Order of Man - ORION TARABAN ｜ Winning in the Sexual Marketplace

00:00:00.000 Very few men think of relationships in the frame of the quote-unquote sexual marketplace,

00:00:05.400 although the rules and principles of attraction and connection can very much be understood as an

00:00:11.360 economic model of sorts of perceived value. And of course, the man who offers the most perceived

00:00:17.100 value is the man who gets the girl. Whether you're married or single, understanding the intricacies

00:00:22.200 and nuance of what makes a man attractive to a woman will help him get more of what he wants

00:00:27.000 from her. My guest today, psychologist Orion Taraband joins me to discuss these dynamics

00:00:32.020 between men and women so we all can get more of what we're after in relationships. We cover the

00:00:38.160 importance of knowing your value and knowing what is valuable to the opposite sex, why love has little

00:00:43.800 or nothing to do with attraction, what is known as the Madonna whore complex, the concepts of captains

00:00:50.520 and passengers as it relates to dating and mating, the differences between talking and communicating,

00:00:56.380 and how best to make yourself more attractive.

00:00:59.400 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears and boldly chart your

00:01:04.680 own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time you are not easily

00:01:10.660 deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you

00:01:18.220 will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:26.380 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. I am Ryan Michler. I'm very, very excited to bring

00:01:31.020 this conversation to you. I was introduced to Orion several months ago. I think I caught some

00:01:37.680 of his YouTube videos and I've had some really, really good conversations about his topics and

00:01:42.780 his teachings. And I've been looking forward to having him on the podcast. So we've got a very good

00:01:48.680 one, a very interesting one, and I think you're going to find it valuable. At least I hope you do.

00:01:52.680 And that is my goal here, guys, is to give you as much value as I can, to give you all the tools

00:01:57.420 and resources you need to thrive as a man. And speaking of value and tools, I want to mention my

00:02:04.200 friends over at Montana Knife Company. They help make this show possible and they are building

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00:02:19.420 over at Montana Knife Company and use the code ORDER OF MAN. All one word, ORDER OF MAN at checkout

00:02:25.260 when you do. Again, that's MontanaKnifeCompany.com. Use the code ORDER OF MAN. Now let me introduce

00:02:31.100 you to Orion. He is a licensed clinical psychologist. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology

00:02:36.740 from the California School of Professional Psychology. He focuses on men's health, healthy masculinity,

00:02:43.500 relationship dynamics, and personal development. He's also the creator of the wildly popular

00:02:48.780 YouTube channel Psych Hacks and also a podcast by the same name. And he offers brief thought

00:02:56.160 provoking videos on psychological tips drawn from his clinical work. He launched his business

00:03:02.860 with the YouTube channel and the podcast in particular in 2021 and has amassed hundreds and

00:03:10.060 hundreds of thousands of subscribers and over 140 million views. He's also the author of the book

00:03:16.620 The Value of Others, which explores an economic model of relationships in the modern dating

00:03:22.540 landscape. And his work has sparked a lot of discussion across very varied social media platforms.

00:03:29.240 And he's praised by some for his logic and also critiqued for his provocative and controversial

00:03:35.880 takes on intimacy and gender dynamics. Enjoy this one, fellas.

00:03:41.620 Well, Ryan, great to see you, man. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

00:03:44.180 Of course. Thanks for having me on, Ryan. I'm happy to be here.

00:03:47.140 You bet. I've been digging into your book, The Value of Others. I'm not sure how I came across

00:03:50.860 it. I think, I don't know. I actually don't know. That's the interesting thing about social media and

00:03:56.320 interwebs these days is we never know how we run across things. But I came across your content and

00:04:00.460 have been very, very intrigued, to say the least, since I ran across the work that you're doing.

00:04:05.560 Right on. Well, I'm happy that you did. It's been quite a cult phenomenon. I haven't spent a single

00:04:11.140 dollar on marketing. I don't have an agent. This is self-published. And yet it's sold over 150,000

00:04:16.260 copies in less than 10 months. So it's doing very well, all through word of mouth and direct to

00:04:22.040 consumer through the YouTube channel. What do you attribute that to? Because I've written a couple

00:04:27.360 of books over the past 10 years, and I don't think they've, no, I don't think they have not hit the

00:04:32.300 level that you're talking about right now personally. What do you attribute that cult phenomenon to?

