A (2:03)

Way more of an expert on relationships than on fucking biathlons. He chose that moment, the crowning moment as he gets to do the interview. Could have thanked his mum, could have thanked God, could have thanked all the hard work, used it as the opportunity to try and do that. Dissect this from a science based lens for me, please. What's going on?

B (2:19)

Yeah, well, I mean, the first thing I want to know is, was this planned? You know, did he think this through? Because to me that is very different. If he's like, okay, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to try to get her back. And he's rationally, you know, got some reasons. Or if this was just like, hey, I'm in front of the camera, I'm all excited, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to regulate myself. Let me just let this fly. I, I think the results are going to be the same regardless. But the feedback I would have for him would be very different depending on whether he did this on, on the.

A (2:50)

Give me both, give me both units.

B (2:52)

Well, I mean, so if he did this on the fly, I would, you know, going forward, I don't know how you walk this back. First of all, I mean, like you said, he shot his shot here in front of the whole world. This is his crowning achievement.

A (3:03)

He shot his shot after shooting many shots.

B (3:05)

Actually, that's exactly what, you know, I'm going through my head. It's like by athlete, like, just stick to your 50 meters or whatever it is. Don't let's not shoot this kind of shot in this situation.

A (3:15)

Right.

B (3:16)

So that's, and that's what I would tell him. I think in a lot of ways you've gotta, you gotta use humor there to diffuse the situation with the individual because he, he just blew up his life.

A (3:26)

Really.

B (3:26)

Because it's, this is not just going to affect his relationship with this woman. Now every woman on the planet is like, oh, this guy's a cheater. Okay, cool. And that's not the message that I don't, I don't think you want that out there. And, and again that's, this is what I would tell him just straight off the cuff is like, look man, we've got two things to do is one is repair at the damage and then the second is what do we do for you to help you regulate and think through what, you know, what you're, what you're going to do in the future. Now if he planned this out, I would ask questions instead. And my first question would be like, what were you thinking? What, what, what was going through your head here? Because I don't know. Honestly, I think there is this desire probably to tell her and tell the world that like, no, I'm, I'm a good guy. I'm trying to do the right thing. And that would be my hope here, is that ultimately he's trying to do the Right thing. And he feels bad. And that kind of shame and guilt that you would feel after cheating is going to motivate people to great lengths to try to repair and restore. So if we're thinking about, is this guy a good guy? He might actually be a really good guy who made a mistake, or he might be an idiot. And that, and that's why I don't think, I think we'd have to ask more questions and find out. And I don't know the guy. And so it's, it's fun to think about him being an idiot, but at the same time, it feels so bad for him.

A (4:53)

Look, I get it, but there is a bit of, there's the beginning of a potentially shit rom com going on here, 100%. And I think 100% when we look at sort of the cliches in romance, especially romance films and stuff, where there's a clumsy protagonist or a guy on the side and all the rest of it, it's strange how with the right lighting and a slightly better script, this could be the beginning, you know, the crowning achievement of this guy's life. And he sort of lays down this accomplishment at the feet of this woman. I think one of the things that most people get skeptical around is if he'd used that opportunity to win her back after he'd broken up with her and said, I realized I made a mistake. That feels different to this sort of rumbling of his lack of virtue, this sort of low credibility, man, potentially, who is sort of using. I did see one person say that it was emotional manipulation. I think if anybody is being emotionally manipulated, it's him by himself. I think that he is doing. He may be. Is it emotional manipulation or is it kind of just, holy shit, I fucked up and maybe I'm a bad guy, or maybe I'm not a bad guy, but I'm just like, I clambering, clamoring to get back into connection with this person. I'm so dysregulated. I just need something. And if she sees me basically dedicating the greatest moment of my life to her. That being said, he was in a relationship for six months. He cheated three months in and told her a week ago. Um, I, I, I, look, if you're gonna be an Olympic athlete, fucking keep it in your pants for six months. Dude, you've worked toward this for a long. At least four years. Holy shit.

B (6:46)

Well, and not to mention, I, I think you're right on point there in terms of he's probably dysregulated he's probably trying anything and not in his maybe right mind in that way. And that's what happens is often when a relationship fails people, they'll do anything and they'll try anything. It's like they're allocating their effort to the wrong things. So this is not a situation where you want to try harder. This is a situation where you want to try better. And for him here, rather than being like, you know, a national, international television, hey, I cheated. Hey, I messed up my relationship. And I just want to say sorry to Melinda or whoever, whatever her name is, you know, and that kind of reallocation is essential because it's not. Trying harder is not gonna. It's not gonna do this. Trying harder, in fact, often chases people away.

A (7:37)

That's an interesting one. Talk to me about some of the ways that the romantic mind tells people to try and fix breakups that the sort of status driven, slightly more rational mind has got a bit of an aversion to.

B (7:51)

Yeah, you know, I think in many ways we have no idea what we're doing in human relationships. Nobody does, you know, in human relationships, because we are animals and we are very reactionary. But it doesn't feel like it because we have this higher order cognition that makes a lot of sense, and it tries to convince us that, no, I'm doing this for a very specific reason. And so as a result, people rationalize what they're doing at a level that. That is always going to feel like it makes sense from the inside and from the outside, very different. And so let me get. Let me give. Let me give you an example. There's this concept out there that nobody's talking about in terms of relationships, but learning theorists know it really well. And it's called approach avoidance. And it's not the kind of avoidance that you would talk about when we're talking about relationships. Like, this person doesn't want a relationship with me, therefore they're avoidant. This is. All this is to say is that sometimes scary things are also desirable, and sometimes desirable things are also scary. So in other words, I want to pursue this relationship, but I know I might get hurt. And what that causes me to do is take some steps forward and then take some steps backward. And same with a breakup. This bad thing has happened, and you might have to deal with some hard truths to get this person back or to fix what's going on in yourself, to not be a cheater anymore or whatever. And that's hard, and that's scary. And so you take a couple of steps forward and a couple of steps back. And this also applies when we're trying to get somebody back. So suppose you broke up with somebody and, you know you'll do anything to get them back. That is a slow process. And people think that grand gestures are the way to go. They're not grand gestures. Like, suppose you had a scared cat under a car, and, you know, it's been living in your neighborhood for a long time, it's getting hungry, it's not doing well, and you want to coax it out from under the car, and you decide you're going to dive under the car and grab it by the tail and pull it out. You're never going to see that cat again if you miss the tail. And that's often what we do with breakups. That's often what we do when we really like people, is we dive under that car and we. We make this grand gesture, this big grab. But really what you need to do is very slowly approach that car. Maybe days, for days, you do this, and you, you know, offer that piece of food or you put out that water. You show that you are a safe person. That's an investment, and that takes a lot of time, and it requires delayed gratification. We don't have a lot of ability for delayed gratification in adult society, unfortunately, we certainly don't.

A (10:31)

If we are out of regulation and scared and anxious, and we know that the attachment wound that we're currently trying to fix, the exact shape and size of it is the same shape and size that that person is there. And if only I could get them and slot them in, all of my pain would stop. And the quicker that I can do that right, the more quickly I'm going to get back into regulation. So therefore, the grander the gesture, they will see how important and impressive and how much I care about them. I just got the bronze medal in the biathlon, and I'm going to do it, and the skies are going to part, and then my dysregulation is going to be fixed. She's going to see how grand of a gesture this is. It is on his to kind of defend a guy that's cheated as poorly as I can. The sort of grand gesture thing, first off, does sound romantic, and secondly, I think it's. It's coming from a good place. At least the grand gesture thing, not the fucking I'm a cheetah thing. The grand gesture thing is coming from a good place, which is I want to just try my best to show you how Much I care. And what is being missed is unfortunately a dynamic that exists in pretty much all humans, especially humans that have just been slighted or someone that's not feeling particularly receptive to whatever it is that you're going to try and do to them. They're a kind of a bit of a tough stand up comedy audience that are sort of sitting back like, go on, make me laugh. And you, you, the more cloying that you are, the more pliable that you appear, the more dysregulated you look like, hey, the situation we just went through was one that was highly unsafe for me, right? You did a thing that made me unsafe. You broke up with me, or you cheated on me, or you did something, you mistreated me, or you did something, and now you're steaming in with what to you feels like a grand romantic gesture, but to me just feels like more dysregulation. It's just you're spewing your unsafety at me. So it's important for the person, the protagonist person that's trying to do the winning back, at least as far as I can see, to fucking pump the brakes to be like, okay, a text that says, I've been thinking a lot. I'd love to speak if you'd care to.

B (12:45)

Yeah. Oh, and it's so important to just be chill sometimes and even if you're not feeling that way on the inside to, to project that kind of confidence,

A (12:56)

but also fake it until you regulate it. Oh.

B (12:58)

Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes. And. And it's like, hey, do you want to grab coffee? Been thinking about you. So simple. You know, you give people that advice and they're like, I don't know why I didn't think about that. And that's because your mind is going so many different places. That is what dysregulation is. You're in this fight or flight mode. You're not. I mean, imagine if you just had to go to a comedy show and make people laugh, but you're being chased by a bear, okay? Like, best of luck to you. And that's how it feels when you're pursuing a romantic relationship and things aren't going well. You've got this fight or flight response. You're being chased by a bear and then you're trying to chase somebody at the same time, you're going to look like a maniac. And of course it's not going to work. And so self regulation is the very first primary endeavor that you need to undertake is figure out how to Regulate your own emotions. And that's the nice part, is these are skills, and they're skills that can be taught. And unfortunately, you don't. There's no class. Even in, like, second grade, there's no class. How do you calm down? But there probably should be.

