Order of Man - ADAM LANE SMITH ｜ How Men and Women Cause Each Other Pain

00:00:00.000 Why can't women just understand men? And why can't men just understand women?

00:00:05.900 The short answer is we're not really supposed to. If we were, we wouldn't really have any need for

00:00:11.620 each other, would we? My guest today, Adam Lane-Smith, has made it his life's work to get

00:00:16.220 closer to helping men understand women and, more importantly, help us understand our own natural

00:00:22.040 tendencies in relationships. Today, Adam and I talk about emotional starvation, the concept of

00:00:28.840 CEO, COO between men and women, the quote-unquote red flags that your marriage is struggling,

00:00:36.120 what men and women do to cause each other pain, and how men can lead in their relationships

00:00:41.180 much more effectively. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears

00:00:47.000 and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:53.140 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is

00:01:00.140 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:01:05.840 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, welcome to the Order Man podcast. My name is Ryan Michler.

00:01:13.320 I'm your host and the founder, and we've got incredible guests. We do an Ask Me Anything each

00:01:17.980 week, and then you get to hear from me on Friday on whatever topic. Last week, we talked about

00:01:23.980 hunting. We're going to talk about the dynamics between men and women, how to get physically

00:01:28.800 strong, how to overcome the cultural dynamics that are keeping us from the things that we want to

00:01:34.960 accomplish, and so much more. So first and foremost, please make sure that you subscribe,

00:01:41.020 leave your rating and review. We're blown up over on Spotify. I was looking at some statistics just

00:01:46.860 the other day, and it is mind-blowing how much it is growing over there, and on YouTube as well.

00:01:53.700 Almost 400,000 subscribers on YouTube. So we're doing big things. We're growing. We're moving,

00:02:00.700 and we're making big moves. So please be part of that. Share with a brother, a cousin, a father,

00:02:06.740 an uncle, a coworker, a neighbor, a friend, whoever, any man that you know who needs to hear the message

00:02:13.180 of reclaiming and restoring masculinity. I've got a very good conversation with somebody who's very

00:02:19.080 close to me. His name is Adam Lane Smith. We talk about the dynamics between men and women. Before

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00:03:09.220 I got a question the other day from somebody who said, why do you carry a knife every day? Are you

00:03:13.940 trying to stab people? And I think they were serious. It's not my goal to stab people every day,

00:03:20.000 which is what I told her. It's my goal to have a tool that I need. And if you need a good tool

00:03:25.760 for a knife, go over to Montana Knife Company. Check them out, montananifecompany.com. Use the

00:03:33.600 code ORDEROFMAN to save some money. All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. His name

00:03:38.960 is Adam Lane-Smith. He is a renowned attachment specialist. He's an author. He's a speaker. He's

00:03:45.020 dedicated to helping men become stronger in their relationships. He's got years and years of

00:03:51.460 experience as a therapist. He works with individuals, couples, organizations, but he's

00:03:57.920 really developed a reputation for making these complex scientific attachment principles into

00:04:08.160 very simple, actionable steps that we as men can use. And that's why I appreciate him most. He's got a

00:04:16.240 very straightforward, no-nonsense approach. You're going to hear that in the podcast today to overcome

00:04:21.780 anxiety, build trust with your significant other, and create a lot of meaningful bonds. He's the host

00:04:30.800 of very powerful conversations. He's the author of multiple books, but he's got a very diverse and

00:04:38.800 rich background in research, but also a lot of powerful storytelling. Again, you're going to hear that

00:04:45.660 in the podcast today. So whether he's guiding somebody through the aftermath of divorce or

00:04:53.020 showing them how to build powerful confidence and connection, his mission is very clear. He wants to

00:05:00.080 help people connect deeply, live authentically. And on today's podcast, he shares his expertise on

00:05:07.560 attachment, communication, and the habits that lead to stronger connections.

00:05:12.320 Adam, so good to see you, man. You actually look like a new man. I mean, I can see it in the way

00:05:21.000 that you hold yourself, your demeanor. I got to imagine you're feeling pretty good about your

00:05:26.960 fitness and your health journey over the past several months, maybe even years at this point now.

00:05:31.640 Thank you for that. It's funny when a man finds his purpose and then chases it, everything else just

00:05:37.200 lines up perfectly with it. When you got five kids to chase a business and you got all these people to

00:05:41.880 help, man. It's making me want to live a lot longer. So now I've got to act like I want to live a lot

00:05:46.060 longer, which is good for me too. What is, what would you say is your purpose? You know, you've got

00:05:51.600 five kids, you've got a business. I mean, a lot of guys listening to this have so many different

00:05:56.460 things, so many different irons in the fire, so to speak. And it's hard to come up with one singular

00:06:02.260 purpose. Do you think you found it? Three. I got three things that grab me and drag me out of bed

00:06:07.620 every morning. One is to build a thriving family system for the next 200 years. It's going to

00:06:12.640 outlive me where the individuals are served by the family, but the family is also served by the

00:06:17.580 individuals. It's where everybody has someone they can trust and rely on because nobody has that in

00:06:22.260 this world anymore. So number one is to build a 200 year family system. Number two is to fix secure

00:06:28.900 attachment in 1 billion people around the world. So a billion people in the world, their lives have to be

00:06:34.480 changed by me or my team or the ripples and everything, but a billion people with secure

00:06:38.540 attachment. Right now, the research shows only 33% of American adults are securely attached.

00:06:43.580 We're going in the wrong direction. I need to fix that. So 1 billion, by the time I die someday,

00:06:48.980 a billion fixed, 1 billion served. And number three is to live fully in alignment with my religious

00:06:54.220 beliefs and be pleasing to God. Those are my three purposes in this life. They're going to carry me

00:06:58.900 right up to the last breath I have. That's what drags me out of bed every day.

00:07:02.580 Well, if you're going to impact 1 billion people, then I can see why it's important that you live a

00:07:08.360 whole lot longer because it's going to take some time, uh, not, not to, you know, be the downer by

00:07:13.740 any means, but it takes a lot of time to impact that amount of people.

00:07:17.800 Yes. And I, I relish the challenge. I'm looking forward to it.

00:07:22.340 I know you do. I know you do. We've been, uh, following each other and connected for some time now.

00:07:26.740 Uh, you reached out to me, what, a couple of months ago now you've been on the podcast before

00:07:32.840 and I loved our conversation and it got a lot of great attention from guys. Uh, you reached out to

00:07:38.180 me specifically after I did a podcast with Orion Taraban and, uh, man talk about, uh, a hot, not

00:07:46.820 only a high quality conversation, but a very polarizing one. I'm very curious about your timing

00:07:52.400 and reaching out after that conversation. Yeah. I've, I've, uh, had the privilege of speaking

00:07:57.480 with Orion as well on my podcast. Uh, I went and talked to his group. I think he's wonderful

00:08:01.880 and I actually think he's quite brilliant, but there's a challenge there that we really have

00:08:07.340 to dissect. There are two separate worlds right now. There's two different segregated groups of

00:08:13.340 people and it's not the have and the have nots. It's people who live in a securely attached world

00:08:18.780 based on honor, based on principles and morality and goals. People who actually do what they say,

00:08:26.200 who are ethically balanced. And the other side of people who are insecurely attached,

00:08:30.720 which we now we know is 67% of people growing upward through the generations. Um, they live in

00:08:37.240 fear. They live in emotions. Everything is catered to how they feel for the next five seconds. It's

00:08:43.020 their left, their right side, emotional brain, their limbic system, their amygdala. It's a malformed

00:08:47.780 prefrontal cortex. The brain actually didn't form properly, uh, for a variety of reasons to try to

00:08:53.060 deal with it. And that group lives in a different kind of world. I think Orion's ideas for that

00:08:58.600 population make 100% sense. And a lot of ideas that he brings out is the survival or at the value

00:09:05.880 of others. He has a great book, but talking about those transactional structures make perfect sense

00:09:10.780 over here. And it begins to build a safer system here that people at least can predict.

00:09:15.100 I think that what's missing is the second group that he, maybe he hasn't seen. I don't know.

00:09:20.180 Maybe he's not a part of most people are not, but this second group over here, it's not exactly the

00:09:25.800 same. And his ideas won't translate to that. That's why some of his ideas, they feel a little bit,

00:09:32.180 I don't want to say soulless. I know he's not bad, but they, they feel like it is so transactional

00:09:38.160 and dry and lacking sentiment and lacking that human touch that it's a bit dehumanizing in some

00:09:45.040 aspects. Again, I say that with all respect to Ryan, if you're listening right now, but

00:09:48.240 it's because only one third of people live in this world. He's speaking to the larger population over

00:09:55.300 here of people who need help. I think that's what he's doing.

00:09:57.600 I think that's really fair. I had the privilege of interviewing years ago, Dave Ramsey, and I called

00:10:04.380 Dave Ramsey out in person. And I said to him, you know, your advice is great for these people,

00:10:10.300 but this isn't what you did to build wealth. You built a business, you built real estate,

00:10:14.760 you didn't eat beans and rice. And he said, he, to his credit, he said, you know what? You're right.

00:10:19.840 But I know who my audience is. And, and I think that that makes total sense when you describe it

00:10:26.480 like that, because there was a large percentage of people who felt that it was, like you said,

00:10:32.240 maybe a little soulless, a lot transactional. In fact, I'm dating a beautiful woman. We've been

00:10:39.040 together for about three months now. And we actually read this book, listen to this book together.

00:10:45.500 And we liked a lot of the content that he shared, but we both came away with it thinking, yep,

00:10:51.540 very transactional, very one-sided. And we weren't quite sure why it didn't fully resonate

00:10:56.680 with us. Although we could agree with the principles.

00:10:59.660 I'll tell you why he, he and I are on different paths. He is teaching people in this insecurely

00:11:05.280 attached area, how to be safe men and women, how to be safe in this insecurely attached pool

00:11:10.840 where people are using each other. They're manipulating, they're faking, they're, they're

00:11:15.620 using emotions as currency. He's teaching you how to be safe in that pool. That's not what

00:11:21.420 I'm doing. I'm trying to get these people to switch and become securely attached and use

00:11:26.220 this system instead. So I fully agree with him. If this was the totality of the world,

00:11:31.380 I disagree in the areas where I believe this is possible and that we can shift people here.

00:11:36.560 So I don't think he and I are at odds, but, but this is where I want people to go. I don't,

00:11:41.080 I don't want to teach them to just live here. I want to teach them to come live here appropriately.

00:11:45.460 And that's probably what, what doesn't, doesn't resonate with you is you and I see this world

00:11:50.020 and say, let's get people here. He's saying, this is where we live. Let's take care of people

00:11:55.960 here. I think that's the divide. You and I see this. Okay. So I would agree largely with that.