00:04:37.380 Well, I do think it has to do with the success of the YouTube channel, Psych Hacks. I think that

00:04:42.800 everything spins from the YouTube channel. So for many years, I've been posting content regularly,

00:04:49.580 new episodes twice a week. Earlier this year, I went down to once a week as an experiment

00:04:53.800 to see how that would impact YouTube. It impacted YouTube in many of the predictable ways,

00:04:59.380 but many other things started to suffer as well. Book sales went down, new consultation clients went down,

00:05:06.180 speaking opportunities became less frequent. So everything for better or for worse spins from

00:05:12.340 YouTube. So I think that if you want to write a book, it could be the best book in the world. But

00:05:17.800 unfortunately, if you don't have an audience already ready for it, it's only you and your Uncle Ted who

00:05:23.260 are going to read it. And maybe Uncle Ted is going to read it, you know. So unfortunately, the success of

00:05:28.640 a book isn't necessarily a metric of its wisdom or its elegance or its utility. It can be. But if you

00:05:38.300 want to write a book, it's better to build an audience first. So I don't know what size your

00:05:43.460 audience was when you wrote your previous books. But my hunch is that it's smaller than it is today.

00:05:48.920 Oh, yeah. Well, that's that's definitely true. I wrote my first book when I think we're a year into

00:05:54.560 the movement. We're 10 years into the movement now. So it would it would definitely be a little

00:05:58.160 different now that we've built up an audience. But I agree with you. You can find the people that

00:06:04.040 really resonate with your information and your work and the people who want to hear more about

00:06:08.720 what you have to say in the style that you have to share it. And you do share it in a very,

00:06:13.000 a very interesting style. I think maybe thoughtful, clinical, very in depth. I think how would you

00:06:21.860 describe the way that you explain the work that you do? At least the style of it anyways.

00:06:26.540 Another component to potentially the success of the book are some of the pictures in the

00:06:31.060 background there, which are I have some of the credentials. So I'm not simply a self-styled

00:06:37.220 relationship guru, which they're kind of a dime a dozen in 2025. So I do have some of the,

00:06:44.740 let's say, ascribed authority that comes from certain designations and education and whatnot,

00:06:49.540 which is helpful to kind of get your foot in the door and to have that sort of trustworthiness.

00:06:54.400 Because I do think, and I think it's for the best, that I tend to hold myself to, let's say,

00:06:59.080 higher standards of communication and integrity than the average influencer, just because of

00:07:05.460 my ethical code and my profession. So I do think that there's one thing for someone to write a book

00:07:10.960 about relationships, another thing for a psychologist to do so. Not that that necessarily makes me or anyone

00:07:17.680 with that degree an expert, but I do think it helps. So one thing that in terms of the style that I think

00:07:24.120 I'm pretty good at is you got definitely some experts in the field of relationships, intersectional

00:07:30.260 dynamics, but if they tend to be technical experts or academics, their work is often very inaccessible

00:07:37.900 to people. Some people write fantastic studies and know these dynamics that I described very

00:07:45.520 intimately, but they have a very small audience. The language is very inaccessible. It's in

00:07:49.840 the style of academic writing, which is almost like a foreign language. The person who's best at this

00:07:57.260 is probably David Buss, which is the name that many people know in the field of evolutionary psychology.

00:08:02.680 He's at the University of Texas, Austin. Many of his books are accessible to a lay audience,

00:08:06.900 but they are basically the description and summation of various scientific studies. Whereas I tend to

00:08:14.960 kind of dispense with that and make more of a theoretical argument and just sort of share the

00:08:20.980 ideas upon which many of these studies are based and the findings that they conclude. Another thing I do

00:08:28.060 is I tend to try to be a bit more conversational. So most of my episodes, for example, are inspired by

00:08:38.780 consultations that I do with my patients. If I see people and the same problem comes up over and over

00:08:44.860 again, I can assume that this is more or less a common problem in today's day and age. If these

00:08:49.660 five people have it, the chances are there's 50 million people out there that are dealing with

00:08:53.580 this or a similar problem. And if the intervention that works for these individuals work for these

00:08:58.280 five, it might also work for a substantial portion of that 50 million as well. But what helps people is

00:09:04.680 not factual evidence. What helps people is not theory divorced from practice. So the guidelines I give

00:09:12.060 are actually very actionable. They're not theoretical. They're not based on what should be the case.