A (14:03)

What would be your prescription to somebody who is going through emotionally turbulent relationships stuff, and they're thinking, I really could do with regulating. This breakup is turning me inside out. I can't stop thinking about them. Whatever. Whatever. What does science say about how people should recover from a breakup?

B (14:26)

There's a couple of different approaches that people take, and for me, mine is distraction. I think distraction is very important. Healthy distraction. So don't distract yourself with alcohol, for example. One drink, fine. You know, no big deal. But healthy distraction is, go to work, pour yourself into it. Go to school, pour yourself into it. Healthy distraction is hanging out with your friends, join a new rec league, play kickball, whatever. I don't care. But whatever you're interested in, if it's video games, that's fine. That is enough to kind of give you a chance to literally calm down. And you don't want to get lost in those things. But just having a couple of good nights where you sleep is really important. And so if you can tire yourself out by lifting heavy, by running long, whatever it is, playing soccer, and so you sleep, as a result, your body's just going to start taking care of itself in ways that it just was unable to before.

A (15:22)

Yeah. Another interesting thing that I learned is people's sense of guilt is almost always directly correlated with the likelihood that they're going to be caught. So this is an evolutionary theory, and it makes complete sense that if somebody's ever done something, they were driving down a road, and a wrapper came out of the car, and there was super strong wind, and it blew away. And you're like, I'm never gonna find. No one's ever gonna know. It was in the middle of the night. Or you do it in the middle of a busy neighborhood and tons of people can see, and they're like, did that rapper just come out of that car? Is that Dr. Max Butterfield from Instagram? Like, the likelihood. I hate that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I broke up with my boyfriend because of him. The likelihood of you being caught is directly correlated with the amount of guilt that you feel. And I just. Every time that I see situations where someone is under pressure, being. There's all of these court cases going on at the moment about the Epstein files, right. And people are being poked and prodded and cross examined or whatever. And I'm looking. This is big shit, right? This is really fucking. This is the biggest case in the world right now, and probably the biggest one that'll happen for quite a while. And he's the worst guy in history and so on and so forth. And I'm looking at these people and I'm watching them, and I'm thinking, how's this motherfucker breathing so slowly? And it's. To me, it's one of a few things, either goat meditator, breathwork practitioner with a fucking nervous system like a glass lake. Didn't do it. And importantly, didn't do it and doesn't think that he's going to be falsely accused of having done it because didn't do it and still might do it is all of the disadvantages of guilt without any of the benefits of actually having to get away with the fucking thing. Or the third one just straight up doesn't think that he's gonna be calling regardless of whether he did it or not. So, yeah, I just. It's interesting, especially watching somebody who did it announced it themselves or maybe he got caught. He doesn't really say. Or he says that he told her. This, like, retrospective guilt thing is real interesting to me because obviously all of the evidence is out there. He's already said it, all right?

B (17:41)

And, you know, well, there's another possibility as well, and that's drugs. You know, the. When you take beta blockers, for example, I don't know if you know about beta blockers, but basically it. It blocks the ability in your body to detect that you're feeling anxious and they're meant for something else. But, you know, you could take them if you have a. You're. You're gonna go into a. Like a billiards tournament, and you don't want shaky hands. So you take beta blockers or you have a big presentation, and they're prescription only, so you have to go to your physician to get them. But these beta blockers essentially lower your heart rate, lower your respiration rate, lower your. Your blood pressure, like all that stuff, but they also disconnect so you don't feel that sensation of the beating heart. And so, you know, there could be any.

A (18:26)

Anything that the Epstein files are using. Performance enhanced.

B (18:29)

They're juicing. That's what it is. But come on, if I said that to you, would you be shocked if, you know, they went to their doctor and they said, I got to go to the courtroom, and I have to. I have to maintain. Like, what do you do? Beta blockers done, bro.

A (18:42)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little do you know that you're helping people regulate their way through being cross examined about being a part of the fucking worst conspiracy in history.

B (18:50)

That. Let's just. Let's cut this. Come on, man. You got to help me out.

A (18:54)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. How similar is grieving a breakup to grieving a death neurologically in terms of the way that it sort of impacts our attachment system?

B (19:07)

I think in many ways it's the same. We have very blunt instruments in terms of our regulatory systems. And it's like fight or flight. For example, the idea that we're being chased by a bear is going to activate the same systems as getting in a fight with your mom. And maybe not to the same degree, but it's just one system and it's either on or off. And in many ways, I think grief is the same. And so as a result, any kind of loss, whether you lose your dog or your grandma or your romantic partner, we just have these blunt instruments that are kind of on or off.

A (19:47)

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B (20:36)

There are a variety of theories about that. You know, you mentioned evolutionary theory before, and one idea is that rumination will prevent you from doing this in the future. So this is an applied mechanism that over time, people who tended to ruminate would make less mistakes actually over time, you know, just kind of one theory. And they'd be more likely to survive. So you accidentally cut off your finger with a rock back in the Back in the day. And you know, you smash it or whatever. That's just kind of basic learning. Don't, don't do that again. And if you're constantly worrying, don't smash my finger, don't smash my finger, remember that time I smashed my finger? You're a lot less likely to smash your finger. And it's the same with breakups or, or anything else. So that, that's one theory. Another is much more local, kind of present to your own life. And that is it serves a function for you in the moment, which is you ruminate and you get in some ways rewarded by that. It creates maybe stimulation in you, whether it's dopamine or anything else. And that rumination makes it's rewarding even though it's punishing at the same time. Again, this idea that sometimes punishing things can feel good. Like that class clown in fifth grade that gets yelled at by the teacher, but all the other students laugh, that punishment is actually reinforcing and you know, in many ways. So that's, that's another theory is that rumination is this loop that we get stuck in that certainly it makes us feel bad, but also it can be self continuing. And so different people have different, you know, different approaches to understanding it. For me, I, that's what I like to look at when I'm advising people is what function is this serving for you? And most people say, what are you talking about? That's not serving any function. And that's why it keeps happening is because we don't have that insight that it actually is doing something. And that's, we have to get to the bottom of it.

A (22:32)

Rick Hansen has a podcast with his son Forrest called Being well. And they did a full episode on rumination. And that was one of the things that I found so fascinating. He gets people to ask this question, what are you getting out of your rumination? What are you getting out of your. What is it that it's doing for you? And you're right. When you first think about that question, you go, what the fuck do you mean? If I could exorcise this out of me, if I could expunge it from myself, of course I will. I don't wanna be thinking about this thing from the past, this stupid sentence that I said at dinner last night, or how that person that I really like probably doesn't like me back and I'm worried that they don't or whatever, that my girlfriend's gonna find out that I cheated on her. But it is, it is. And a Couple of insights that I think at least hold a bit of water. One is that the human mind abhors uncertainty. So much ambiguity and uncertainty are kind of one of the seats of the germinators of anxiety. And if you've got ambiguity and uncertainty, you would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with ambiguity. Because what happened, what is going to happen, what this means for the future, there is an open loop somewhere and you're closing it, you're collapsing it down, but because we have a negativity bias, you're collapsing it down to perhaps a situation so bad that even the physics of the universe couldn't allow it to. You know, your fucking dead grandmother comes back and she sees that you cheated on your girlfriend. And then the entire universe, well, I mean, this guy's managed to make the entire world see, you are collapsing down the superposition of all of the uncertainty into something. And it just goes to show how much humans abhor ambiguity and uncertainty that we would rather imagine a catastrophe than deal with not knowing. I think that's, that's kind of, that's, that's a pretty cool insight.

B (24:23)

Well, another, another element of this is that our brains are also cognitive misers. They want to take the path of least resistance. They want to do the thing that's the easiest. And so if you wear in a path, this is, you know, very much kind of glossing over a lot of details, but if you wear in a path, that path is going to get used again, and it's going to get used again and again. And so if you ruminate once, you're a little more likely to ruminate again. And if you ruminate again and you see where this is going, this isn't good. So if we have an involved tendency to ruminate and it can serve a function for us and it's self reinforcing just because of cognitive architecture, we're kind of doomed in a lot of ways once that rumination starts, unless there's intervention. And interventions, I mean, therapy can be helpful, but there are other interventions as well. Just, you know, breaking your routine, going somewhere else, doing something else. It doesn't always have to be therapy. Therapy is good for some people, but for others, you can do this without, you know, this serious kind of costly intervention. It's like, do something else, think about something else.

A (25:33)

Yeah, it seems like you're suggesting that the content of your thoughts after a difficult period are pretty important. That if you want to get over whatever it is that's happening, giving yourself some fresh territory to inhabit. I really, really hate the way that if my partner's been on a night out, that I worry about them the next morning, and whether I've got a text or that every morning I wake up and I think about that girl and hasn't. She hasn't text me back or whatever, it's like, okay, well, maybe if you do something different because your thoughts are attached to the patterns that you've been behaving, the fact that you get up and look at your phone straight away, or the fact that you get up and go to that part of the house in order to get breakfast. Well, maybe if you got up and went straight to a coffee shop, that pattern's already disrupted the way that you operate, and therefore it's gonna disrupt the way that you think.