00:12:02.880 And, and so my question is at, at a baseline in order to elevate to this level you're talking

00:12:10.720 about, is it a prerequisite that both men and women feel safe with who they are as individuals

00:12:18.420 and who they are with partners? Like, is that the baseline? And then once that safety objective

00:12:23.980 is met, then we can start elevating the relationship or our conversations or our relationship,

00:12:30.160 et cetera. Safety is definitely a prerequisite. I look at the works of Abraham Maslow and he's got

00:12:35.520 his pyramid of five needs at the bottom is food, water, and shelter. Maslow. Yeah. Maslow's needs

00:12:40.640 at the bottom is food, water, and shelter above that is safety, physical safety. No one's going

00:12:45.780 to come kill me. The third level above that is belonging. And that that's really an, an emotional

00:12:51.260 safety that really gets tagged in. Very few of us in America, very few, not none, but, but less

00:12:57.160 have, have water and shelter safety for the day that we're afraid of, right? We're, we're good

00:13:02.780 there most of the time. Um, some people still struggle. Level two is that physical safety

00:13:07.520 sense, right? Am I physically safe? But that level three is where a lot of attachment issues

00:13:11.640 come in is what I deal with of, I don't belong anywhere. If you have anxious attachment, you

00:13:16.640 believe that there's something wrong with you on the inside that no one will ever love.

00:13:20.440 So the problem is you. So everywhere you go, you'll never be accepted. So you can never

00:13:25.860 leave this pool because you are the problem. And for avoidantly attached people, they believe

00:13:31.120 other people are the issue. They only believe in this world. They don't believe there is

00:13:35.520 a securely attached world. They believe everyone is governed by their emotions. Everybody is

00:13:40.180 somehow inherently selfish and I have to keep myself safe. And there's different variations

00:13:44.560 of that and, and, uh, different manipulative levels of that. But that's the avoidance style

00:13:49.840 of survival at all costs against the world. They live over here. You and I are living over

00:13:55.960 here in the emotional safety capacity. I can have meaningful conversations. I can disagree.

00:14:01.380 I can disagree with Orion live on air knowing he's probably going to come talk to me about

00:14:05.060 it and say, Adam, what the heck, right? And we'll have a great conversation. Um, I can disagree

00:14:09.020 with my wife. I can push back on my business partner. We can have conversations and that

00:14:13.320 begins a conversation. It doesn't end a relationship over here. Disagreeing and friction ends relationships

00:14:20.160 and causes pain and agony. Those are childhood wounds. They're still carrying, which makes

00:14:25.040 it impossible to move over here into long-term bonded relationships where like you said, we

00:14:30.500 have emotional safety. We can have discussions. We can open up and be transparent. This world

00:14:35.600 is only possible with that level of safety.

00:14:37.700 I think the way you described it, just, it was a revelation in a way for me, um, just

00:14:43.420 in the, in the past 20 seconds, cause you said it so succinctly. And here's how I'm going

00:14:48.520 to paraphrase. Tell me if I'm misunderstood. Anxious attachment is really about me being a

00:14:55.620 problem. Avoidant attachment is everybody else around me is the problem. Did I pick that

00:15:02.480 up correctly? Yep. Correct. That's interesting. What is, what does safety in a relationship

00:15:08.900 look like? I mean, obviously we can say, I feel like I'm not going to get violently attacked

00:15:14.660 or murdered, but I don't, I mean, that's sure it is. And I, and I think that's like the baseline

00:15:21.340 I would hope. Um, I know people get into abusive, physically abusive relationships, so maybe it's

00:15:27.260 not met, but what else does safety actually represent something that's probably a little

00:15:32.460 bit more harder to grasp than he beats me. Yeah. Um, well, do we want to talk about safety

00:15:38.280 for men or safety for women? Cause we're going to look different things. Let's, let's talk

00:15:43.040 about, okay. So let's talk, let's talk about both, but let's address safety for men first.

00:15:50.460 Let's talk about safety for men first. A hundred percent. And your audience is mostly men and

00:15:55.040 they're tough dudes. They're, they're survivalists or alpha dudes probably. Right. Um, they probably

00:15:59.880 will get nauseous at the idea of, of the idea of safety because most of them have never felt

00:16:04.640 safe in their lives. The male nervous system is not really designed to prioritize safety.

00:16:08.780 We're designed to build a perimeter of safety for others and then go out from that perimeter

00:16:13.700 to harvest resources and gather them through stress, pain, and agony. And we, safety is not

00:16:19.380 really a thing for us. We don't even really value it that much. Uh, now we value something

00:16:23.900 that is basically the same and it feels the same in our nervous systems, but it's described

00:16:28.520 differently. We call it peace for men. Safety is a sense of peace. I come home. I locked

00:16:34.360 my door. I take my armor off. I cleaned my wounds. No one at home is going to add to my

00:16:39.420 wounds. No one is going to hurt me. So emotional safety for a man means I can say what I need

00:16:44.780 to. And my wife won't make my life harder. She's not going to come at me like an angry, vengeful

00:16:49.480 spirit out of the darkness and stab me. She's not going to be barking at me. She's going

00:16:53.260 to be sexually loyal to me. She's not going to betray me in that way. Uh, she's going

00:16:56.980 to meet my needs and care for me when I come home. This is still safety. Women would describe

00:17:02.140 it as safety, but again, to us, our nervous systems, we would call this peace. We get

00:17:06.660 peace from her. And in that we find safety.

00:17:10.460 Hmm. I've got a big group of, of men that we work with on a, on a daily basis at this point

00:17:16.660 now. And we've, we've substituted, uh, the word safety for security. And that might be

00:17:24.840 just, um, uh, a semantical difference. Uh, but I like security because it doesn't mean

00:17:32.020 the absence of risk. It means that we're capable of handling whatever might come our way. What

00:17:37.920 do you think about that?

00:17:38.420 And that's the masculine perspective. The masculine perspective is look, risk is normal. We go

00:17:42.720 seek it out on purpose. We have to hunter gatherer style. Our ancestors had to the man

00:17:48.020 who didn't starve to death or everybody laughed at him and then beat him to death. So the men

00:17:52.380 who go out and face danger, those are the men. So we don't, we don't look for safety. Women

00:17:56.940 need safety because if they don't have safety, it actually disrupts their fertility. It disrupts

00:18:02.940 their hormones. It disrupts their neurotransmitters. It diminishes their capacity to give to their

00:18:07.220 children. It diminishes milk capacity to even feed newborns. They need safety.

00:18:12.160 As a balance point. Yeah. Ask me sometime about the link between breastfeeding and attachment

00:18:17.280 issues. We'll talk about that. And I mean, in mothers, not in children. Um, that's a fascinating

00:18:21.900 conversation to have someday, but women need safety for stability and, and, and comfort so

00:18:29.160 that they have optimization inside that safety. Men draw perimeters and build, we build security

00:18:34.940 and we want security and peace. That's the difference. But I'll be honest with you. It feels about

00:18:39.980 the same inside our nervous systems. Yeah. Yeah. I could see how that would be the case.

00:18:45.360 Um, I want to get into the women's perspective here and we will, but if a man is not feeling

00:18:51.740 safe or secure or at peace, we're using these as synonyms. I understand. And everybody listening

00:18:57.960 is capable of discernment. Okay. So pick your word of choice. You get what we're saying. If

00:19:02.800 a man is not feeling that in a relationship, how does he communicate that to his woman without

00:19:10.500 feeling weak and pathetic? Because I've felt that way. And I know a lot of other men feel

00:19:16.500 that way because we're not supposed to complain. We're not supposed to talk about these things.

00:19:21.140 We're supposed to shoulder it, deal with it and drive on. Yep. So first of all, woman is

00:19:26.400 not the answer to your problems. That's what I'm going to say to the men out there listening

00:19:29.400 right now. You don't start feeling secure with your woman. That's not how this game

00:19:33.540 works. Remember that in childhood, you had your mother and your father and they were supposed

00:19:37.560 to train you on how relationships work. I have a nine year old son just today. I was teaching

00:19:43.180 him how to talk with his mother and integrate with her, disagree with her, validate, and then

00:19:48.160 work together on a compromise. I taught him and she was patient and she worked with him

00:19:52.040 and I trained him into how to negotiate peacefully with a woman right there. And he was, he loved

00:19:57.680 it every moment of it. I trained him. Now, fathers are supposed to be doing this. Mothers are supposed

00:20:02.620 to be doing this. When a kid says, I want to do X, you don't say, no, screw you. You say, hey,

00:20:08.240 you know what? That's something we could do. Here's what we can do to get there together.

00:20:11.860 I want ice cream. Well, not right now, but here's what we can do to earn that ice cream. Here's what

00:20:16.260 we can do on Friday ice cream day. You work with them. They need to learn that relationships are not

00:20:21.440 going to be arbitrary, controlling, domineering, hurtful, painful. They need to learn that people will

00:20:26.400 work with them. So number one, if you didn't get that from your parents, guys listening, don't be

00:20:30.740 ashamed that you don't know what to do. Your nervous system was programmed to survive either

00:20:36.160 by knuckling under and pleasing other people or by taking control, being lone wolf kind of guy off on

00:20:41.820 your own. So number one, that's where you start. Number two, I'm a fan of Jack Donovan's work,

00:20:47.080 his book, The Way of Men. In it, he says, the way of the man is the way of the gang. Men are supposed to

00:20:52.300 build security with other men. We can build a perimeter, but you sleep someday. You have to

00:20:56.640 sleep at some point, and that's where the wolves and the tigers come eat you. So the way of a man

00:21:01.260 is not to be secure or connected unless you have that bond of brotherhood, that gang. In Iceland,

00:21:08.140 they have an old proverb, a bear is the back of a brotherless man. And that's true. Your back is

00:21:12.900 naked if you don't have a reliable connection. So you need your family unit. And failing that,

00:21:17.800 you need a bond of men, your gang, your connection around you, where you have proper bonds with them

00:21:23.800 and you can say what you need to. You can push back on them. You can test with them. You could

00:21:28.180 test boundaries. You can disagree. You can even have fights and then reconnect and you solve problems.

00:21:33.780 After you've built that, you come to your woman and you say, here is where I am right now. Here's

00:21:40.700 where my heart is. Here's my desires. Here's my thoughts. Here's my concerns. Let's work on these

00:21:45.600 together as a team and be productive. That's how you start building emotional safety with a woman.

00:21:50.760 And if she will do that with you, then you have a good match. If she will not do that with you,

00:21:56.180 you have a serious problem. What would you say to men who have been married for 10, 15, 20 years who

00:22:05.480 are listening to this conversation right now and they're thinking, well, I would love to do this.

00:22:09.120 I've got a band of brothers. I feel good in who I am. You know, Rudyard Kipling, you talked about

00:22:14.800 Jack Donovan, who's a close personal friend. Rudyard Kipling says, the strength of the wolf

00:22:19.560 is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf. It's the same concept that we're talking

00:22:23.680 about. So a man's doing everything right. He's in a marriage over 10, 15 years and now he's wanting

00:22:30.760 to have this conversation, but he's realizing maybe the woman in my life who I've been with for

00:22:36.500 decades at this point is not on board to the degree that I would like them to now that I'm a more

00:22:41.040 mature man. It's very possible. So I literally wrote the book on this exhausted wives, bewildered

00:22:46.860 husbands right up there. Cause I was a marriage family therapist for many years, watching those

00:22:50.900 marriages get torn apart. What I see is if your wife has even the tiniest willingness to work with

00:22:57.400 you, even a scrap of willingness to work with you, it's solvable, but you have to number one,

00:23:03.620 anything you're doing that's causing pain on her side, you must stop. You have to stop because if

00:23:09.100 you've caused her continuous pain for 20 years and now you've decided to be a spouse to her,

00:23:14.280 you've got emotional starvation over there on that side that you haven't even figured out yet.

