Because I think for a lot of couples, what ends up happening is it's a constant throwing the dart to try and get the bullseye, but you're not even anywhere near the board. And so there has to be some. There has to be very good communication about expectations, needs, wants, and desires. The other thing is that there needs to be some level of space and mystery. And I think this is very important for men as well. Like, I joke with my wife that the reason why she's with me is because I'm kind of like an untamable beast. You know, like, there's. There's this part of me, she knows me super well, and, you know, we have such great conversations. We have a lot in common, blah, blah, blah. But there's always this edge. I have this edge that I'm like. Like, you'll never know this part of me. You'll never really understand this aspect of me. And part of it's a joke, but part of it is just keeping a little bit of that mystery alive, you know, of that edge of, like. I think that the game is over when a woman says, oh, I know you better than you know yourself. I think the game's over at that point.

Chris Williamson (113:33)

How do you blend that with? Well, I need to be able to be barrierless with my partner. I want them to fully know me. I don't want to hide things from them. I don't want to hide things from myself. Are we not supposed to be in this, you know, seamless transition where we tell each other everything? Is this not the reason? It's the only relationship, apart from my therapist, that I can do this with. How do you think about that not being some beginning of. This is just, to me, this is my little precious secret that I have.

Conor (114:08)

Yeah. It's not about intentionally withholding. It's about a display of, one, I know myself exceptionally well, and two, I am resourced in relationships outside of you. So for me, I have, you know, I have my own men's group. I have my own group of men that are very good friends of mine that know a tremendous amount about me.

Chris Williamson (114:32)

Me.

Conor (114:32)

And there's things that I bring to them that I talk to them about that I don't necessarily need to bring to my wife and talk to her about, and we talk about a lot. I don't want to paint the wrong picture that like, you know, that there's things that are, you know, withheld or hidden or that I'm like keeping secrets or anything like that. But it's just that not everything needs to be processed and spewed out into the relationship. Not everything. And I think that that that has become a kind of unspoken expectation in some modern relationships that like, the relationship should be a container to talk about and process literally everything. And that your partner should be your therapist and your coach and your parent and your, you know, and your best friend and your lover and your affair partner and like literally everything. Right. And, and I don't necessarily, I don't think, I don't agree with that. I think that that usually doesn't work for most people because what happens is that it's a sign that they are under resourced in other relationships and that they are under resourced in their self relationship, that there's certain parts of themselves that they don't necessarily understand or that they're not connected to. So I think in part, and I also think that, that, you know, when you look at, I don't know if this is going to get me in trouble or not, but when you look at, not in my relationship, just online, when you look at like female desire and you know, women's archetypes of arousal and desire, it's really that, that kind of beast that gets tamed, right? And when you look at something like Beauty and the Beast, I think it's a great example of feminine desire, right? You have the kind of psychopath in Gaston that is lacking empathy, that's not compassionate, that is overly relentless, that doesn't pick up on her cues, that she's not interested. But then you have this other archetype that is literally a beast that has not been in a reciprocal relationship, but has kind of been a romantic that wants that. And part of the feminine desire is to be in relationship with the beast that, you know, has the status and has those things, but also the desire to sort of tame that part of him. And so I think we as men, what ends up happening is that we get into relationships with women and we oftentimes, in an effort to create safety for her, we overly domesticate and tame ourselves and we become this very docile version that then collapses the polarity and we lose a kind of intensity and ferocity, a kind of primal nature to ourselves that creates attraction. And we try and signal safety by being excessively docile. And I think that that actually in the long term, maybe not in the interim, but in the long term, does more harm than good.

Chris Williamson (117:40)

Good. Conor, Ben, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're so great.

Conor (117:44)

Thanks, buddy.

Chris Williamson (117:45)

I think your work absolutely rules. Where should people go to check out everything you do?

Conor (117:49)

You can go to man talks.com man talks on YouTube, on. On Instagram, Check out the alliance. We've got a great, you know, community. Thousand book, thousand plus dudes. Yeah, the book is called Men's Work, which has been crushing. And I'm working on a second one, which is fun. So, yeah, thanks for having me back, rich brother.

Chris Williamson (118:06)

Appreciate you, man.

Conor (118:07)

Yeah.

Chris Williamson (118:10)

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