B (26:21)

Exactly. You know, if you wake up and you check your phone, instantly put your phone somewhere else, put it in the garage, put it in the car before you go to bed. It's not. It doesn't have to be complicated. It just is switch things up a little bit. And I think people overcomplicate, especially people who tend to ruminate. They're like, well, there has to be a complex solution.

A (26:41)

Let me. Allow me to ruminate about my rumination problem.

B (26:44)

No, exactly, exactly. And I think sometimes also just arguing with yourself, just chipping, you don't have to completely prove the rumination wrong, but just chipping away at it. I was talking to a guy a while back, and he was worried that this woman he broke up with was living her best life after they broke up. And he just had that thought just kept popping into her head, his head, over and over and over again. And I said to him, how do you know she didn't step in gum today? He's like, I don't. I don't know. Maybe she did. Maybe she did, you know, and that's. That's all it takes is just a little bit of possibility. And you can do that to yourself, just argue with yourself. And it's not. I don't want to say that there's just a simple solution. All you have to do is stop thinking that way. That's not it at all. It has to be very intentional. You actually have to take steps, put your phone in the car, go out for breakfast, chip away. Maybe she did stepping gum. And those things really add up over time.

A (27:40)

I love the idea of rumination, being a teacher, and the reason that I like it is I think a lot of people have a problem with their first order emotions. Right. Feeling sad, but it's really the second and third order emotions. It's their frustration at their sadness and then their bitterness about their frustration about their sadness. But if you've got this infinite regress of self flagellation about all of the bullshit that you've done or think that you've done or how you should have seen the thing that you were going to do, a nice way to work out again, how is this serving you? Even if it's an ultimate, as opposed to a proximate outcome that we're playing with now from an evolutionary lens, what's cool is you go, oh, it's trying to keep me safe, it's trying to teach me something. I went through this very difficult, painful situation and it's making me think about it and then it's making me think about how much of an idiot I am for thinking about it. And then it's getting me frustrated at how much of an idiot I think I am for how much I'm thinking about it. And all of this is just trying to marshal defenses to make sure that I'm safe and make sure that my life goes well moving forward. So thank you, thank you many million year old programming for trying to keep me safe. And it just, I think it at least helps to, it's a solvent that helps to dissolve a little bit of the, the judgment that people have around,

B (28:55)

around that stuff that that kind of self judgment is so prevalent. And I really envy the people who don't think, you know, who, who just can turn it off and go for that run or turn it off and just watch TV or you know, whatever it is that they do, because that's not me. And I think most people find themselves really harshly judging not just what they've done, but especially what they haven't done, what they could have done as an alternative. And there's a lot of new research out there about, and we do this, some of this in our research lab about the difference between compassion and self compassion. And what's really interesting is if some, so suppose you, you know, you cheat and like this guy and he should feel guilty for that. Don't get me wrong, he should feel very guilty about that. But that being said, it's much easier for me to say, you know what, everybody makes mistakes, move on, you know, don't, maybe don't mention it at the Olympics again next time. And but to, to forgive yourself is often much more difficult. So there's this disparity that researchers have been targeting recently. Why is it that it's easy to know when to apply compassion to someone else's life. And in our own case, we have a lot of guilt and shame about what we could have done or what we didn't do or what we should have done differently. And that creates problems downstream.

A (30:15)

How do you advise people to develop more self compassion?

B (30:17)

That's, it's, it's such the cutting edge of research that there is not a good intervention right now. There are, there are some. There's this researcher named Kristen Neff who is kind of the guru of this. And one of the things she shows is that kind of like writing a letter to yourself as you would to a friend, can be really helpful. Even just writing a letter to a friend, advising them if they were in the same situation, here's what you should do. So a lot of it has to do with self reflection and just being aware of this fact that we're treating ourselves differently than other people. But truly, researchers are looking for interventions as we speak. We're doing it in our lab as well because it's such a prevalent problem that only recently has been identified.

A (31:01)

Very cool. Talk to me about high rejection sensitivity. I had an inclination about this, but I'd never heard it as a formal term before I started looking at your work.

B (31:11)

Yeah, so rejection sensitivity is basically, do you like rejection or not? And most people don't. So it's normal not to like it, but how much does it affect you downstream? And some people, what happens is they are so sensitive to being rejected that they see signs of it even when they haven't been rejected at all. So you send me a text and I don't respond instantly. If you were high in rejection sensitivity, it's oh, he hates me and probably he never wants to talk to me again. And you know what? I'm never going to talk to him again. I'll show him. And so what, what that does is it creates these turbulent social environments where you are now seeing. It's a lens that you see rejection everywhere, even when it's just ambiguous, sometimes people don't text right back. And so rejection sensitivity has been associated with neurodivergence in some ways. So you, you will occasionally see it in people with autism or people with adhd. You'll see it in people with personality disorders at a much higher rate. And the reason why isn't necessarily because it's causing those disorders, but it's part of a constellation of behaviors and kind of just ways of living and lenses of viewing the world. Yeah.

A (32:32)

What about, talk to me about some of the ways that you wish more men and Women knew how to signal interest. Cause I think this is something I'm seeing more of online now. Maybe this is kind of the progeny of a post MeToo world where men have been taught not only that no means no, but that anything short of a really, really obvious hell yeah is probably get the fuck away from me.

B (32:59)

Right?

A (33:00)

They don't want to make women feel uncomfortable and they don't want to blow through boundaries that aren't there. And they're scared of being a part of some me too. And they're just good people generally. So I'm seeing more. There was a video of a girl talking about how in New York, people, women are stealing finance bros salads.

B (33:19)

I've seen that. Yeah, absolutely.

A (33:22)

There's a girl walking through Central park with like pretty big boobs and no top on, no top on, no bra on, saying like, no, my skin's glowing and no guy's going to come up and talk to me. There's another one of a girl walking in a maxi dress, this party dress down the street. And the caption something like, I can't wait to go out and have no guy come up to me at the bar. What do you wish more men and women knew about how to signal interest?

B (33:44)

Yeah. It's much simpler than you would imagine. You don't need tricks. The easiest way to do it is say, hey, you're cute or whatever. I don't know what people say, normal people, human beings, you know, but you could say whatever. You can say, hey, I like you, or hey, that's a killer boots. That is. That is a great phrase. Not super dangerous. You know, that's the danger, I think with, with flirting and signaling interest is that you can go too far. You can absolutely go overboard. And commenting on people's bodies, for example, don't. Probably don't do that. Commenting on their clothes is body adjacent. And so that can be dangerous as well. Like. Yeah, it. It really is. You know, it's like, oh, that, that top is pretty tight, huh? You know, like. Yeah. And so you do have to be careful. Flirting, by its very nature, is ambiguous. That's why it's good. People have lost the ability in many ways to flirt because. Not because of me too, but because I think people took flirting a little too far in the workplace, in schools, and as a result, we had to teach them, okay, stop doing that. You know, stop commenting on people's bodies. That's not welcome in some. In some cases. But I think that's why being forthright is helpful. But it's hard because you have to put yourself out there. Whereas with flirting it's like, oh, maybe I like you, maybe I don't. So you can't reject me if I haven't actually signaled that I like you. But I feel like this has been going on a really long time. I had a moment when I was teaching a class probably eight years ago and this was when apps were, you know, they were, I wouldn't say the dominant form of find dating apps, of finding people, but they had become much more prevalent than they used to be. There was this guy who I really liked in class as student and I'd had him for a couple courses and he had gotten a text from a girl and he didn't know how to respond. And there were in class probably 15 people giving him advice on what to text back at once. And my reaction was in my head was, oh no. Like this isn't. They're debating things that are so basic, they're in their head so much, they don't have a chance, these poor kids. And so I think we have to get back to the basics in many ways. And it's very difficult on social media. It's very difficult through text because you don't have that back and forth. If I tell you a joke in person, I tease you a little bit. That's much more obvious. But if I send a text, it's like, was he being sarcastic? You know, was that. What did he mean by that? And that those were all the questions that they were debating back and forth, like, how do I respond to that? So part of it is just limitations in the way we communicate.

A (36:30)

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B (37:58)

There's a, there's a lot of back and forth about that. And you know, there's arguments from the evolutionary psych side, cultural psych, maybe personality, you know, a variety of things. All that to say, I don't think science says anything. I think people have theories. I think there's evidence in one way or another. But in my opinion, the evidence that's most persuasive is that it depends and depends on the context. So in many cases, women dress up to impress each other more so than to impress men. And that seems counterintuitive because, like, why, why would they do that? But there are a lot of reasons why you might want to do that. Women have a social hierarchy in the same way that men do, and they don't want their mate to get poached. And so you have to show not just a man that you're an attractive person. You have to show other women, like, don't mess with me, you're wasting your time. So personally, I find that explanation, that evidence to be pretty persuasive, but not everyone does.

A (38:59)

Yeah, it's an interesting one. I, I mean, I've seen so many different studies. There was a, a great one that I learned about from. Not Joyce Benson or Candice Blake, not Corey Clark, someone else. One of the evolutionary psychology ladies taught me this great study where they had a protagonist, this, what do they call the person that's the actor in a study? What's it called?

B (39:26)

Typically, I don't know. Actually, I usually use target, not comparison. I use target and actor personally.