00:23:18.440 Okay. So stop the bleed, stop the bleed. And to do that, you need to go up, go to her and suck it up

00:23:23.960 and say, I don't know where I might be hurting you and I want to stop. So can you please, I will grit

00:23:30.440 my teeth and I promise you I will not blow up. Please tell me where I'm hurting you so I can build

00:23:35.700 plans to stop. And then you take that information in, you make yourself a servant, servant leadership

00:23:41.680 mentality. You are still the leader. You don't give her power, all of it. You say, show me where I'm

00:23:47.040 hurting you and I will build a plan to stop it. And as you do, you regain her trust. There's what we

00:23:52.560 call a cortisol association. Her brain associates you with cortisol, pain, stress, sadness, fear,

00:23:59.580 resentment. Her brain associates that with you. So when you walk in a room, she says, Oh God, not you.

00:24:04.280 Now there's something else that you need to do is number one, resolve the cortisol, stop

00:24:08.680 the cortisol and then resolve it. And as you do, there's another bonding hormone called

00:24:13.420 vasopressin that when we solve stress and pain with somebody, with them, we release

00:24:18.940 vasopressin, which says we are allies. Men have more receptors for this in our brains, but

00:24:23.720 women do have it. And your brain says, I like this person, keep them around. And that inspires

00:24:30.140 the softer bonding, oxytocin bonding, the intimacy bonding that inspires that. We have to do it

00:24:35.960 in this order. Stop the bleed, build the plan, follow through on the plan, start emotional

00:24:42.740 intimacy and bonding. And as you do that, you regrow your entire marriage. That's how you

00:24:47.560 become the leader that you need to be in your home. And don't, don't expect it to be pretty

00:24:51.720 and happy at the beginning. She probably, she might be angry and bitter. She might be. And

00:24:55.880 that's actually a test to see if you can weather that pain or if you blow up in her face. If

00:25:00.340 you blow up in her face, that's, it's done. She won't trust you again.

00:25:03.980 Well, and at a minimum, she's going to be skeptical. I mean, you've spent two decades

00:25:07.900 undermining the relationship and all of a sudden you say, Hey, I'm going to come here and save

00:25:11.860 the day. She's like, yeah, right. I know who you are. We'll see what you do. Have you read

00:25:17.880 the male brain? I think, I think the author's name is Luanne Brizantine or Brizantine, something

00:25:23.720 along those lines. And she talks a lot about cortisol, testosterone, vasopressin in these

00:25:30.160 other hormones that are released in both positive and negative times. Yeah. Interesting. Okay.

00:25:37.340 So in your experience, then you talk about men asking their significant others, how they've

00:25:45.440 hurt them. In what way specifically have you experienced in your practice and the work you

00:25:51.040 do now that are common that men often overlook in the ways in which they're hurting their

00:25:57.620 women? Oh, my son was doing it this morning. That's why I had to teach him. When, when the

00:26:03.300 woman says, this is what I'm feeling and the man goes, no, no, no, no, that's not how it

00:26:07.980 is. And he corrects her and tells her how it is and then sweeps it under the rug and says,

00:26:12.840 now there you go. Now you know the truth. Buzz off. We call this invalidating. Men get this

00:26:17.640 wrong. They think that validating a woman means saying, yes, babe, you're right. Uh-huh. No,

00:26:21.800 it doesn't even mean that. Validation means, okay, you're telling me you're hurt. I admit,

00:26:29.440 I don't understand, and I don't know that I even agree, but the fact that you're hurting

00:26:34.020 bothers me. What can, tell me more about where you're hurting and tell me what I can do to help

00:26:40.260 you stop hurting. That's called validation. I care that you're hurting instead of, no, no,

00:26:46.280 no, no, no, you're not. Invalidating dismissing. Uh, the new term for this is gaslighting,

00:26:51.980 which is not accurate. Gaslighting is something completely different. This is simply dismissal.

00:26:56.280 This is invalidation because you don't understand. You think you know what's actually right,

00:27:00.060 but it means I don't care how you feel. Get out of my face. If your woman is coming and telling you

00:27:05.380 that there's hurt, she's trying to solve it with you. The more that you brush her off, the more you tell

00:27:09.500 her, I don't care. Get out of my face. When women stop trying to solve with you, that's where you've got a

00:27:14.840 deadly problem. Okay. So, but the common wisdom is that she's not trying to solve with you. She's

00:27:20.840 trying to vent and, and that might be the case, but how do we differentiate or are those two things

00:27:26.360 one and the same? That's one and the same. Uh, most of the time women are coming to you with a

00:27:31.520 challenge. Their right side brain is agitated. Their emotional, their emotions up, their logical

00:27:36.480 brain is diminished. So they come to you if they have a problem, not about you, they come to you and

00:27:41.580 they want to vent and talk with you and process. Women process out loud. They're meant to do this

00:27:46.680 with each other. Most women today don't have female friends. So they process with you. And what they

00:27:50.720 want to do is decrease their agitation and restore their own logical functioning and then work with

00:27:55.480 you. Now, if she's complaining about you, you would damn well better believe that's not venting and

00:27:59.960 processing. She's actually bringing you a concern. Fix it. I teach, I teach a model when I work with my

00:28:04.680 couples called the CEO and the COO model. The man wants to be leader of the home. He's the chief

00:28:09.580 executive officer. The woman is the co-executive chief operations officer, CEO slightly above in

00:28:16.180 hierarchy for decision-making. It's the COO's job to bring you concerns about how operations are being

00:28:22.000 impacted. Her job is to bring you problems and tell you this is running our company into the ground.

00:28:28.240 Morale is in the toilet. We have no budget. That half of the building's on fire. I don't like how this

00:28:34.000 smells, right? Whatever the problem is, the operations officer is doing her job bringing you

00:28:38.800 concerns. Now she knocks on your door and says, what's going on? You say, get the hell out.

00:28:43.160 You're wrong. That's fine. Ah, budget's fine. Don't bring me those problems. What are you whining

00:28:47.400 about now? And you kick her out of your office. For 20 years, you do this. And then you go, hmm,

00:28:53.060 she doesn't seem very happy and we're not having sex lately. I wonder what's happening. Well,

00:28:56.960 for 20 years, you've treated her like the janitor when she's actually the co-executive with you and

00:29:02.620 you've failed to allow her to do her job. Now you need to come in and allow her to do her job.

00:29:07.460 Hey, I know I haven't listened to your reports for 20 years and our company is about to go belly

00:29:12.980 up right now. And you're probably secretly fantasizing about a divorce. Could you please

00:29:17.920 tell me I'm actually listening now? Give her context. I'm listening. I'm taking this seriously.

00:29:23.460 I want us to succeed. And only today do I understand how badly I have failed in my role. I want to

00:29:30.120 improve. Could you please give me a report on the top five problems in our company right now?

00:29:34.940 I want to build a plan. I'm going to then run that plan by you to make sure it doesn't make it worse.

00:29:39.940 I'm going to implement that plan. We're going to have steps we're going to follow. And then we're

00:29:43.660 going to rebuild this thing together. And I swear to you, I will never dismiss you as my executive

00:29:47.980 like that ever again. That's the proper mood to go to her with. And you invite her into company

00:29:53.800 building with you. That's the process. Is that making sense to you, Ryan?

00:29:57.320 Yeah. No, it makes total sense. I do. I do see a lot of guys, myself included in my past marriage

00:30:05.360 where, uh, we overlook red flags because nobody's hitting us over the head with a two by four.

00:30:13.720 You know, our, our wife might come to us and say, you know, I'm really concerned about fill in the

00:30:18.380 blank, which when a man hears that, he's like, okay, well like be concerned about it. I'm really

00:30:25.100 concerned about this does not mean I'm leaving you tomorrow because you're not doing what you

00:30:30.060 need to be doing, even though it might actually translate to that. So what are some red flags

00:30:36.000 that a man, because we're dense at times in this way, can be aware of that his marriage is struggling

00:30:44.380 and he might not even realize the severity or totality of it.

00:30:49.160 Yeah. So I'm going to turn that on its head and say a CEO's job is not to run around trying to guess

00:30:56.300 where the red flags are when he has a COO whose job is to bring him red flags. If he is ignoring

00:31:02.080 his CEO, there is not much I can tell him about how to go be better at being a CEO and COO at the

00:31:08.700 same time. Don't take her job, let her do her job. So the job of a CEO is actually to ask a lot

00:31:15.320 more questions. Men don't ask enough questions. We do like that. We say, well, how can I go solve

00:31:20.520 this alone right now without my wife, without listening to her anymore? How can I become, no.

00:31:25.380 Hey, the better sequence is how can I ask my wife better questions when she brings something to me

00:31:30.620 and says, Hey, I'm concerned about this. You go, join the club, right? Like instead of that,

00:31:36.200 how do we stop and say, okay, you're, you're concerned. What about that concerns you? Tell me,

00:31:41.080 help me understand. Why is that concerning? I'm not over in the sales department. I don't really

00:31:44.980 understand what that looks like. I don't understand this pie chart you're showing me.

00:31:47.720 What is, what is concerning about that to you? What's, what does that mean for us as a company?

00:31:52.020 What does that mean to me as a CEO? Uh, how long do you see this being a problem? How concerned are

00:31:56.980 you on a scale of one to 10? Why is this a challenge for us? And what could this lead to?

00:32:01.360 What level of priority would you assign this if you were me right now? Right? Asking questions,

00:32:06.600 understanding the data your wife is bringing her. Um, Ryan, do you know what the purpose of your

00:32:11.940 wife's feelings are? Do you know why she has them? A, a wife, I'm not going to say my wife,

00:32:18.480 but a wife. Um, no, I don't. I'm very curious what you would think about that. Um, here's what's,

00:32:25.060 I'm going to tell you something really awful. Um, children who are born without pain receptors,

00:32:29.660 their average life expectancy is 15 years because they cut themselves and don't know it. And they

00:32:33.460 bleed to death. They burn themselves and they bleed to death. They get a heat stroke and they die

00:32:38.000 because they can't feel the pain or the sunburn. Our emotions are tools. They are sensory input.

00:32:44.820 It is the lights on the dashboard of your car that light up and say, warning your engine's about to

00:32:48.820 explode. Sadness, anger, hurt, fear, hunger, arousal, all of these sensations, they are bringing

00:32:55.400 us data. A woman having emotions is data. That's all it is. Now it comes into the wrong side of her

00:33:02.100 brain. Her logic brain is here. Her emotion brain is here. Men too. It comes in through the wrong side.

00:33:07.000 So trying to interpret that data is very messy. A woman will usually come to you with emotions,

00:33:12.240 high logic, low, and say, there's something that's making me scared and I need to, we need to fix it.

00:33:17.640 And your job is not to say, lady, what are you doing here? Go, go, go home. It's not your job.