00:09:18.380 They're based on what can actually move the needle. And this is something that I've discovered in my

00:09:22.400 own life and the lives of those that I've worked with and substantiated by a lot of the evidence base

00:09:26.520 in the literature. But rather than go down that road, I keep things fairly conversational. I generally riff

00:09:32.020 an idea to myself, transcribe that using AI into a document, and then spend some time polishing

00:09:37.860 the idea into a script, which I can then present in one of my episodes. And I think that keeps things

00:09:44.080 down to earth because it's rooted in a dialogue that was based in real human suffering and a desire

00:09:50.240 to get out of that and or to meet some sort of desired outcome.

00:09:55.040 Well, I mean, I want to dig into the material because I would definitely agree with the way that

00:09:59.460 you frame that. It certainly has been received that way from me.

00:10:03.720 And one of the things that really stood out to me is your use of metaphor and analogies,

00:10:08.500 and specifically this idea of the captain and the passenger. For whatever reason, that segment of

00:10:15.540 the book really stood out to me. And I think as we continue to explore what we're talking about

00:10:20.200 today, it would make sense for us to explain some terms. And what are the prerogatives? You talk

00:10:26.040 about the three prerogatives of the captain, and you also talk about the three prerogatives of

00:10:30.780 the passenger. You don't make any gender assignments, but I think I can assume for the

00:10:36.840 most part, the captain would traditionally be the male and the passenger would traditionally be the

00:10:42.780 female. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I mentioned that in the book, but we are no longer living

00:10:47.280 through that historical moment. Today, women are encouraged and incentivized and empowered to be

00:10:53.220 captains in their own right. But if they want to take a traditional path of being a passenger,

00:10:56.920 that's still open to them. The promise of gender equality under feminism was that men would also

00:11:04.140 be liberated from, let's say, their traditional gender roles and the toxic aspects of their

00:11:09.320 masculinity. And that hasn't really happened. It's not possible in 2025 for a man to really set his

00:11:17.100 sights on being a passenger. Women might want to be captains, but they don't want to be in

00:11:23.480 relationships with male passengers. So men kind of have a Hobson's choice where it's between going

00:11:30.040 through the trouble of ascending to his captaincy or sort of languishing on the dock, as I put it.

00:11:35.780 Those guys don't seem to go anywhere because it's very difficult for them to secure passage on a

00:11:39.780 female captain ship because of some of the economic incentives. So have you finished the book or you

00:11:44.040 just started with it? I think I'm on chapter seven at this point. I think there's what, nine,

00:11:50.420 ten chapters? Is that right? There's 12 chapters. And I think chapter four goes into the intersections

00:11:55.000 of gender and role. So I break down the four different ways where you can have a male captain

00:12:01.120 and a male passenger, a female captain and a female passenger, and how different combinations tend to lend

00:12:06.800 themselves better to the sexual marketplace because there's alignment in resources and incentives,

00:12:12.020 as it were. And a male passenger isn't very useful to women. So even though there might be a movement

00:12:19.080 to, let's say, normalize stay-at-home dads, we know that in practice, most women do not grow up and spend

00:12:25.920 most of their lives hoping that one day they will take material care of a grown man. Like, that's not an

00:12:33.580 attractive prospect to the vast majority of women. I don't even think it's an attractive prospect to

00:12:38.940 most men. I made a post probably a month and a half, two months ago, about the mental gymnastics

00:12:46.060 a man would have to play in order to justify him being a stay-at-home dad. And of course, all the

00:12:51.160 stay-at-home dads got very, very upset. But at the end of the day, you can look at the, I think you can

00:12:56.240 look at the statistics and see that they're generally less happy and lead to divorces sooner than their

00:13:02.120 traditional counterparts. Yes, it does take a lot of mental gymnastics and never underestimate a

00:13:07.980 human's ability to complete those gymnastics. Like, people will do all kinds of things to

00:13:13.020 diminish cognitive dissonance that would lead to otherwise sources of emotional pain. But yeah,

00:13:19.180 there's lots of statistics. With the little asterisk, which I'll say once because it's very annoying to

00:13:23.060 keep bringing it up over and over again, is that statistics are very different from individuals.