A (39:33)

Okay, well, whoever that is. One version of the study, same woman twice. One version of the study, she's wearing quite revealing clothing. Second version of the study, she's wearing pretty covered up clothing. And two people who think they're about to go into the study are waiting outside the classic it's begun before you think it's begun thing. The protagonist goes up, asks them for directions, and then they did vocal analysis, sort of micro expression, tracking body language changes and stuff. And the same woman in much more conservative clothing that sort of quite kind and pass her on the way, just say whatever. I don't think they know where they need to send her in any case. And then in the other version of it, there's sort of this, like this sort of look up and down and then. Did you see what she was? No, no, no, no, no. So I don't think, I mean, guys might notice the fact that she was more revealing, but I don't think that it would be from the clothes. I don't think that they're paying as much attention. I think this is the thing that women don't understand about what guys notice about women. I mean, there was that great study you talked about. What was that study to do with Armani suits?

B (40:36)

Yeah, it's a classic, classic study in just this idea that there is competition, intrasexual competition, competition among women and between each other. And so the study shows that if you put guys in Armani suits versus Burger King attire, wear the uniform, whatever, and you ask women, same guy. So like, you have you wearing Burger King and you have you wearing Armani suits, and you ask women which version of Chris now? And you wouldn't say it that way. It's like, do you think Chris is attractive? And the Armani Sue Chris people like, yeah. And in the Burger King uniform, people are like, women are like, no, same guy, just different clothes. Are, you know, is he attractive? Is he powerful? Is he somebody you'd want to date and mate with? Not really, no. But if you do that with women, the guys are like, yeah, she's hot. Doesn't matter what she's wearing, Whether it's the powerful, you know, business attire, whether it's the Burger King uniform. And this study has been replicated many, many times. First, first kind of discussed in the 90s. And it has continued to, you know, be investigated in many, many different ways. And, and so I look at that and I talk about that and I say, yeah, so women are pigs, just like men. You know, I mean, it's very like we have our own domains of being a pig.

A (42:02)

Yeah, they're slightly different and they're pointed in different directions. Yeah, I think it's kind of tragic in some ways that the amount of effort that women go through thinking that there is Some sort of male judge or tyrant that's kind of this panopticon fucking godlike figure looking over them to judge their beauty standards when the call is very much coming from inside of the house. And if all women didn't like the beauty standards that were being enforced, I feel like if they were somehow able to do God's eye coordination and all say, okay, well, why don't we all try and have less long hair and less long nails and less high heels and less tan and all the rest of the stuff. We can kind of bring the market down together and guys are probably not going to fucking notice.

B (42:54)

Now when's the last time you heard a guy say, did you see her

A (42:57)

nails, dude, it's, it is, it is wild. I mean, that's the other thing that jewelry is a sort of area of attire that most guys, I don't think really pay any attention to. The difference between a $50 bag and a $10,000 Birkin or a Louis Vuitton bag or something. The difference between this brand of shoes from the high street and this brand of shoes, that's $1,000. We have no idea. Who do you, who do you think that this is for? But the same thing, the same exact fucking dynamic is true. Guys. How much do you think that woman knows about the specific sporting cup edition recaro seats that you've got inside of your BMW M3? Like, but this is a limited edition because it's got the, the twin tip exhausts at the back and they're the black. And then there's the alcantara seat in the middle and it's actually got the idrive with the other. Like. No, not only does she not know, she doesn't understand or care.

B (43:56)

Right? Yeah. And it's again, it's, it's about allocation of your effort, not this amplification of that effort, you know, and whether it's like, hey, I'm going to tweak my car so that it's a perfect car that will finally attract the love of my life. That's, that's stupid. You know, that's, that's not going to work. So where can you put that effort? Instead, literally go talk to a woman. That would be tough.

A (44:26)

Direction of a speed, dude, right? Direction over speed. Is, is a man saying, you're too good for me or you're out of my league? Is that a red flag? I saw someone saying that. That's a red flag.

B (44:38)

I don't think so. I mean, well, let me re, let me back that up. Can it be. Yes, but not out of context. You have to consider, why is he saying that? So if you give that as blanket advice. No, that, that is not a red flag. It could be, it could be a green flag. You know, it could indicate humility. But the reality there is we don't have more information about why did that guy say it. And so this is about investment rather than, you know, creating these rules. People want it fast. They want to be like, okay, this guy said this thing, therefore he's a good guy. Yeah, that's, that's like a magic spell. And that is not how relationships are built. They're, you know, they're built over time. They're built by getting to know people. And there's just no way of. I mean, there are a few things people could say that would be a red flag, like, hey, I'm gonna murder you. But even then I just said it. And that's not out, you know, out of context. Maybe now, you know, you clip this and, and it's like, oh, he's Dr. Max Butterfield is after, he's after Chris. This is big trouble here. But that's why context is so important. There's no shortcuts.

A (45:48)

I think this is sort of much of the meta theme of what you're doing with your content, which is to say if we take very short out of context pieces of relationship situation and then apply a universal rule from that, we end up getting in all sorts of trouble. It's so super fucking squirrely because, yeah, I mean, you're too good for me is if said by a guy who's quite high status and self assured, actually quite a nice compliment. And it can be done in such a cute, flirty way. You're just too good for me. How have I ended up with a girl like you? You know, that's, that's a nice thing to hear, especially if it's done from a place of not sort of pliable simping, but it's genuinely done out of a look. And we both know that we're good for each other. But that's cool. And to look at your date as she walks through, even on the third date, and you go, dude, you are so out of my league. Holy shit. Like, that's, that's beautiful. I think that's good.

B (46:59)

Right? But that's the rom com writing right there.

A (47:02)

Exactly. So, okay, are there things, such things as real red flags? And so beyond the obvious shit of like, I'm going to eat you and bury your bones in the yard, what about red Flags that people should pay attention to.

B (47:17)

I think there are certainly some, you know, and big ones are maybe not what's being said. They could be what's being done. You know, behavior matters a lot more than what people say, because people. Let me back it up and say there's a behavior intention gap. And so I might want to do a lot of really nice things for someone, but if I never do that, okay, that's a red flag. And that's a pattern over time is do I follow through or not? And. Okay, that. That's important. On an inability to regulate emotions. You know, we talked about this already. That's a major red flag. If you see these outbursts of anger, even if it's just minor ones leaking out, you know, something goes wrong, you punch a wall. Yeah, that's. That's worth looking at. And it's not. I have punched a wall when I was 13, you know, and so, like, was that a red flag back then? Yeah, I wasn't fully emotionally developed.

A (48:16)

People shouldn't have dated you when you were 13. Right.

B (48:18)

And they didn't let me tell you.

A (48:20)

So tell Epstein. Right.

B (48:23)

Yeah. You know, and that's a red flag. Like, what are people doing under the COVID of secrecy? You know, if. What are they doing? And if you find out that, again, they're. What they say they're doing is different from what they're actually doing, that that's worth looking at. So ultimately, for me, I guess the short answer to your question is it's about consistency and it's about regulation. So do actions match up with intentions? And are they a calm person? And do they be. Can they. Do they have the ability to become calm when they get dysregulated? Because we all get dysregulated.

A (49:02)

Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say, that not everybody is calm. And so you don't necessarily want somebody who is always calm. It's actually kind of cool to be someone who's excitable. And maybe actually there's a useful time for them to get angry, especially if it's on your behalf. But it's if. Yeah. If you're late for the flight and you just make it, does that ruin the entire holiday? Or by the time that the flight's landed, has everybody been able to sort of burble their emotions back down?

B (49:31)

Right. Exactly.

A (49:33)

In other news, this episode is brought to you by RP Strength. This training app has made a huge impact on my gains and enjoyment in the gym over the last two years. Now it's designed by Dr. Mike Isratel and comes with over three 45 pre made training programs, 250 technique videos takes all of the guesswork out of crafting the ideal lifting routine by literally spoon feeding you a step by step plan for every workout. It guides you on the exact sets, reps and weight to use. Most importantly, how to perfect your form so every rep is optimized for maximum gains. It adjusts your weights each week based on your progress and there's a 30 day money back guarantee so you can buy it, train with it for 29 days and if you do not like it they will give you your money back. Right now you can get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rpstrength.com Modern Wisdom and using the code ModernWisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com ModernWisdom and Modern Wisdom at checkout. Yeah, the. I mean, that's from David Buss. It's the number one trait that he says to look for in a partner, which is emotional stability. How long after some sort of emotional perturbment that takes you away from baseline does it take your partner to get back to baseline? The shorter that that window is, the better.

B (50:50)

And to give credit where credit is due. I probably got that from David. David is like my research grandpa. So he had a student, Sarah Hill,

A (50:57)

who was my Ph.D. absolute king. No way. You studied under Sarah?

B (51:00)

Yeah.

A (51:01)

Yeah. Holy shit.

B (51:02)

Yeah. So you know, so I sat. Classic lineage.

A (51:05)

I spoke at her H best symposium two years ago.

B (51:09)

Did you? Yep.

A (51:10)

Yep.

B (51:10)

That was awesome.

A (51:11)

I was by far the least credentialed person in the room. The only person in the room with a master's level education surrounded by PhD, double PhD, postdoc doctorate. Fucking Don Toobie was there. This was before John Tooby passed away. So fucking John Tooby sat in the front row as I'm speaking my 15 minute.

B (51:28)

That's when you need the beta blockers, you know, that's bruh.