00:33:23.140 Your job is to understand she's trying to bring me data. She feels this is useful. It may or may not

00:33:28.580 be useful. I don't know. Let's figure this out. A wife's job is to be clear and calm enough to bring

00:33:34.600 you data in a usable manner and learn how her CEO receives reports. A husband's job is to ask the

00:33:40.200 right questions about that data so he can begin making educated decisions. It is our job to treat

00:33:46.100 our wife's feelings as useful data. Not as true. Sometimes it can be wrong. But it means something

00:33:52.540 nonetheless. Something is always setting off the smoke alarm. Maybe it's smoke from a fire. Maybe it's

00:33:57.820 steam from a shower. But let's figure that out together and let's resolve it. That's the purpose of

00:34:02.780 female feelings. Now we can treat all of it like stupidity, but we're not going to be buried for

00:34:09.920 very long. Fair enough. Fair enough.

00:34:15.960 Man, I'm going to step away from the conversation very quickly. We're talking about attachment,

00:34:20.360 but obviously when it comes to the connections, the interpersonal connections between men and women,

00:34:26.340 there is some disconnect at times. And oftentimes, unfortunately, it leads to divorce. We put together

00:34:36.080 a great course. It's called Divorce Not Death. It's a powerful call to men navigating one of life's

00:34:43.020 most painful and frankly, a little bit disorienting challenges. In this course, I'm going to reject

00:34:51.580 the common narrative that divorce is the end of a man's purpose or his ability to lead a meaningful

00:34:57.380 life. But instead, I frame it as a pivotal moment to reclaim your identity, to rebuild strength in

00:35:05.260 your life and also create a vision for the future that isn't defined by your loss as a man. I'm drawing

00:35:11.920 on my own personal experience and the lessons that I've personally learned in working with thousands of

00:35:17.920 men. We give you a blueprint for coming out of divorce, not as a victim, but as a man built by

00:35:27.580 the adversity of it. Now, guys, this is not a sugar-coated prep talk. It's a battle plan.

00:35:33.960 I'm going to address the emotional, the financial, the relational wreckage that often comes with divorce,

00:35:39.540 but I'm also going to equip you with the mindset and strategies to stand firm and tall in this storm

00:35:46.940 that you might face. So we're going to talk about hard truths. We're going to talk about practical

00:35:51.300 steps and we're going to talk about focus on personal responsibility. So check it out at Divorce

00:35:57.480 Not Death. We're going to show you what you need to do to create impact in your life, to overcome

00:36:04.380 divorce, to define your masculinity as potentially a new single man. It's really a rallying cry for those

00:36:11.140 ready to step up and stop mourning about what's lost and start building what's next. Check it out

00:36:17.860 at DivorceNotDeath.com. We're going to open it up next month. So less than 30 days, DivorceNotDeath.com.

00:36:25.560 Do that right after the show. For now, let me get back to it with Adam.

00:36:30.720 Okay. So you said something interesting. You said emotions come in on the wrong side,

00:36:35.540 but then you also said emotions. You didn't say this, but this is what I think you're alluding to,

00:36:41.240 that there are no negative emotions. It's just data. So if you're sadness, sorrow, anger, frustration,

00:36:47.300 it's not negative. It's just a data point for you. So why do you say then that it's coming in

00:36:51.900 on the wrong side? What if this is the design, not a bug in the design?

00:36:57.260 100%. And it very well may be. We humans, remember, are not meant to be in isolated structures alone.

00:37:02.740 We're meant to be in hunter-gatherer tribes of 15 to 30. And then we're meant to have four tribes

00:37:07.640 around us. So 30, 30, 30, it's 150. Dunbar's number says we're only really capable of carrying

00:37:13.360 about 150 people in our network. We are hunter-gatherers and we're not meant to be alone.

00:37:18.400 We're meant to sleep in a big connection pile to everybody else, you know, at least our little

00:37:22.380 huts and our tribal connections. So this concept of, I will go do everything alone, that's not accurate.

00:37:28.800 Even the reduction of a human being down to a mere individual is not really accurate. Human

00:37:35.580 beings are meant to connect at least in a tribal network or a family. That's really the smallest

00:37:41.360 unit of actual functioning. Our brains are meant to interlink. The male and female nervous systems

00:37:48.040 are meant to interlink symbiotically. The whole argument about why do men need women or why do women

00:37:53.700 need men? It's stupid. We are supposed to integrate to operate successfully. Our brains are formed

00:38:00.500 differently to actually make decision processes differently and on purpose because they're supposed

00:38:05.160 to interlink for decision-making. I should show you that if you ever want to, but our nervous systems

00:38:10.380 especially are supposed to interlink so that we men can live an extra 10 to 15 years longer with higher

00:38:16.980 life quality as we interlink with their nervous system after we work to make them feel safe. All of it is

00:38:22.680 supposed to fit together. This concept of I'm one dude on my own, I'm Rambo and that's it. That is

00:38:27.580 stupid. Humans are not meant to operate that way. I have so many questions. So here's what I'm thinking.

00:38:34.360 First, I want to talk about one more thing that men cause pain to women for. I want to talk about

00:38:42.120 the inverse of that, how women cause pain for men. And then I would like to dive a little bit deeper

00:38:49.880 into the interlinking nervous systems. Cause I think that's an interesting concept, especially

00:38:54.820 when you have a man who is more feminine in his approach. And that might be nature or nurture

00:39:01.780 or a woman who is more masculine, which also might be nature or nurture. So, all right. So there's my

00:39:07.840 outline for the remainder of the conversation, but let's, let's go back to one thing you said. You said

00:39:12.360 that, and I think you're saying this is the primary way that men hurt women is through

00:39:17.880 invalidation. You were pretty quick about answering that. So I have to assume that is the number one

00:39:23.380 way in your experience. True or false? It's a big one. It's, it's a big one. It's so big that it's been

00:39:29.000 with us since ancient Greece. Uh, in the Arrestian trilogy, you had Cassandra who was cursed, uh, to have

00:39:35.920 perfect foresight of what would happen and cursed that no one would ever believe her. This is the female,

00:39:41.400 the female terror is I will know what's going to come and no one will trust me and I can't do anything

00:39:46.400 about it. So there's a validation. Well, rape and sexual assault is a great example of that.

00:39:50.100 I mean, that, that explains exactly what you're talking about. Women who are afraid it will

00:39:55.760 happen. And if it does, nobody's going to believe them. So I think that's, that's something that you

00:40:01.620 hear all the time. And inside relationships, the other way that men hurt women is emotional

00:40:06.140 starvation by starving their brain chemistry and their body chemistry of what they need through

00:40:10.220 intimacy, uh, through lack of safety, keeping them in an unsafe situation, situate emotionally,

00:40:15.520 even where they are biochemically starving, which increases their risk of reproductive cancers,

00:40:21.200 of chronic migraines, autoimmune disorders, fertility issues, a lot of problems. Emotional

00:40:26.700 starvation is another way that men inadvertently hurt women. Hmm. Interesting. Well, let's go back to

00:40:33.760 the invalidation thing for just a quick second before we get into that. Um, so you had said that

00:40:42.240 it's not our job to turn as men to turn to women to solve our problems, which I think is a sense of

00:40:51.480 validation, right? We need to find that outside and then we can bring that into a relationship to be

00:40:57.140 healthy. So do you think the same thing about how a man shows up for his woman? For example, if my biggest

00:41:05.920 potential for hurting a woman is invalidation, conversely, is it my job to validate her the

00:41:12.520 same way it's not a woman's job to validate a man? Hmm. I think that when we look at leadership,

00:41:18.140 it only really functions when you have validation. Um, there's a research that came out from Harvard

00:41:23.860 recently that showed that trust-based leadership teams have a 40% productivity increase. Trust-based

00:41:30.840 leadership includes validation. It doesn't mean yes, employees, you're right. And we'll do everything

00:41:35.560 you want. It means, okay, employees, we're listening to you. Whatever you tell us, we're going to take

00:41:40.960 into consideration and we're going to work with you to resolve the concerns that you have. That's a

00:41:45.500 trust-based leadership system. Again, 40% increase of productivity. The numbers are there. The numbers

00:41:51.380 prove that this is true as leadership. Leadership in business is very little different from leadership

00:41:56.100 in a family. It is very similar. A lot of my CEO clients, all we have to do is generalize

00:42:00.680 their good leadership skills they have at work into the home and all of a sudden pop. Their

00:42:04.760 marriage is thriving. Most men fail to generalize that skill set though. Well, I'm, I am glad that

00:42:10.400 you made the distinction between just being a yes man and actually just honoring what the person is

00:42:16.440 saying without having to agree with it. Right. And that, that goes back to the quote. I think it's

00:42:20.960 Socrates, the mark of an educated man is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it

00:42:25.580 or I'm paraphrasing. And, and I think that's what you're saying. Like I can entertain what the woman

00:42:31.740 in my life is saying without, and validating that she has an opinion, that it's valid, that it's

00:42:38.560 warranted, that it's welcomed without having to completely agree with it all the time.

00:42:43.220 I'll give you a great example. About a year or two ago, somewhere back there, my, I was reading a book

00:42:48.600 and my wife came and sat down next to me and said, I need to tell you, I've been really frustrated with you

00:42:53.160 lately. I went, Hmm. Okay. Close my book. I said, tell me more what's going on. And she said, well,

00:42:59.800 you're sharing all your feelings with your business partner and not with me. And I went, Hmm. Tell me

00:43:07.620 more. What makes you think that? And she said, well, you're not sharing your feelings with me. So you

00:43:12.940 must be sharing them with him. And I said, Hmm. Okay. Well, that's an interesting perspective. Can I,

00:43:19.420 can I tell you what I'm seeing from my side? She said, okay. I said, I'm not sharing

00:43:23.020 my feelings with anybody. And I don't understand where you're getting the idea that I'm sharing my

00:43:26.880 feelings with him. We are working 90 hours a week right now through this crazy crunch that we don't

00:43:32.340 have time for emotions. So I said, I'm, I'm bottling everything up, just trying to get through so I

00:43:37.560 could take care of all of us right now so that we can get to a better place. And she went, really?

00:43:42.180 I said, yes. I said, do you really think he and I talk about emotions when we're there? And she said,

00:43:46.960 no, I guess that, that doesn't make sense. I said, okay. But I said, let's go a step beyond.

00:43:51.700 You've been feeling lonely lately. You're feeling like I'm not sharing with you, opening up. You're

00:43:56.360 not getting that time, that focus, that connection with me. You don't even know where I'm at. So

00:44:00.420 you're, you're trying to guess where I'm at. That tells me there's an issue here. So I need to be

00:44:04.320 clearer with you about where I'm at, what I'm doing. It sounds like you need some more, you need some

00:44:08.600 more connection time. Is that fair? She said, yeah. I said, cool. Why don't you and I sit down and we'll

00:44:14.300 schedule this in so that I'm telling you where we're at and helping you understand. And what do you need to

00:44:18.120 feel some more connection to the odd than that? You need a date once in a while. We built a schedule

00:44:21.640 with dates, everything. That was me validating with, while fully also disagreeing. She got

00:44:27.380 exactly what she needed. The real concerns were met and everything's been perfect ever since. And

00:44:32.780 that was years ago. So that's leadership. That's validation. That's listening to your concern. Even

00:44:37.920 if she's accusing, it's listening, taking it in and then doing something about it. That's,

00:44:43.200 that's all, that's all this is. That pivots nicely into the concept of emotional starvation.

00:44:49.720 I don't think that men are trying to starve the women in their lives, right? It's not malicious.