A (51:31)

I wanted to feel all of that. It was fantastic. It was in Palm Springs. It was this great place. So yeah, Sarah is wonderful. She taught me about another one, this great study that was done. It was, you'll probably be familiar with it to do with ovulatory shift hypotheses. Or maybe it was Christina Durante. It's one of the two. And they had the same guy dressed in leather jacket, smoking, super cool with his hair done. Or another Version where he was much more nerdy and he was wearing a sort of sweater vest type thing, almost like a Big Bang Theory caricature. And in both iterations of the study, women went in one. It's the same guy, right? Absolutely, same guy. Women go in and see the first guy. Women go in and see the second guy, but they're told that they're twins, so they don't know that it's the same dude both times, but they're told that they're twins, so there's two different versions.

B (52:24)

I love it.

A (52:24)

And they go in and they have a conversation, and they're just told to sort of talk about, sort of play out what dating might be, like, what the sort of meeting would be. And the asking the dude with the cigarette, and he's like, you know, like, maybe we could go out. Or, you know, maybe not. I don't like it. Be cool or something. Like, maybe, you know, maybe I'd see you. Maybe not. Like, I got my motorbike outside, whatever the fuck. And then with the other guy, he's much more pliable than all the rest of it. And they're asked, they track the hormone cycles. Where are they? During the ovulatory window, the women who are ovulating see the guy that's detached smoking, obviously signaling sort of more classically masculine traits, but is the same fucking dude as the other one. Even lesbians rate him as a better father to ask questions. Who do you think would be a more invested father? Who do you think would be a better father? And that. I mean, I know ovulatory shifts going through this. Is it true? Is it not? Replication crisis says no. And then all of my friends say yes, and I kind of want to back them, but this will come out, I think, in the wash eventually. But I fucking. That stuff is so good. What was that one about? Women were more likely to vote for Obama over Romney when they were ovulating because Obama's evidently way more chatty than Romney was. Classic brilliant dude. Brilliant.

B (53:49)

Yeah, well, and that's what I really like about the evolutionary approach, is that, you know, whether these studies turn out to replicate or not, they drive very interesting hypotheses. And that, for me, is where I really. I'm always trying to look for hypotheses that are supported by theory and evidence. And so, like, what would you know? What's the mechanism? Is the question that I have in my head all the time. If that would work, what would the mechanism be? And how can we target that through, you know, through the research and psychology as a whole. So, you know, my degree met, some of my degrees are an experimental psych, but social psych is truly my area. And social psych is kind of theory loose. And what I mean by that is many. If you read a social psych textbook, it's like a butterfly collection. It's like, oh, look at that one. Oh, that one's got blue wings. Look, a tiny one. And there's no unifying theory of social psychology. And that at its core is what evolutionary psych in this domain is trying to be is it's unifying theory of why people, you know, relate the way that they do. And it does some things really well. And then there are some things we haven't quite figured out yet. And that's why I take an eclectic approach myself. Just because I think it offers. It's more like a Swiss army knife offers a little more utility rather than this butcher knife that's just kind of like chopping things.

A (55:10)

I think more. I think more and more people are. That's not to say I don't know, because I've done pretty much every big EP researcher on the planet. I'm sure there's some out there that haven't been on yet, but I'll get around to you. Lots and lots and lots and lots of them. And I'm yet to see somebody who is completely unwavering in their. It is adaptation explanation or die, but that's it. There usually is some give. But that being said, there's people like Candice Blake or Mac and Murphy who's sort of human behavioral ecology, and they're sort of trying to couch it in a broader sense of what's happening in the local environment right now and how are we adapting to that. There's that really great study around the environmental security hypothesis. Have you seen this one?

B (55:53)

Yes.

A (55:53)

So the men prefer bigger women when the economy is doing badly, and men prefer thinner women when the economy is

B (55:59)

doing well because they know where the food is.

A (56:01)

Correct? Correct. Correct. Yeah. And they did the study on students in the mess hall or whatever of their halls of residence. And people before they'd eaten wanted the bigger women and people after they'd eaten wanted the thinner women. And you can track this. You could do a tracking of the state of the economy and the pinup women of the economy era. And it's crossed over, which is pretty interesting. So I like that there's a few. I get a little bit squirrely with some of the relationship science stuff. It's nice, but it Seems to have less explanatory depth. But the social psych stuff, you know, Rob Henderson has got some of that, a ton of that, in his lineage. So are you familiar with Tai Chiro's work? Did you ever come across his stuff?

B (56:39)

Some, yeah.

A (56:41)

He has these three traits. I'd be interested to know your thoughts on these. So he's got three green flags that most people should generally prioritize on finding in a partner. Yeah, conscientiousness. So I think he calls it thoughtfulness, but what he means is conscientiousness. Do you pay attention? Are you sort of reliable? Can you get things done? Have you got agency? Do you care about the partner? And have you got the ability to make that caring happen? Second one is agreeable. So somebody who is yes and not no, but typically doesn't make everything into a fight or a disagreement, tends to be supportive as opposed to sort of conflict. And then the third one is at most moderate openness. He says, you don't want too much openness because then you get into the realm of somebody who's got a wandering eye. They're kind of unpredictable. It's very hard to lock in a routine. They're gonna want to go polyamorous in 15 years time when the kids are a little bit older, when you definitely don't. But you also don't want no openness because then you've got no adventure in your life and nothing is ever gonna change. So what do you think of that? We've got conscientiousness, we've got agreeableness, we've got sort of moderate openness as generally prioritized traits for people in relationships.

B (57:57)

Yeah. What immediately strikes me is that that sounds great for me in my life, where I am right now. And I also know if you ask this question to my college students, my 20 year olds, they might want much higher openness and they might actually prefer less conscientiousness. Because, like, I don't want this guy or this girl that's just focused on school. Like, I want somebody that wants to have fun. And so that's what I would add to this is like, it's great to have these rules, guidelines. However, personality traits, especially the big five, those, those three, they vary throughout the lifespan. People are not aware of this, that personality changes, actually. And that's why I have a beef. I'll tell you, I have a beef with personality in general because it's very situation specific. I always ask this in my class when I teach personality. I say, how many people in Here are liars. And like, one kid will raise his hand. You know, it's always a little startling to get that, you know, admission. But most people are like, no, I'm not a liar. And then I say, how many people lie? Everybody raises their hand. What is personality then? What is the point if it varies from situation to situation and it doesn't describe what people are actually doing? So all that to say, I think those traits are high quality traits, but I also think they vary so much situationally that it's really hard to assess. And they vary over time so much that it might not be what you want tomorrow and it might not be what you want in 30 years. And so I wouldn't use it as a way to pick a partner, but I would use it as a lens. Are we compatible in this moment?

A (59:33)

Yeah, I suppose some sort of cognitive flexibility is probably pretty important as well. Is this person open to growing trajectory? Yeah. If not, and you are, again, this is compatibility. I think about this so much, man, when I watch a lot of the relationship discourse that goes on online. And the reason that he's like this and she's like that and that's not going to. Whatever. What it is, for the most part are people who fundamentally weren't compatible in a few very important areas trying to. For instance, guy says men should never open up to women about their emotions because he is perhaps a bit more sensitive of a guy than most on average tried to open up to a woman for whom that wasn't very enjoyable. That's not the sort of guy that they want. So what you're saying is I cheese tried to get with chalk. It went badly. Therefore, this weird outcome that I'm going to explain, it's like, no, what you need, because there is an entire slew of women out there who would just melt at the thought of this guy who opening up his heart to her and telling her about how when he was a kid he used to feel on the outside and da, da, da, da, da, da, like that's all. They would just love to sort of bundle that. And then they would still find you hot and they'd still take you to bed afterward and they're still gonna wake up and watch you go to work and think he's the man. And similarly, for the woman, there is a guy out there who is way more stoic and kind of doesn't really feel his feels all that much and isn't gonna say that. So for her to say, when guys open up to me, I get the ick is I need to be in a relationship with a guy who doesn't have that kind of trait. And the dude who said, I tried to open up and she got the ick. It's like, okay, you just need to find the woman for whom not only is that acceptable, but it's actually a turn on. Like, that's the sort of thing that they would go, oh, this is so amazing. I found a man who's competent and feels his feels, or the opposite. So, yeah, so much of it is basically people trying to reverse engineer incompatibility and then create universal rules from it.

B (61:41)

Right. And that's. People want rules. They love rules. And that is because rules offer certainty and relationships are inherently uncertain. I don't know what to tell you. You know, it's like you want a magic spell, you say the incantation, you wave your wand, bang, you're in love forever. That's not even. They don't even do that in Disney movies anymore. You know, like that. That's so detached from reality, and yet we are drawn to it because we like certainty. It makes us feel so much better. And so that ability to sit with uncertainty and to sit with ambiguity and not closing the loop, if you find somebody like that, that I think is a very good trait.

A (62:25)

Say more on that.