00:44:56.180 I was talking with her earlier today and I shared a quote about never, never attribute to malice what

00:45:03.660 could be attributed to stupidity or ignorance, but you can fill in the blank. And I think, yeah,

00:45:10.140 I think that's most of the time what it is. Like we're not trying to emotionally starve the women

00:45:15.140 in our lives. We just, we don't think the same. So we don't really, you know, like, like women will

00:45:20.640 ask a man like, Oh, did you talk with your friend? And I said, yeah, we talked. I talked with Adam

00:45:24.780 today and she's like, cool. How's his family? I'm like, I don't know. Well, how's his wife? I don't

00:45:29.860 know. What about his kids? What are his kids' names? What are their ages? What? I don't,

00:45:33.080 I don't know any of that. Well, how's he doing? He's doing awesome. Well, how do you know if you

00:45:36.700 don't, I don't know. I can't explain it, but I know his golf game's pretty good this afternoon.

00:45:41.880 Like he golfed a hell of a round and it's like, we're not trying to do that. I think there's this

00:45:47.940 big disconnect between the way that the sexes generally communicate. It unfortunately is a

00:45:54.260 little bit worse than that. So right now we're seeing that 67% ratio of people with insecure

00:46:00.360 attachment style and a large percent of men are avoidantly attached. This is a hardcore survival

00:46:06.260 state where your prefrontal cortex, the judgment center overdevelops and squashes emotional

00:46:12.040 expression. So it mutes your emotions, positive and negative, happy and sad and angry. It mutes

00:46:17.100 them. And then from childhood, we don't get much oxytocin. That's that warms affectionate

00:46:23.780 hormone. We don't get much. So we enter a very robotic survival, like workhorse sort of mode

00:46:30.460 where we will work to death. And so we don't really understand the depths of emotional intimacy.

00:46:35.720 Men today are raised to believe emotional intimacy is a feminacy and homosexual. And

00:46:40.660 most men are like, well, I don't want to go that. That's not me. So I'm going to be over

00:46:43.400 here alone, starving to death. We actually take emotional starvation for granted. We

00:46:48.120 think emotional starvation is normal. So we just say, eh, it just hurts, right? I just

00:46:53.480 have a bulging tumor on the side of my neck. That's just supposed to be that. That's who men

00:46:57.320 are, right? We take it for granted. It doesn't short-term impact us the way it does them. Women

00:47:03.840 have massive short-term and extremely massive long-term impacts. They really show like debilitating

00:47:10.800 effects of emotional starvation. We are designed to handle it. They are not. So the things that

00:47:17.140 they're trying to get us to do are actually good for us. They're not intuitive. They're

00:47:21.720 counterintuitive to our programming from childhood and to our life experiences and to our overdeveloped

00:47:26.920 prefrontal cortex for survival. So we are actively resisting what is good for us. But by resisting

00:47:32.400 it, we're actually starving and harming them without meaning to. No, it doesn't occur to

00:47:37.480 us. We don't even know what we're doing most of the time.

00:47:39.940 Okay. So if that's the case, then I think generally we can say that men work best when we say,

00:47:45.820 this is the problem. This is how you fix it, right? We're just blatantly obvious about it. So

00:47:50.980 how do you know if your woman is starving emotionally and how do you know if she's

00:47:58.320 thriving emotionally? Cool. Great question. So what we're looking for is signs that she feels safe

00:48:05.080 and calm so that her oxytocin receptors are opened up and she's out of her sympathetic nervous system

00:48:10.780 into her parasympathetic nervous system, rest and digest. And her vagus nerve is calm and settled.

00:48:15.980 Uh, and her oxytocin receptors are open enough that it's stimulating the production of GABA,

00:48:21.280 GABA, gamma-aminobutyric acid, which then in turn helps synthesize melatonin to sleep at night.

00:48:27.020 It improves immune system functioning. It improves estrogen and progesterone flow and fertility

00:48:32.040 and her cycles, her PMS, everything gets better. Uh, it diminishes chronic pain. It makes her

00:48:37.540 resilient against cancers and heart attack and heart disease. Uh, it improves her weight as well.

00:48:42.900 Human growth hormone goes up. So it's easier for her to stay fit and trim and build muscle. Uh, it,

00:48:48.380 it also enhances as, as the GABA goes up, it suppresses cortisol. So she's calmer and smilier

00:48:53.800 and more friendly. So we look for insomnia. Is she sleeping peacefully through the night

00:48:58.320 and actually staying asleep through the whole night and waking up refreshed? Uh, is she smiling more

00:49:03.040 because her mood's enhanced by grown, uh, estrogen, um, by oxytocin, by, um, serotonin in the gut,

00:49:11.820 especially during their parasympathetic? Uh, is she snuggly and warm with you? Does she want to put

00:49:17.100 hands on you the moment you get in the room and not sexually maybe, although that's there too? Um,

00:49:21.400 is her libido reasonably high? Is she, is she coming to you two to three times a week,

00:49:25.740 kind of seeking out sexual connection, maybe not fully initiating, but making sure, you know,

00:49:30.820 like a, like a female deer flicking her tail at you that, you know, she's available to you.

00:49:34.520 Is she giving you more hugs, more attention and not in a way of please pay attention to me,

00:49:39.040 grabbing you, pulling you, but, but like really resting, more resting on you, leaning into you,

00:49:44.120 right? Is she leaning her upper body against you? Um, is she eating foods that are higher in iron,

00:49:51.240 especially, is she eating foods richer in iron or is she defaulting away to really light,

00:49:56.320 like carbs, get me through one more minute kind of thing, defaulting to sugary junk food,

00:50:00.760 in snacks? Is she dopamine? Iron would be, iron would be a representation of eating healthier

00:50:06.320 foods. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. So meat, um, she's preparing for pregnancy,

00:50:11.360 even if she's not preparing for pregnancy, she's preparing for pregnancy. So she's taking on iron,

00:50:16.580 richer meat, uh, even richer vegetables, all of this. She's her, she's building more iron and

00:50:22.120 protein into her system. She doesn't even know she's doing this, but it's happening. That's

00:50:26.560 interesting. A happy woman grabs a hamburger, a nervous woman grabs a chicken salad.

00:50:33.000 Hmm. Cause she needs the nutrients. Her body is telling her she needs the nutrients so I can

00:50:39.060 bear this child. Her sex drive, her libido is actually a perfect thermostat for the,

00:50:44.280 a thermometer for the entire relationship. When she has robust oxytocin, she is coming at you and

00:50:49.860 you're asking for a night off and it's enthusiastic. It's thriving. Uh, her arousal is faster. She doesn't

00:50:56.020 need as much foreplay. She has orgasms faster and multiple orgasms. Um, she, she's enjoying that

00:51:02.380 experience with you. She'll rest her upper body on you, letting you know that she's ready to go.

00:51:07.380 She's seeking that intimacy and connection with you. She's bubblier. She's playful when she's in a

00:51:12.720 flirtatious mood. That means she's in a sympathetic, out of sympathetic into parasympathetic.

00:51:17.460 That's where she will flirt with you. When she feels closer to you, she'll ask you more questions

00:51:22.780 and be curious about you, right? You're looking for these signs. So it's also, is she having

00:51:28.260 massive chronic pain? A lot of headaches, right? Is she having trouble sleeping? Is she sick all the

00:51:33.980 time? Is she eating very low amounts of food or overeating junk food to dopamine binge? Is she always

00:51:40.140 on her phone, always staring at Instagram? Does she get eight Amazon packages a day because of retail

00:51:45.960 therapy and doesn't even remember what she's ordered? Is she so focused in on her, her, her pain

00:51:51.720 and her struggle that she doesn't even have time for you. That's really a bad indicator that her

00:51:56.580 nervous system is unsafe. How do you, I mean, this is, this is amazing information. I'm fascinated by

00:52:05.040 this. How do you, how do you get her into the mindset of safety? If it has nothing to do with you,

00:52:13.520 because I imagine in some cases it does, but in a lot of cases she's out working for the man. Her

00:52:19.760 kids are involved in this and that and everything else. And like, there's just so much going on that

00:52:25.740 it might not even have anything to do with you. So how does a man get his woman, his wife, whoever

00:52:30.200 to, to calm down into that? There's four levels of safety that a man must provide to a woman in a

00:52:36.980 relationship. And they go back to hunter gatherer times, the same things that our foremothers wanted

00:52:41.660 in the hunter gatherer structure that Jack Donovan talks about building a perimeter and making sure

00:52:45.900 the tiger doesn't come eat her in the middle of the night, right? Same thing. Her, she may be here

00:52:50.580 in 2025, but her brain is back in, in 20,000 BC. That's where her brain is still. Okay. Ours too.

00:52:57.840 So the four types of safety they needed is what she needs right now. And if she doesn't understand

00:53:04.360 that a lot of women don't, cause they've never felt it. They've got four generations of traumatized,

00:53:08.440 scared women in America who've been raised to say, don't ever trust men. Cause they fail you.

00:53:12.680 They die. They leave, they cheat, they abandon, right? So they're, they're afraid to outsource

00:53:17.400 safety to a man, but they need it. You go on Tik TOK. It's full of women saying, I'm tired of being

00:53:21.780 in my masculine. I want to be in my feminine. I want a masculine man. Tik TOK is flooded with demands

00:53:27.300 for masculine men to provide who provide those four levels of safety. Do you want to go through them

00:53:31.960 right now? Yeah. I would just add one caveat before we get into that. Like I do have to say

00:53:38.000 that I know that is reality. I do know that women are saying I'm tired of being in my masculine,

00:53:43.420 but it seems like increasingly women are really having a difficult time, even in the presence of

00:53:51.920 masculinity to let go of their own masculinity. And maybe the four levels of safety solve that,

00:53:56.840 but it seems like generally in societally, it's becoming harder and harder for women to be

00:54:03.900 feminine. Yes. And, and this is where I'm going to borrow from Orion. This is where that

00:54:10.800 transactionality needs actually come in where a man says, I will provide you safety in return.

00:54:18.220 Here is what I require. That's, he's got it a hundred percent right. I will be masculine,

00:54:23.400 but you must be feminine in return. I will not settle for anything less. And the women say,

00:54:29.720 yes, I take that on a hundred percent. Those are the women you go with. Are they always going to be

00:54:35.100 that way? No, they're going to get a little neurotic sometimes, a little nervous, a little

00:54:38.480 fearful. And then as a CEO, when your COO gets a little antsy and a little nervous, you don't say,

00:54:44.140 that's it. I'm burning this company to the ground. You say, Hey, look, heads up. I'm the CEO.

00:54:49.220 You've trusted me before. I need you to trust me now. However, I am here to listen to your

00:54:53.100 concerns. Share your concerns with me. I will manage them. I promise you, we will get through

00:54:57.360 this. When you weather that storm as the CEO, the mutiny stops and they say, Oh, thank good. Oh,

00:55:02.880 thank you. I don't want to be the CEO. I just want to make sure we're safe. Hey, understood.

00:55:07.080 Share your, sit down, sit down in front of my desk, share your concerns with me. I'm going to write

00:55:11.060 them down and we're going to go through them one by one. That's how a man is supposed to handle it.

00:55:14.900 When a woman panics and steps into that masculine, nope, not appropriate. Step back. I am the man.

00:55:20.420 I am going to take care of us. Please trust me. That's how a relationship is meant to be built.

00:55:25.680 And you build trust by demonstrating your follow through. You don't just do that day one.

00:55:29.880 You have to demonstrate to her who you are consistently. So she begins to trust you.

00:55:34.300 That, that analogy of the CEO, CEO is so good. So good. All right. So let's get to the,

00:55:40.040 you answered my question and I think we're going to resolve a lot of that through the four levels of

00:55:44.120 safety. So what are they? Four levels of safety, baby. Let's do this. Okay. Level one,

00:55:49.040 pretty simple. Physical safety. Now, yes, you have to be physically safe. She has to know you're not

00:55:54.720 going to hurt her unless you guys are kind of into that, but you're not going to harm her. You're not

00:55:59.500 going to do the wrong time. Even then though, she needs to know because there's constraints. And so

00:56:05.460 she'll let you do that if she knows you're not actually going to hurt her. Correct. It's exciting

00:56:11.160 to play the game, but she knows you would never harm her. That's the thing. Harm. Harm is lasting damage done

00:56:18.380 from negligence or ignorance or, or malice. She knows you will never harm her. And number two,

00:56:24.060 with that one, um, she knows you would protect her from outside threats. She needs to know if

00:56:28.560 there's a saber tooth tiger coming through that door, that you're not going to kick her in the

00:56:32.020 way of the tiger and jump out the window while it's eating her. Are you going to be first one to the

00:56:35.900 door? Are you going to be the first one into the battle? Are you, when you walk on the sidewalk

00:56:39.760 together, do you walk on the side of the street in case a car hits you and let her walk in safety?

00:56:44.680 Right. Do you walk in a way that protects her? Do you look physically like you could protect her in

00:56:49.920 a fight? Or are you all string bean? Are you so fat that you can't even walk? And she's, she's the

00:56:54.460 one who has to take care of you. What can you physically protect her in some way? Okay. In 2025,

00:56:59.860 the odds of a saber tooth tiger attacking her are fairly low, but her brain still remembers. I need

00:57:05.640 to know that if something happened, you would help me. Okay. This is why women are saying,

00:57:12.080 I want a dude with six pack abs. I want a dude who's blah, blah, blah. They want a man who's

00:57:15.780 physically capable. Most women are afraid and they don't even feel physically safe in this world

00:57:20.240 for a variety of reasons. I don't even know that they, I don't even know that I agree with it in

00:57:25.740 many ways. Sometimes it's valid, sometimes it's valid, but many times it's also overblown and

00:57:30.800 hyperbole and insanity. And many of them are trained to feel unsafe for a variety of reasons. So

00:57:36.200 they need physical safety. Yes. At least the feeling of it, they need to know that you would cover it.

00:57:41.100 Level one, level two, resource safety. Now this is funny because most women today,

00:57:46.360 a lot of women are making more money than men are nowadays. Most women have more degrees than men

00:57:50.240 do. A lot of women are financially leaving men behind. So you would think, oh, women don't need

00:57:54.620 men anymore. No, resource safety is not what we have right now. Resource safety says if something

00:58:00.560 catastrophic happens, the banks all burned to the ground. I lose my money. I lose my job.

00:58:05.640 The world ends and we have to fight over cans of beans. You would step to the front and procure

00:58:11.820 resources for our family. And I would still be safe. You can be, you can chill on your hindquarters

00:58:18.220 and she's got 20 billion in the bank and she's your sugar mama. But if something bad happened,

00:58:23.160 would you get up off your butt and take care of her? Or are you going to hover in a little blankie

00:58:28.160 shivering while she has to go out and try to make things work at the, at the end of the world?

00:58:32.060 Resource safety. Okay. What will you do? Let me, let me, let me pause before you go to the other

00:58:37.480 two, because I think I can already hear people as, as we're having this conversation and my job is to

00:58:42.540 give them a mouthpiece. Um, when, when I hear that, I already know that there's going to be men who are

00:58:49.920 going to say things with the idea that that is not fair, right? Like we've got this, this,

00:58:57.700 this huge influx of, of women saying, I don't need no man. I can take care of it. To hell with

00:59:05.040 men. What are men good for? And then when shit hits the fan, people look to men and you're shrugging

00:59:12.820 your shoulders like, yeah, well deal with it. Right. Which I agree with, but how do we get men to that

00:59:19.460 point? We understand that as men, we choose who we help. I didn't marry a woman who says I don't need

00:59:28.620 no man. And then I married her. I married a woman that said, I need a man to do these things because

00:59:34.940 I could do them, but I can't, I shouldn't. My wife, she was valedictorian of her high school.

00:59:41.620 She got a full scholarship to Harvard business. She ran her own company. And then when we got,

00:59:47.060 when we settled down and said, it's time to have kids, she sold her company. She supported me

00:59:52.160 through school. She worked on the backend. I worked on the backend. And when we had kids,

00:59:55.960 she's a stay-at-home mom. She is home. She is barefoot and she is pregnant in the kitchen.

01:00:00.580 And she has been for the last 10 years. And that's her life now. She could step to the front.

01:00:06.940 It would be a complete and total waste. She could be masculine. I can't be feminine.

01:00:12.560 feminine. I'm better at being masculine than she is, but she could do it. But for her to be feminine

01:00:18.720 and raise a family and do everything she wants to do, she needs a man. And that's what I provide.

01:00:24.720 I didn't marry a woman who said, I need a man or I don't need a man. I married a woman who said,

01:00:29.580 I want a man because I can't build a life without a good man. So men, no, I'm not calling on you to go

01:00:35.840 march out into the world, find some awful woman who hates you, marry her, and then take care of her 16

01:00:41.340 illegitimate children. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying, pick a good woman who is worthy of your

01:00:46.520 time, who respects you as a man and understands that masculinity is vital now, maybe more than

01:00:52.080 ever, and then bond with her and build that connection with her. You're not responsible

01:00:56.240 for society. You're responsible for the circle you draw, who you allow in that circle is up to every

01:01:01.160 man. That's probably the best answer I've ever heard on it. As I was saying earlier, the woman that

01:01:07.440 I'm with, she said something kind of funny. She said, men should not be hairy women and women

01:01:13.800 should not be less hairy men. I'm like, that is so good. It's a good visual, but it also is

01:01:22.000 perfectly representative of what you see. You see a lot of guys trying to be hairy little women or big

01:01:28.820 women, I should say, and women trying to be less hairy little men, which is kind of interesting.

01:01:34.760 It's unfortunate, but it's the reality that we live in. Men are hyper specialists. Women are flex

01:01:42.080 players who can specialize. Women can do 70% of masculinity, but it burns them out and kills them

01:01:51.380 quickly. Men can do all of masculinity and we're optimized for it. Women can also do 100% of feminine

01:01:58.900 and it's a waste of effort and time and resources when they have to be 70% masculine. It is a waste

01:02:06.260 when a woman has to be masculine. Now there's some women who excel at it, maybe 10% of the population

01:02:10.940 who are absolutely phenomenal in those roles and God bless them. But 90% of them, that's not how they work.

01:02:18.040 When you say women can do 70% masculine and the inverse, what is masculine and what is feminine?

01:02:27.440 How do you make that distinction?

01:02:29.720 Again, I love Jack Donovan's discussion on this. Masculine is establishing a security perimeter of safety

01:02:37.200 and holding up that perimeter of safety with your own life if you have to, and then going out beyond

01:02:43.100 that perimeter of safety into the darkness and procuring resources by blood and sweat and tears

01:02:48.400 and bringing them back inside that perimeter. It is protecting and providing. It's also elements of mentoring

01:02:55.100 and teaching and good other things. But in our hunter-gatherer role, that's a lot of what it is.

01:03:00.560 It's also hyper-specializing into building, into problem solving in particular. A lot of that,

01:03:07.540 the male brain observes a problem in the back and immediately leaps forward to act upon it and solve

01:03:11.860 it without any second guessing, even without testing for consequences. Our brain wants to leap forward

01:03:17.500 into solving. So a lot of that is more of the masculine focus. The female brain can do those

01:03:23.340 things mostly, but again, it burns them out and they die of cancer fairly quickly.

01:03:29.760 So what is, I would agree with that. I mean, our motto is protect, provide, preside. So I'm on board

01:03:35.640 with that. What is then feminine?

01:03:39.500 Feminine, I equate much more like a well of water. Feminine is as the man nurtures her and builds

01:03:45.880 her up with that safety and intimacy. Her oxytocin receptors open. Now, as she builds with oxytocin

01:03:51.460 within herself, oxytocin is an interesting bonding hormone that surges through her and it makes her

01:03:57.820 spontaneously and compulsively affectionate and warm to those around her. Oxytocin is what makes a

01:04:04.120 mother want to kiss her baby on the face. It's what makes a mother want to grab your hand and be there

01:04:08.820 with you. It's what makes her want to cook you a wonderful dinner and sing while she's cooking your

01:04:13.480 dinner. It's what makes her love darning your socks in the darkness by candlelight. It's what

01:04:18.540 makes her want to give that depth of nurturing and affection and care to others. It's the man's

01:04:24.060 job to fill that well with water. And then it's her job to portion that water out to everyone around

01:04:29.680 her. And the more water you put into her well, the more she has to give back to you and to everyone

01:04:35.260 around you. So is it fair for the man to have to go out, suffer in agony and pain and blood and come

01:04:41.800 home with an arm missing? No. But what do we get in return? Well, we get that nurturing and feminine

01:04:47.100 connection in return, not only though for us, but for our children, for our tribe, for everyone around

01:04:53.700 us. When it's one man, one woman, the equation doesn't balance. When it's one man and everyone

01:04:59.020 he loves and that woman is by his side feeding and nurturing and enriching them, suddenly it makes sense.

01:05:06.300 I like that. I think that's an alignment with what I've thought about it. And I've thought a lot over

01:05:12.880 the past decade about this. I tend to believe, tell me what you think about this. Maybe you can

01:05:17.700 poke holes in this a little bit, but I feel like it's a man's job generally to provide the raw resources

01:05:23.840 and it's a woman's job to make them better. So for example, I'll go chop down the tree and build it into

01:05:31.420 a structure and then you turn it into a home. I'll go raise the sheep and shear the sheep and you take

01:05:36.440 the wool and make it a blanket or a piece of clothing for me. I'll provide the sperm, you provide

01:05:43.460 the egg, and then you nurture that over nine months and you make those two things a better thing, a human

01:05:49.440 being, a baby. That's how I tend to look at it. It's so much deeper than this, our brains. So the male

01:05:56.160 brain observes a problem, rushes forward to act upon it. The female brain observes a problem and

01:06:01.400 then goes back and forth across the hemispheres to analyze all the relationships and consequences

01:06:06.520 and then eventually tries to go forward to make a decision. Women's brains are not optimized for

01:06:12.300 decision-making and especially not fast decision-making or pressure-based decision-making.

01:06:16.540 When they have pressure and stress, they get paralyzed with analysis and freak out and don't know

01:06:21.360 what to do and they just want someone to tell them what to do. The male brain though misses all the

01:06:25.780 nuance and keeps jumping and messing up over and over and over. When the male brain, when the female

01:06:30.880 brain detects a problem, brings it to the male brain and says, hey, there's a problem, and the

01:06:35.860 male brain goes, hmm, here's what I think we should do about it. And he builds a solution but pauses

01:06:41.700 and says, not should we do it, but analyze this solution with your brain and tell me what comes out

01:06:48.220 the other side. So she takes his solution and runs it back and forth across the hemispheres and says,

01:06:53.560 well, it will work immediately, but this problem will happen next week and this person will be mad.