B (62:27)

Well, life, you know, I felt like as a kid and as a teen that when I reached adulthood, things would kind of. I would get to a point and then I would live and I. There was a lot of uncertainty. You know, I applied to grad school, the first round. I had done really well in undergrad high standardized test scores, did all my research, whatever. I applied to 12 top PhD programs didn't get into a single one. And that was unpleasant, let me tell you. And so that set my life on this trajectory, that eventually I made it kind of back to where I was trying to go. But what I found is that reaching that point that I was looking for in adulthood, A, took forever. And B, once I got there, we had a baby and things got even more uncertain. I figured the infant out. Great, now he can walk. I got a bunch of new things to think about. And so what I learned is that adulthood creates increased uncertainty, not decreased uncertainty. And being able to sit with that and live with that is something that I've really grown in. I think my wife has really grown in that. And it makes life easier because life's never going to be certain. And when you learn to tolerate the uncertainty and live with it, you're just going to have a better time

A (63:51)

Is there anything by way of practice or prescription or mantra that has helped you in the times where the uncertainty really starts to sort of twist the wet rag inside of your stomach and make you feel uncomfortable? Where do you go to? To. Uncertainty is a part of life and I need to be able to be comfortable with it.

B (64:10)

Yeah. I have run probably 16,000 miles, I think, at last count, in the last 10 years. And that helps.

A (64:19)

Fuck me. Yeah. What's the thing about run away from your problems. But, you know, I'm.

B (64:24)

Oh, you can't. You can. Yeah, you absolutely can. No, but that's the thing. You can. But what? For me, that is not a lesson everybody should take. You know, I really, I always. I enjoy working out, I enjoy being active. But running in particular, I hated running growing up. That was a punishment in all the other sports that I played. But I found when I slowed down, I had this shoulder injury and I had to stop playing basketball. So I started running. And when I slowed down, what I realized is it gave me time to think. And I would have a thought that would bother me on this run and it would bother me and I would think about it and I would think about it and then I would see a bird and that thought would go away and if it was important, it would come back. And I would think about it again and again and again. And then I'd have to get out of the way of a car and it would go away. And eventually that process of thinking and leaving it and thinking and leaving it, it really helped me just kind of deal with everything that was going on. And it's not a cure all for sure, but in many ways that was a meditative practice. I hate meditation, but running is a meditative practice. For me that's the same.

A (65:29)

How many people. My housemate George is. Every morning, the yards pool outside, I come downstairs and he's 45 minutes into a 60 minute meditation. Cause for him he's just found the button that he can press. And for you that would sound more like torture. Alex o', Connor, Douglas Murray, two British friends of mine, both of them, Sam Harris has tried to teach them live to meditate. You know, this guy teaches probably millions of people that have got his app and they got a custody in person live meditation thing. And they would have rather stuck pins through their fingers.

B (66:04)

Oh, me too.

A (66:05)

Exactly the same than done that they would have rather fought Sam Harris in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu than being taught to try and fucking meditate by him. So yeah, again, this is what I like is the There are generally accepted principles that are probably better and worse for your life, but there are no universal rules that work for everybody, right?

B (66:25)

And so just getting that experience and learning what works for you is gonna require some trial and error. And the biggest thing, the biggest mistake I would say, that people make is trying something, having it not work, and then not trying anything else, or feeling like you can't try because you don't want to quit. For me, that was. I have quit everything. You know, like, you read the intro when I came in, and it's like, yeah, I did a master's degree in clinical psych. I did not like being a therapist, so I quit. I studied in seminary. I hated it, so I quit. I quit football in seventh grade. Since I'm confessing everything, Coach yelled at me one too many times, once. And that, you know, that was enough. But that being said, quitting football allowed me to focus on other sports that I cared a lot about. And so if you don't try things, you're never gonna. Especially as you get older in life, you're never gonna figure out what works for you, what. What clicks. So never be afraid to quit.

A (67:20)

Isn't that an interesting blend that people have? I think there's some evidence that suggests people who make changes are happier than people who don't. Oh, yeah, should I move to a new city or not? And people are worried about which city is the most optimal one. Am I going to be more happy in this one or not? Or whatever. And maybe there is an imbalance with where the city is or the tax or the weather or the whatever. But people who make changes tend to be more happy. And also, over time, our openness to experience seems to go down. Typically, people become more closed. Their openness to experience dips as they get older throughout life. And also the only way that you can find out if a solution is right for you is to try it. And also, we are praising a lot of the time the stick with it muscle, the stick with it ability that you shouldn't give up on this thing because if you push through, there is something good on the other side.

B (68:14)

Right?

A (68:15)

All of these are traits, especially as you get older, that suggest, well, maybe trying something new. Don't completely quit your job, maybe don't entirely leave your relationship, but perhaps have a look on LinkedIn and see if there's anything else out there. Perhaps journal a little bit about why you're not super fired up in your current relationship. Perhaps have a little look on Zillow or rightmove at what the sort of property prices would be like to move to this different city that you're thinking about just little steps and you go, oh, wow. I go to a different coffee shop. I don't wake up and ruminate. I don't check my phone immediately and ruminate. And this is one of the reasons, kind of like a psychological spring clean, I suppose, that you can do regularly to just pattern interrupt the bullshit that you're sort of locked into. I'm gonna try running that Dr. Max guy ran and everyone's got part of a run club. I'm gonna fuck it. Maybe they've got some wisdom. I'll give it a try. I think there's something to it. I think there's something to it. And increasingly over time, like a sniper has to sort of adjust the sights on his rifle. If there's wind, that wind is going to blow more as you get older and the wind is going to actually blow in the direction of being closed and not being open.

B (69:26)

Right.

A (69:26)

So you need to account for that even further if you want to maintain that level of sort of novelty and intrigue and get out of your local maximas. What's a global maxima that I could maybe get to by trying something new?

B (69:38)

And it's so important to invest in the things that give a good return. And sometimes you need to invest in a new. You know, you have to recognize like, this is not giving me a good return, like what you were saying. I have to try something else because this isn't working for me. And in many ways that applies for people as well. Invest in the people that invest in you. You know, rather than trying to insert yourself into somebody's life if they don't want you in their life. Like, yeah, okay, take that as a signal that you don't have to cut them out of yours. But at the same time know that it's going to be a lot harder to take that path than it is to invest in somebody who is going to be there for you.

A (70:20)

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B (71:44)

Right?

A (71:44)

What do you think of that?

B (71:47)

In some ways it depends. But in general, I don't think that's a very fun game. I don't like playing that game where you have to guess at what people mean. It's like, don't talk to me means talk to me. I don't know about you. I'm not good at decoding those kinds of signals personally. How. How are you supposed to know? So, yeah, I think being straightforward, weirdly has to be. It's a skill that can be developed and younger people are less likely to have that skill. I remember when I was younger, in college especially, I didn't know how to communicate how I was really feeling to people. And I also didn't know if it was safe to do that. And so you use this kind of like angle to get there and they go, you, you know, I'm looking sad today. You know, I want to make sure I want somebody to notice that I'm looking sad today. And they go, oh, you look sad today. Are you sad? And I go, no. Why do you ask? Because I want them to ask more. I want them to dig deeper, you know, So I was so close but not quite there. And that is odd to me that we would need to teach people to be straightforward and yet here we are.

A (72:58)

Because there's more effort needed to obfuscate the thing that we actually want, right?

B (73:04)

It's like, what are you doing? Why are you playing that game? And I think in many ways it's self protective. It's kind of like flirting but with your emotions, like making them prove that they care about me enough to dig deeper. And yet I don't. It doesn't require me to put myself out there. I don't have to. It is hard to say. Like, if I say to you, hey, Chris, I'm feeling sad, I don't know. Like this interview, I don't. I don't know how it's going to go. Can you imagine if I had started that way? You've been like, oh, okay, you know that. So you have to pick your spots. But at the same time, if you are in fact feeling sad, which I'm not, by the way, but this is great. But there is a. There's a way to reveal that that's more socially appropriate. And I think that's where the skill is really learnable.

A (73:47)

Why do women say things like, leave me alone but actually mean the opposite?

B (73:55)

How should I know? No, I. So I think it can be for a variety of reasons. We could look at it through a cultural lens, and I think culturally, women have been more penalized for sharing openly than men have historically. I think today, you know, it could go either way and maybe men are even being penalized more. But I think that's one lens of explanation that people sometimes use, is that women have. Have had to be very careful in how they communicate. And that has been transmitted across time to women today, even if it's not as true as it used to be. So, okay, so that's, that's maybe one lens. Another is that truly social media communication teaches them to do it. And so that is. It's like, hey, ladies, this is what you have to do. Never tell a guy X. Instead, do abc. And other times it can just be learning. You know, you learn over time, like when you're in fifth grade, that if you pretend to be sad around a boy, he'll pay extra attention to you, and then you never learn a better skill. Well, you're still doing that when you're 30. And now people are dealing with it, you know, on. When you're trying to connect with them on Hinge or whatever.

A (75:11)

Joe Hudson, friend of mine, his daughter was 7 years old, crying in the bathtub, and she'd been crying in there quite regularly over the last couple of weeks. And he went in and the way that she was crying sounded kind of angry at the same time. He said, hey, you know, when you're crying, how often are you sad and how often are you pissed off? She said, pissed off. Is that okay, well, white, how. Why are you crying if you're, if you're angry? So. Well, when I'm angry, everyone runs away. But when I cry, my sister comes and gives me a hug.

B (75:43)

Exactly.

A (75:45)

So there is this. It's not just the message, it's the way that that's received. And yeah, I think it's a difficult one, putting us learning direct communication or not speaking in shadow sentences. Right. Not pointing in the direction of the thing that you mean, but saying it in a way where you don't plant what you want so that it can't be denied, so that you can't ever be invalidated. But you also deny the person the opportunity of actually giving you what it is that you want. It's kind of the same as telling somebody to hit the bullseye on a dartboard. But they've got to have their eyes closed.

B (76:22)

Right.

A (76:23)

Or you're moving it like this all the time. Yeah, okay. I guess passive aggression, shadow sentences stuff is similar to passive aggression. What's the role of passive aggression in relationships? You know, why it comes about, what its role is?

B (76:37)

Yeah, absolutely. So there. Sometimes researchers will call it indirect aggression as well. You know, there's multiple names depending on which angle in the literature you're taking. And that too is one that has been debated and kind of misunderstood over time. It used to be thought that men were aggressive, aggressive, and then women were passive aggressive or indirectly aggressive. And what more re. Kind of recent research has shown is that men are just more aggressive across the board

A (77:06)

and including indirectly.

B (77:08)

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So they have maybe equal levels of women with indirect. But then when you add. Or maybe even a little less. But then when you add aggression, aggression, it's like, no, guys are in fact more aggressive, but women, I think, are more. I wouldn't say it's rewarded. It's more socially appropriate for women to be indirectly aggressive, typically. And it's also less dangerous. So think about it this way. If you say to a buddy, you know, you're fighting and you take a swing at him, you're probably going to hold your own at worst. You personally, I mean, you're a big guy, you know, you're going to hold. Hold your own at worst. If a woman takes a swing at her guy friend in anger, that's very dangerous. And so as a result, women tend to use passive aggression or indirect aggression a bit more simply because it's a. It's a safer outlet. And I think, you know, this is not my area of specialization, but I think there's some evidence that shows that when women are dealing with other women, they're a lot more likely to be aggressive, aggressive than to be than if they were dealing with men.

A (78:17)

Because the potential physical repercussion coming back to them, given that they're more fragile and more valuable evolutionarily, they're less likely. They're less likely to have lethal force be applied because the imbalance just isn't there.

B (78:29)

Correct. I'd have to go back and check on that.

A (78:31)

I'm almost makes total sense. I mean, female intrasexual competition is the least popular on the Internet. Most fascinating. It's got the biggest disparity between how much you're allowed to talk about it, how little you're allowed to talk about it, and how fascinating it is to study.

B (78:50)

Right.

A (78:50)

It is fucking endlessly interesting. Joyce Benenson's the Candice Blakes, the Corey Clarks, the fucking Christina Durantes, the Tracy Vinecores with mean girl. Like, all of this stuff is so fucking sick. I remember Rob Henderson taught me this story. Maybe it was bus. A woman had been kidnapped by an Amazonian tribe while she was on a tour. And she'd been taken into the local tribe after she'd been sort of taken from her touring group. And when she was there, a little boy had come up and given her a little parcel. Given her a parcel that had some food in it and. No, sorry. One of the women had come up. Yeah, one of the boys had come up, given her a parcel that had some food in it. And it was, you can eat this. And she smelled it and it sort of smelled bad, so she didn't want to. And then she went and sort of laid it down somewhere and didn't bother eating it. And then a little bit later in the day, one of the kids fell super ill. And when asked, what's happened? Why are you ill? She said, oh, that woman put this thing down near me and I went over and ate it. And they chased her through the jungle. You've just tried to poison one of these children. What it turned out had happened was that some of the other women had given the parcel to a child to give to her, knowing that she would either eat it and get sick or put it down. And then they could accuse her of being.

B (80:21)

And I'm like, it's a trap.

A (80:22)

Do you understand just how stupid the male equivalent of that would be? Like, if it was a guy that had come in and the guys didn't like him, they would have like, man, take rock.

B (80:36)

That's literally what I was gonna say.

A (80:37)

Man throw rock at right? Like. And there's this seven step inception thing. Christopher Nolan's designed it. You know, it's got redundancies built in. If she doesn't do it, she'll give it to someone and then it'll hurt them. And then we can say that she. I'm like, oh, I am so glad that I'm not a woman. I'm endlessly glad that I'm not a woman. For that reason, I could not navigate that situation at all well.

B (81:00)

And I, I was shocked. So I made, I think I've made one or two posts on intersexual competition recently and I thought people might find it to be mildly interesting. I find it to be very interesting. You know, that's one of the things we studied in, in grad school a bit. And I made this post and I started taking shots from all over the place. It's like, what, you guys have a problem with this? I thought it was just as well accepted principle. That's why I almost didn't post about it. I'm out of town. I don't know what people don't know and apparently A, people don't know about this and B, when they find out, they get real mad.

A (81:37)

There are hidden third rails. I got in trouble a little while ago for a conversation I had about birth rate decline. Talking about birth rate decline to me is so overdone. It's almost like a comedian doing a trans joke. It's hacky. Do you know, it's what I was interested in six years ago and it's still a big problem now or whatever.

B (81:56)

I'm like, it's.

A (81:57)

Is this not just completely accepted to the point where talking about it is hacky. And it's kind of. This broke out into the real Internet. It broke out of the sort of wisdomverse stuff that I typically do. And I was like, oh wow, this is not only not hacky, this is unspeakably beyond the Overton window to a huge group of people who. They don't have any context about where I'm coming from, about the fact that I do this unnecessarily arduous throat clearing land acknowledgement about. We must remember that we're not trying to get women out of the boardroom and back into the bedroom. We have to remember that we don't wanna row back women's rights and birth control and da da da da da da da. And now that we've said that, allow me to talk about how the only data that we have from the WHO or from census is the total fertility per woman. Like we don't have the data around men. So whenever we're talking about this, we're talking about women. I go on Tucker Carlson's podcast and I was accused of being riddled with feminist lies and infected with blue pilled thinking. And then I went and had another conversation a month later and was accused of being a right wing misogynist. I'm like, hey guys, if I can say the same shit in two different places and be unspeakably on the wrong side in opposite directions. And that's the intrasexual competition thing. But the best argument, and this is another Rob Henderson one, when he sort of pushes back against people who say, have skepticism around female intrasexual competition being as powerful as we say it is, the opposite of that is that women are non agentic. Oh, so what you're saying is that women don't have the ability to coerce or cajole or, or manipulate their way through the world, so they're just sort of passive recipients of whatever other people. And if it's all women, that's men. Men just do stuff and women are the recipient. No. Okay, that doesn't seem like a particularly empowering perspective. And also to any woman, that's obviously not how you go through the world or how you would want your daughters to go through the world. You would want them to be able to take control of their future. And if you deny the fact that they have control, that they can use intrasexual competition and mate guarding and status seeking and all of these things, if you deny that they can use that, what you're basically saying is that whichever direction the wind doth blow there they will be blown. It's very disempowering. And I think when you unveil, when you sort of pull the rug off a little bit and you go, I'm aware that there are lots of people on the Internet that say, fucking awful. They couch misogyny in science in a desperate attempt to try and make women feel bad. I'm just saying you've pattern matched this one incorrectly when you sort of reveal. You do see how there's subtle misogyny coming from the other side of the, like your side of the fence here by saying women are passive victims or implicitly derogating motherhood because you say that it's something that some women aspire to do and that taking that away from them might be a bad thing. It's like, okay, so you're saying that women are second class mothers are second class citizens. Well, no, obviously I'm not. It's okay. Well again, hidden in some of the presuppositions are kind of like thinly veiled misogynistic assumptions from your side. It's not coming from here. So, yeah, I feel you on the intrasexual competition thing.

B (85:21)

Well, and that's what's been so interesting to me because I've only been on social media about a year. I did not want to be here, to be honest with you. I love it now. I'm having such a good time. I love it. Did not want to join this circus. That being said, I've learned a bunch of things and one thing that's been really interesting to me is how you could be vilified kind of on both sides, just like what you're saying for the same thing. So I've been called a cuck thousand times, and then I get called a red pill incel a thousand times. And I'm neither of those things, to be honest with you. It should be clear that I'm just trying to call balls and strikes. And people don't like that. They don't like to be told that their favorite thing is wrong, even if it's very wrong. And they give. It becomes very personal. So, you know, I found, like you said, there are these. There's many rails, there's a third rail, there's a fourth rail. You know, it's like, I didn't know that was there. Oh, I didn't know that was there. And probably there's something tomorrow that I'll post same thing. Oops. Did not know that was such an electric issue.

A (86:30)

Yeah. I discovered, at least in the first couple of months of 2026, that the basement had a cellar. And in the cellar there was a fucking trapdoor. And it just kept on. It just kept on going.

B (86:41)

And I was like, oh, this is lower and lower.

A (86:42)

It was just interesting. It's really fucking fascinating. But ultimately, uncomfortable truths will always win against comforting lies. Just given enough time, you know. How many things were people right about long ago? Whether it's a year or six months or 10 years ago. And then it comes. Being right but early is uncomfortable. But as long as you have your sort of stick with it muscle, I think you end up being redeemed in the end. So we said there about the sort of difficulty, I suppose, in men and women's communication. What have you learned about healthy and unhealthy communication? How do you suggest that people go about doing that better within their relationships?