01:06:59.660 So what we could do is tweak your solution like this and then not only do these things get solved,

01:07:04.580 but now we have an added benefit out the other side. And the guy goes, hmm, I like this plan.

01:07:09.200 I am saying, yes, we will do this plan. We will begin implementing immediately. And the woman says,

01:07:13.860 okay, now he has made the decision. He didn't ask her, should we do this? She's not his mother.

01:07:19.680 He is still the CEO. But again, in business, the COO says, hey, there's a problem. Tell me more about

01:07:25.160 this problem. Okay, here's the thing. Okay, here's what I think we should do. Does that work? Well,

01:07:29.640 no, because that will hurt this department and this. But if we do this, it'll make it better.

01:07:33.020 That's a great idea, boss. Okay, I am now declaring we are making this plan work. You and you work

01:07:37.880 together to implement this and give me a report next week. That's that structure. The male and female

01:07:42.540 brains are meant to interlock for decision-making. The man decides, but the woman advises and refines.

01:07:49.220 In our home, with our wool, with our family, our kids, whatever it is, we give to them and they

01:07:56.180 refine and improve. And again, if it's one man with no kids ever, and you just got some woman in your

01:08:02.060 house, like, yeah, it doesn't make sense. But when you have, like, I have five children. When you are

01:08:07.700 providing for your wife for the best outcomes for them, I told you at the beginning of this thing,

01:08:12.640 and everybody listening, I warned you, I want to build a family system for 200 years. I don't care if

01:08:17.740 it's fair to me to go work 90 hours a week while my wife's at home barefoot in the kitchen dancing

01:08:22.760 with my kids and playing with no stress. I don't care if that's fair. I care about the next 200 years

01:08:28.620 of my bloodline and how they're going to take care of each other and remember that they were loved and

01:08:34.240 work together to build businesses and understand honor and integrity and work as a family. That's what

01:08:40.280 I care about. So to me, me working 90 hours a week, that means nothing. I'm getting the better

01:08:46.600 end of this deal by just working and being in pain because my wife is providing something for my

01:08:52.500 family that I couldn't do without her. So that's how the equation balances. You look at 200 years and

01:08:58.520 it makes sense. Yeah, it's powerful. So this is what I wrote down. The man decides and provides,

01:09:03.420 the woman advises and refines. There you go. All right, let's get to the next two levels and then

01:09:10.160 we'll probably call it a day. We might need to run this back for a part two because I told you what

01:09:15.400 the outline was going to be and we got through a third of it. So we blew through it, didn't we?

01:09:19.680 We did. So what's level three? So we have level one is physical safety. Number two, resource safety.

01:09:26.640 Yeah, level three is important. It's nebulous. It's emotional safety. Let's break this down very

01:09:30.900 simply. Emotional safety means that as the CEO, you're not sitting there drunk and angry and

01:09:35.440 belligerent in your office. If she knocks on the door with a problem, you don't scream at her.

01:09:39.580 If she brings you an issue, you don't dismiss her. You aren't going to yell at her, dismiss her,

01:09:44.880 scream, cry. You have control of your emotions and you are a disciplined leader. You can't have no

01:09:50.680 emotions. You have to have some because she has to connect with you as a human. She has to understand

01:09:54.900 what you're thinking, but they must be disciplined, disciplined, proper emotions where you have them

01:10:00.640 and they are information that you use appropriately. Okay. She needs to know she can at any point come

01:10:06.000 to you and say whatever she needs. Now, respectfully, she needs to be respectful. But if she's ever not,

01:10:11.400 she's ever PMSing and she says something sideways, you don't scream at her. You say, hey, look,

01:10:17.080 I know you're probably having a rough day. I'm going to let that one slide. Just, hey, be kind. Okay.

01:10:22.240 I don't appreciate that. Okay. I'm sorry. That's totally fine. Let's move right on. What are we doing next?

01:10:28.120 Right. That, that right there is an appropriate response when your wife has been a bitch to you

01:10:33.100 on her period kind of thing. That's how you act appropriately. You hold your line, but you love

01:10:37.920 and care for her. Now that's, that's appropriateness. Emotional discipline means she never has to walk

01:10:44.360 on eggshells around you. She never has to wonder what your response will be. She never has to worry

01:10:49.140 that your lines are suddenly crossed. I call this being a Hammurabi man. Okay. Hammurabi of ancient

01:10:55.080 Babylon. When you lived in his city, he had pillars inscribed with his laws. So you could read them in

01:11:00.780 three or four different languages. If you do this, this happens. If you don't do this, you will be

01:11:05.980 safe. And that's what a man needs to have as an ironclad code that the woman knows. So she never

01:11:11.600 wonders what the outcome will be. She needs emotional safety in the relationship, discipline, attentiveness,

01:11:18.300 responsiveness. You are responsive to her emotions. You don't make her Cassandra. She doesn't say I'm

01:11:24.980 scared. And you say, aren't we all that's the human condition. Shut up. Right? No. Tell me what's

01:11:30.600 going on. Emotionally responsive. That's emotional safety at level three. Now, level four bonding

01:11:36.520 safety. She needs to know that she herself is important to you as a human. Are you properly bonded

01:11:42.580 to her? Are you biomechanically bonded to her? Do you have vasopressin? Do you see her as an

01:11:47.460 ally that you're working with her to solve problems? Or is she a hot piece of ass that

01:11:51.780 you could replace next week with a blonde bikini bimbo? Right? Are you purposely bonded

01:11:56.480 intentionally to her? Do you have oxytocin bonding to her? This is why women obsessively

01:12:01.180 scan men for romance, poetry, eye contact, hand holding, touch without sex, touch without

01:12:08.780 pressure, touch for no reason. They're testing to see, do you have oxytocin in you that

01:12:14.140 spontaneously compels you to give affection to her, to kiss her on the forehead, to touch

01:12:20.360 the small of her back as you walk by, to slap her butt in the kitchen when you walk next to

01:12:24.680 her? Is it spilling out of you because you're purposely bonded to her as a human? Bonding

01:12:31.040 safety. When my wife said she wanted me to share with her, she felt I was no longer bonded

01:12:35.920 to her. Bonding safety was missing. I had to step back in, share my thoughts. I don't dump

01:12:41.280 out my sadness and fears to her on an average day. I tell her where I'm at, what I'm thinking,

01:12:46.960 what I'm doing, who I am as a man. So she sees me continuously. Trust, connection, talking,

01:12:53.920 bonding safety, level four. When a woman has physical safety, resource safety, emotional

01:12:57.920 safety, and bonding safety, she flips into a highly overwhelmingly feminine state.

01:13:03.320 Do, okay, so with the bonding safety, you said, you know, she wants touch without ulterior motives,

01:13:11.280 hand on the small of the back without any sort of sexual pressure. These are the things that

01:13:16.480 you said. Do we as men have the capacity to do that? Now, that could be that we bond with

01:13:23.000 them over a long period of time or that we put our hand on the small of her back over a long

01:13:28.920 and sustained period of time, but do men have the capability or even is it, is it even a fair ask

01:13:38.000 of women, even if it's subconscious, to expect that of a man? Yes.

01:13:48.280 Ask me how. Elaborate.

01:13:51.520 There's something called the oxytocin pipeline that I've, I've developed. The oxytocin pipeline is this.

01:13:58.080 For a couple to grow oxytocin and oxytocin is important to men. And they're predicting over

01:14:03.640 the next eight years that they're going to replace Viagra with oxytocin nose spray up the nose to

01:14:08.020 improve your arousal. It makes stronger, more robust erections, thicker erections. Viagra just

01:14:14.320 pumps blood in and then prevents it from coming out. Oxytocin makes you fully aroused and ready

01:14:19.320 to go and you're enjoying it. So men need oxytocin too, but our receptors are usually blocked from

01:14:24.920 stress. So we need emotional safety is point one. Emotional closeness is point two, feeling close to

01:14:32.380 the person, knowing them. Non-sexual, physical touch, hugs, connection, hand-holding, caresses,

01:14:39.060 right? Leading into sexual touch, which is a lot more fun. Leading into foreplay, the immediate lead

01:14:45.000 up into sex. Into sex, into, and then aftercare, the after plays. Some people call it after sex where

01:14:51.080 your oxytocin receptors are explosive and you're bonding overwhelmingly, which then loops back around

01:14:55.720 to emotional closeness. And it causes this insane hyperloop of constant oxytocin bonding, which keeps

01:15:03.140 us men, keeps our human growth hormone high. It helps us sleep at night through melatonin. It

01:15:08.160 stimulates GABA to suppress cortisol so we don't bounce as high on our stress moments. It invigorates

01:15:14.860 us so we have an extra 10 to 15 years of quality life on top of that when we do this. And it makes us,

01:15:19.720 our sex drive goes through the roof and so does hers. So when we have this, you're not having sex

01:15:25.520 24-7 usually. So touch her for sex. Absolutely. And when you do this, she's receptive. Like you just

01:15:33.080 touch the small of her back and she leaps on you and her clothes explode off. And you're like, wait,

01:15:37.360 babe, no, please. I'm going to work. And you don't get a choice. Like that's the experience. So you

01:15:42.660 touching her is also, there's sex, there's joy, there's fulfillment. There's no line between bedroom

01:15:49.500 and out of bedroom. The entire life that you have is intimacy and connection. The physical springs

01:15:55.920 from the emotional and it's all flowing together. So then when I say touch your wife, brush her face

01:16:01.420 as you walk by, give her a hug while she's standing over the stove, right? Put your hand on the small of

01:16:06.420 her back. Gently touch her. It's not, okay, you're both at complete starvation. Touch her, but you're not

01:16:13.440 allowed to become aroused. No, like build this so that as you're touching and sharing and nurturing

01:16:19.400 and bonding, she is highly receptive. And now it's fun for both of you. That's the oxytocin pipeline that

01:16:25.780 needs to be working. How do you do this? Uh, when, you know, men are in the workforce all day.

01:16:33.240 Uh, it used to be that men were at home, you know, so we, we would go out, we plow the fields and then

01:16:38.000 we'd come back in and have a meal. And then we'd go back out and take care of the horses and feed

01:16:43.400 the livestock. And then we'd come back in. Now we're gone for eight, 10, 12 hours a day, or maybe

01:16:48.560 even the woman is so, or it could even be a long distance relationship. How do you stimulate this

01:16:55.000 bonding in situations like that where there's no physical touch available?

01:17:01.000 Oh yeah. A lot of my clients, they're working, you know, 13, 14 hour days as CEOs, six days a week.

01:17:05.660 They're, they're working a lot. Um, going on business trips, everything. So I tell them,

01:17:10.340 start with what you have. You probably have a cell phone. You could probably be texting your

01:17:14.740 wife more affectionate things throughout the day. Hey babe, just thinking of you. Just missing you.

01:17:18.620 Right. Set an alarm three times a day. Right. Hey babe, just thinking of you. How you doing?