B (87:32)

There are absolutely things that you can do, skills that you can develop over time. Being open, being honest. Knowing though how much is oversharing is an additional skill. You don't have to say everything that pops into your head. And in fact if you do, that probably is not going to be viewed positively, you know, and so that just takes practice and it takes feedback. And that, that's part of the trouble is people are very afraid partly because of what can happen on social media. If I say the wrong thing, I'm canceled. And for, you know, you reach a certain point where that affects your career. But I think for everyday people who, you know, have stopped posting on Instagram or on Facebook or whatever, there's too much risk. Because what's the benefit if you post something and then you get ganged up on by literally 3 million people for what? The opportunity to get 15 likes from the couple of friends that happen to see your post. So that trade off, it's quite problematic. And so people are disconnected in real life so they don't get a lot of opportunities for feedback. Is this over sharing? Is this a good idea to say this kind of thing? And then they don't post online either. So it's like the opposite of an echo chamber where you don't say anything and so you don't have the opportunity to learn was this good communication or not?

A (88:54)

That's so good. And I guess you never get to learn whether your assumptions should be corrected because you don't ever put yours out there, right?

B (89:02)

And you just hear because of your algorithm that you curate yourself, you just hear the same old stuff, you get that that's where the echo chamber comes in. And so you never said, you know, you don't go to class as a 16 year old in high school and say, you know, I think women are great. And you find out like, women like to hear that. And so instead you just have these thoughts that echo around in your head. But you, you curate a very peculiar algorithm that's very specific to you and you hear these guys typically who are feeding you things and I don't know, are those good or bad? It really depends on what you're liking, what you're commenting on, what you're watching longer. And I'm not anti media at all, but it does create problems. There are certainly trade offs and one of them is that people don't interact as much and have an opportunity for learning and feedback.

A (89:56)

That fear of speaking up, of if I say something, I say something wrong, I do think that that probably entrenches people's opinions more than if they were actually allowed to spew what is wrong. Because there was a great study that was done a while ago, sort of comparing erroneous beliefs that each side had about the other, left and right. And it was the percentage of right wing people who think that left wing people are trans. Are the people the percentage of left wing people who think that right wing people don't want there to be any birth control. And there is just so much more. The Venn diagram is actually basically two circles with a couple of bits out on the wings. Most people agreed with most things. Most people, most people on the right wanted some safe gun control. Most people on the left wanted some strong military. And you end up with. If the Venn diagrams never cross over because people stay in their echo chambers, or if people never speak up, they never get to engage in dialogue in a meaningful way with somebody else. And you're right, the pattern matching, like the speed of fucking pattern matching on the Internet of you. Who are these men to talk about women's issues?

B (91:14)

Like why men need to.

A (91:15)

Men need to stay in their place. Who are they to speak about women's issues? He said, well, the issue that you have is not about men speaking about women's issues. The issue you have is that men are speaking about women's issues from the perspective that you don't agree with. Because if they were saying the thing that you agreed with, you would be completely happy. And there is a cohort of women out there who are happy that they're saying it, because that's their opinion. And also if you were to say, who are these men to talk about women's issues? Okay, so only if I'm from the group that I'm talking about am I allowed to speak on their issues. So that means that gay rights are fucked because I'm not gay. And I'm afraid that the soldiers on the front lines of the Ukraine war, I'm not Ukrainian or Russian, so I have nothing to contribute there. Palestine, that's also ruined. I'm not a dog. So the RSPCA is. I'm not a child. So the nspcc, that's gone. I'm not a whale. So the Save the Whales project, that's also fucked up. Like you there. Is it? Because people are so quick to find an enemy on the Internet and say, you are the guy that's doing this wrong and I know your true intentions, right? Because the total number of reasonable people that exist on the Internet is getting squished down to like five.

B (92:35)

Like, they're not the ones who comment. You know, they don't care. They like the post, or they watch it and they move on. But the ones who comment are the people who are angry, typically, or the people who are your biggest supporters. And so in the comment sections, you

A (92:47)

see those two edges.

B (92:49)

Polarity, right? Exactly.

A (92:50)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the problem with that is that it causes people to dig their heels in more. Like, you see this, you see this with people who are real passionate about climate change. They think climate change is super important, so they plant this flag in the ground and they say this is important, and nobody listens. Or maybe people mock them or people say that they shouldn't be doing it, so they shout louder because people aren't listening. So what do you do when someone's not listening? You make the signal greater, you make the amplitude greater, and people still not listening, so they go louder. And then eventually the first that somebody sees of you, well meaning calm climate campaigner person 10 years ago, is you gluing yourself to the M25 in London because you're shouting so loudly now that Superglue is the only vehicle through which you can get your message across. And this is where I think I've managed to go through the entirety of 1060 episodes without sort of actively calling anybody out. Because for me, this game of fucking paddle that you play, where it just increases the size of the ball and the velocity each time that you hit it, I don't think that that's particularly. I don't think that's particularly constructive.

B (94:03)

It's definitely not productive. No, no. And I think it is a really admirable thing to call out ideas rather than calling out people, because ideas can be wrong, ideas can be debated, people can be wrong, and people can be debated. But so often it turns personal. And it's like you are the type of person who. And that is where the conversation ceases to be a conversation anymore. It's just people yelling at each other.

A (94:28)

Well, they're not. You're no longer discussing the idea and this person. Allow me. Max, I appreciate that you've got this perspective on. Of a literary shift, but I think that you're mistaken here. As opposed to. We really know what you mean. We know what you mean by that. And it's that you're saying that you've lost all credibility.

B (94:49)

We know you're the type of person who.

A (94:52)

Exactly. And it's like, no. And there are lots and lots of people out there for whom that is true. And the more again, you were talking about it before, sort of the open, honest communication. Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be lovely for more people to do fuck me. Wouldn't that be lovely for the Internet to do? Like, that would be so great if people just said what they meant. I remember I saw this tweet a while ago that was breaking down the fact that passive aggression and sort of sardonic standoffish language is. Is the language of Twitter. And it's that you see some. Two people going back and forth, trading insults or whatever, and one person goes, lol, when what they actually mean is fuck you. But no one ever says fuck you because that would show that you got to me or that you crossed a line. So everybody's in this weird, like, Christopher Hitchens sardonic, sarcastic ivory tower thing where they're doing this cooler than cool as a. Because nobody actually wants to show their true colors on the Internet. And that means that if you do, somebody doesn't take your message for what it is. They take your message as the shadow of the thing that you really meant to say. Whoa, whoa. If that's what he's saying publicly, imagine what he's saying privately. Like, the same thing, saying the same thing. But I'm aware that that's a rarity online.

B (96:11)

Well, and the other part of that is sometimes you do and you say things you might regret in the heat of the moment, and then that gets screenshotted and save forever. And now you are that guy that did that one thing. And that. I think that limits people's Even attempts to communicate for good and for bad. But that shuts. I think that shuts down the average person as well. And it also. It inhibits people from playing with ideas and from speaking freely. Because you just. I think about it every day, to be honest with you. It's like every day I wake up as today, the day that I. You know, this post that I have scheduled is the one that gets me. That does me in. And so I check every day, you know, it's like, okay, oh, no, it's fine. Don't worry.

A (96:55)

My digital ghost of me is still alive. Fantastic.

B (96:59)

Right? Right. No, Exactly. And so I would probably say some. Not that I would say crazy things, but I'd be a lot more playful. I would try things out.

A (97:08)

And

B (97:11)

so that's kind of problematic just for society in that we are becoming much more pigeonholed and we're pigeonholing ourselves in our lane, whatever that might be. And there's not as much crossover, there's not as much creativity. There are some benefits for people not saying crazy things. Don't get me Wrong.

A (97:29)

Because there's pressure from the outside that if you do say something that's beyond the pale, you'll get found out for it.

B (97:34)

Right. And so it's not all bad, but it's certainly not all good either.

A (97:40)

It's the least possible gracious interpretation of anything that anybody's said.

B (97:48)

Yeah. And I have to convince myself to do that in my daily life. Not even on the Internet. But, you know, I get this email and I'm like, okay, I don't like that. And so in my head it's okay. But what is the most possible gracious interpretation of this? And often it's like, well, maybe they're having a bad day and they didn't actually mean to phrase it that way. And I certainly have bad days and send the wrong wording. So why can't I extend that possibility to other people as well? Well, it takes extra effort and sometimes that's the simple reason why we don't do that. But I really, I do, personally, I try to make an effort to do that because so often our mind leaps to they hate me. That's why they did that.

A (98:28)

They're a bad person.

B (98:29)

They're a bad person.

A (98:30)

Yeah. This sort of reductive, two dimensional view. Dr. Max Butterfield, ladies and gentlemen. Max, you fucking rule, dude. Thank you. What can I do? Have a think. If there's anything that I can do, if there's any intros you need or signal boosts that you need, you've got me for whatever it is that you want.

B (98:49)

Oh, man.

A (98:50)

Within reason.

B (98:51)

Yeah, no, of course. I really appreciate it. Right now I'm trying to grow my email list. Drmaxbutterfield.com Just put your email in there. And I've got big plans. Some I can't really talk about publicly yet. You kind of know how that goes. I've got some things in the works. So sign up for the email list and find out what that secret is.

A (99:13)

Heck yeah, dude. I want to fly you out to Austin as soon as I've got this new studio done. I need to get you in. We need to sit down and talk more. So once that's ready, I'd love to bring you out. Everyone should follow you on Instagram as well. What's your IG?

B (99:26)

Dr. Max Butterfield.

A (99:27)

Dude, you're great. I'm looking forward to seeing what you make.

B (99:30)

Awesome. Thank you so much. It was a blast. This was a great conversation.

A (99:34)

Yeah. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom reading list. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life changing and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now for free by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.