01:17:23.180 Right. Send her a funny meme. Hey, this made me think of you. Little things. Use your phone for that

01:17:27.460 purpose. Flirt with her a little bit over the phone as well. Right. I'm thinking of you. I brought you

01:17:32.720 this candy bar from the store. Hey, here's a flower just because I missed you. Start with

01:17:37.940 these little gestures. It doesn't even have to, it's, it's, that's seconds a day. Right. And when

01:17:43.100 you pass her in the hallway, a small affectionate touch, Hey, let's talk about our day, right? Take

01:17:48.820 five minutes to talk about your day and process for women. This is explosively important. Hey,

01:17:54.500 let's just talk about our day. Let me tell you about my day. Um, you know, yeah, it was the same

01:17:58.260 thing. I talked to Steve. We did this project. We're moving forward. I'm a little bit stressed

01:18:01.440 about this, but I'm going to get it done tomorrow. That for a woman, that is like opium hearing about

01:18:06.100 hearing you share that little tidbit. That's drugs for her. She needs more of that. Right. So men,

01:18:13.080 men misunderstand how easy it is to give women this intimacy. We, we really think they need 15 hours

01:18:19.240 a day. They need 15 minutes. And then as you can, you schedule it in again. I'm, I'm, I work a lot.

01:18:26.820 I'll just say I work a lot on my business. I'm blessed. I get to work from home. So I get to step out

01:18:31.140 on lunch and stuff and see my kids. But at night, my employees, staff, my business partner,

01:18:36.060 they all know they're dead to me at 9 PM. Cause from 9 PM to 9 45, I have wife time slotted where

01:18:42.540 I'm going to sit with her. I'm going to hold her hand. Maybe we'll watch an old movie. We'll do a

01:18:46.000 puzzle. We'll play a card game. We'll just take a walk on our property, whatever. And I talk with

01:18:50.020 her. We share, we bond, we laugh. Maybe we take a shower together, whatever we're going to do.

01:18:53.940 That's our time five times a week for 45 minutes. And then on Sundays, I have slotted several hours

01:19:00.960 for us to go on date and Friday mornings. I have six hours minimum of just concentrated,

01:19:06.980 no work family time. No one's allowed to intrude ever unless they're bleeding and dying. And then

01:19:11.100 they better get out quick, right? That's it's all of this flows together so that we have everything

01:19:15.780 slotted. You need to know how to make use of your time. You don't need 15 hours a day to do this.

01:19:21.080 You need maybe an hour maximum. If you want an amazing relationship, if you want to rebuild from

01:19:26.420 nothing, 15 minutes a day is better than zero. You said something is kind of a throwaway. I just

01:19:33.380 wanted to draw attention to it. And maybe we can hit this in part two, but you said that if a man

01:19:38.660 says, Hey, I'm dealing with this issue at work and it was been stressful, but here's what I'm doing

01:19:42.520 about it. I wanted to draw attention to that because a lot of the times and myself included, I don't think

01:19:49.780 that the way that women say they want a man to be vulnerable is the way that we as men interpret

01:19:56.800 it. Like I don't want to, women don't want us to dump all of our bullshit on them. What they want,

01:20:02.700 I think you tell me if you think otherwise is they want us to know and recognize threats and problems

01:20:09.360 with external threats and problems, internal threats and problems. And this is important with a plan to do

01:20:16.780 something about it. And I think that's what most men miss is like, Oh, if I just tell my wife, I'm scared.

01:20:22.620 She'll love me more. No, she'll think less of you. But if you say I'm scared and I'm scared about the

01:20:28.140 business because we just lost a big client, but here's how we're going to actually secure 10 more clients

01:20:33.700 this week. That's the kind of quote unquote vulnerability. I think she's more likely looking for.

01:20:40.360 Yes. The time of you share that with your wife, I'm really concerned because we lost these 10 clients, but

01:20:45.720 here's this plan I'm putting together with my business partner for tomorrow. I'm just letting

01:20:48.580 you know, cause Hey, I'm stressed out right now, but I'm going to do something about it. You're

01:20:52.420 going to have to fight her off with a stick that night. Cause she's going to try to have sex with

01:20:55.860 you because you're sharing and bonding with her men. Men imagine that there's two modes. One is to never

01:21:00.700 tell her anything ever. And the other is to sob uncontrollably on the floor like a child. Those are the

01:21:06.940 two modes men imagine, but solution focused sharing is exactly what you're talking about right there.

01:21:12.680 Solution focused sharing. This is how we share with other people. One of my dearest friends,

01:21:17.720 I love him to death. He's Russian. And he says, Adam, there is no point in complaining. And I say,

01:21:22.620 you're right. A hundred percent. But talking about our challenges and working through them together,

01:21:27.280 that's helpful. And the other piece is this, the other piece is this. She doesn't just want to check

01:21:31.960 in and see that you have problems managed. She wants to see if she can help. When you step in and say,

01:21:37.600 man, I'm stressed about this tomorrow. I'm frustrated at this. Here's this challenge. Here's what I'm going to do

01:21:41.920 about it. Here's the plan. We're already working on it. She says, Oh, is there anything I can do to

01:21:46.860 help? Now men get this wrong. She doesn't mean, can I come to work and do your job for you? She's

01:21:51.000 saying, can I enhance your odds of success? Can I take other small, insignificant tasks off your

01:21:56.460 plate? So you have more time to focus. Can I cook you a warm meal so that you have something comforting

01:22:01.080 in the middle of the day? Can I come have sex with you in your office at lunchtime? So you're relaxed

01:22:05.120 for that meeting. Can I, what, what can I do to facilitate your success in that role that you're

01:22:11.240 fulfilling? That's what she's asking. And if you say, no, babe, nothing, get out of here. You're

01:22:15.940 telling her you are nothing to me. I could replace you tomorrow. When you say, you know what? A really

01:22:21.440 warm meal at my desk at lunchtime would make a huge difference for me tomorrow. Could you make that

01:22:25.200 happen? Suddenly she has a huge way to personally contribute. Hey, you know what? I tell my wife this

01:22:30.800 at the end of the day, I got, I got 14 hours today. A lot of people crying, a lot of emotions,

01:22:36.140 blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, if you and I could sit down and just watch a funny movie

01:22:40.660 and laugh together, let's watch something we've, we've seen a hundred times, right? Let's have a,

01:22:44.920 let's have a bottle of wine and just laugh tonight. That would mean the world to me. Yeah, I can do that.

01:22:49.080 She goes, oh, she pulls out every stop she can to make it special that night, right? Give your wife

01:22:54.300 tasks to do that enhance your success. The worst thing you could do is tell her, no, you can't do anything to

01:23:00.100 help me get out of here. That's so, that's so good. And it's, it's a little bit counterintuitive

01:23:04.600 because I don't think men are, or would say no, because they want to dismiss their wife. I don't

01:23:11.960 think that's what they're doing. I think they're saying, well, I don't want to add a bunch of extra

01:23:15.000 stuff to your plate. I already have to deal with this. Why should two of us have to deal with it?

01:23:19.420 But I like what you're saying. This makes sense to me. It's even worse than that. Most men have no

01:23:24.460 idea what they can even ask for. It's most men are so used to eating the equivalent, the emotional

01:23:29.160 equivalent of gas station hot dogs their whole life. That when a woman offers, brings him into

01:23:34.280 her, her like steak house and sits him down, she doesn't present him a menu. She just says,

01:23:39.880 what would you like? And he goes, I don't know. Do you have hot dogs? And she says, no,

01:23:44.280 we have tomahawk steaks. He goes, well, that sounds weird. I don't think I want that. Uh, you don't

01:23:48.920 really don't have a hot dog for me to eat. No tomahawk steak with, with a groton and, and bacon

01:23:54.280 and all this, no, no, no, no. That sounds weird lady. I don't know. I don't know what

01:23:58.000 that sounds like. Please don't do that. Right. Most men don't know the menu and most women

01:24:02.880 don't know how to provide the menu because they also don't know what a woman can provide

01:24:06.540 either. That's been lost. So we have, what does a woman bring to the table? That's a

01:24:10.180 whole conversation someday you and I can have, but that's, that's what's being lost is men

01:24:14.220 say, well, you can't come to my work. You can't do my job for me. You can't sit in on my

01:24:18.880 meetings. Sorry, babe. There's nothing you can do to help. Well, we got a lot more to

01:24:27.020 talk about. So, uh, are you open to doing a round two for this conversation? Yeah. Sounds

01:24:33.240 like fun to me. So what I want to talk about in round two is we talked about how men potentially

01:24:40.140 hurt women. I want to talk about how women potentially hurt men. I want to talk about

01:24:45.280 integrated nervous systems, which is something we kind of touched on a little bit, but I want

01:24:48.620 to dive deeper into that. And then I also want to talk about what men and men and women

01:24:53.060 bring to the table for each other. I think that'd make a really powerful part too. If

01:24:57.340 you're open to it, let's set it up. That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Awesome. I've

01:25:01.960 got notes here, Adam. I appreciate it, man. I really respect your time and your work. It's

01:25:06.240 been helpful for me on a personal level. And obviously the men who listen, I hope, I hope

01:25:10.500 it's obvious are going to get a lot of information from this. Tell the men where to go to connect

01:25:15.280 with you. You've got a couple of books you've written. So if you want to plug

01:25:18.180 those and then I'll make links available for all the guys as well.

01:25:21.740 Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate that. Everybody at home, I'm Adam Lane-Smith, the attachment

01:25:26.380 specialist. You can find my full body of work, my courses. I just released how to build a

01:25:31.120 secure marriage. Everything's available on my website, adamlanesmith.com. You can find

01:25:35.500 me on Instagram and on YouTube as at attachment Adam. Attachment theory is my whole life and

01:25:41.180 I'm going to be teaching it till the day I die and probably beyond that too. So come check

01:25:44.900 me out and let me know how I can help. Adam, once again, man, I appreciate you. Thank

01:25:49.040 you for your time today. Thank you, Ryan. I appreciate you.

01:25:53.480 Man, there you go. My conversation with the one and only Adam Lane-Smith, as you heard on

01:25:57.800 the podcast, I'm going to be doing part two because it is warranted. This is a conversation

01:26:03.040 that I've, for the past 10 years, have heard over and over and over again. So if this one resonated

01:26:10.080 with you, go check out my past conversation with Adam, you can go to orderman.com and type

01:26:16.120 in Adam Lane-Smith to find that first one. And we're going to be doing round two, as I

01:26:20.640 said earlier, I guess at this point it'd be round three. So that one should be coming out

01:26:26.400 in the next 30 to 45 days. Make sure you check it out. Subscribe if you're listening to this

01:26:32.460 podcast on Apple or Spotify and make sure you leave a rating and review when you do. Connect

01:26:39.280 with Adam on the socials over on X or YouTube or Instagram or wherever you're catching your

01:26:47.340 social media updates. And then also make sure you go to divorcenotdeath.com if you are facing

01:26:53.880 or staring down a divorce and learn what you need to learn to get overcome those as best

01:26:58.980 you can. All right, guys, you've got your marching orders. We will be back tomorrow for

01:27:03.660 our Ask Me Anything. Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant

01:27:08.620 to be.

01:27:12.760 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of

01:27:16.920 your life and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order

01:27:21.080 at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - August 12, 2025

ADAM LANE SMITH ｜ How Men and Women Cause Each Other Pain

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