00:13:26.680 And you don't actually have relationships formed between men and women. You have a specific

00:13:32.700 relationship formed between this individual man and this individual woman. And their needs,

00:13:37.660 desires, and skill sets are going to be very different and could deviate significantly from

00:13:41.900 the statistical population or the norm. And that's okay. But in general, yes, we're talking in

00:13:47.900 generalities and these things tend to be true on a population level. Both things are accurate.

00:13:52.200 So then if that's the case, what would you say? And obviously I've read through this portion of

00:13:57.880 the book and it really resonates with me, the prerogatives of the captain. You know, obviously

00:14:02.100 we talk to men, this is called order of man. And if we are to assume that the captain is generally

00:14:07.560 geared towards men traditionally, then I think it would be good for them to understand what is their

00:14:12.240 prerogative in a sexual relationship, a sexual marketplace. Sure. And I also try to explain in the

00:14:17.600 book that there are liabilities to being a female captain that our culture does not very, do a very

00:14:22.680 good job of explaining to women on the front end, which is like bad for informed consent. If your

00:14:29.280 doctor isn't telling you about some of the risks of a drug or a procedure, how can you really make

00:14:33.480 an informed decision about whether to take it? You're just hearing a lot of the positives about

00:14:37.920 female captaincy and not some other liabilities. And I think that's irresponsible. It's leading to a lot

00:14:43.100 of unpreferred outcomes in today's day and age. Well, so let, before, well, before we get into that,

00:14:48.460 because you bring that up, I mean, obviously we have the concept of feminism and now third,

00:14:53.660 fourth way feminism as we move into the future. And I imagine it'll be even more so. What are some

00:15:00.520 of the liabilities that women face when they try to step into that captaincy role? Well, a lot of women,

00:15:06.260 first of all, it takes a long time. It takes at least a decade to ascend to one's captaincy.

00:15:11.900 So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of expense. It's a lot of effort. And it's certainly not guaranteed.

00:15:18.580 Lots of people start down that path and don't arrive. And there are risks associated to not

00:15:22.920 arriving after you invested a considerable amount of generally time and effort into something.

00:15:30.720 So that's one. But let's assume that a woman actually does the hard work and succeeds in a sense

00:15:36.720 to her captaincy. The main problem that she'll have at that stage is, one, regardless of what her

00:15:43.400 culture or third or fourth way feminism tells her, many of the things that she's attracted to,

00:15:50.640 she's not going to find in a male passenger. We know from the context of hypergamy that women tend to

00:15:55.900 mate and date up, that even as women become more successful, they don't think of that and say,

00:16:01.200 oh, now it's an opportunity for me to share some of my success with a less successful man in order

00:16:05.900 to secure the relationship that I would prefer. Women, for better or for worse, they don't share.

00:16:10.260 They don't grow up with that kind of attitude where a man is sort of expected to succeed and then

00:16:16.340 distribute some of those resources and success to his family, his children. That's part of what we're

00:16:24.280 acculturated to do. And I don't think that women are acculturated to do the same thing.

00:16:28.740 There's like the old joke about marriage where, you know, my money is my money and our money is

00:16:34.680 my money too, from a woman's perspective, right? Sorry to interrupt.

00:16:39.160 I mean, I think that's, no, and I interrupted you. I think that's accurate. Men traditionally,

00:16:43.640 from where I sit, are designed to give and women are designed to receive. So where we as men might take

00:16:49.200 the raw ingredients or the raw resources and distribute those to the people we love,

00:16:54.360 women are to receive that and make it better than we could do alone. That's how I look at it.

00:16:58.160 I think there's some truth to that. But in any case, when a woman succeeds, she still wants a

00:17:04.100 more successful man. And the more successful she is, the fewer more successful men there are. I talk

00:17:10.100 about this more later on in the book. And that increases the sexual interest for the top, let's

00:17:17.740 say 10% of men. And given some of their incentives, at least a substantial portion of those men are not

00:17:23.680 going to trade out an uncommon amount of sexual optionality to enter into an exclusive commitment

00:17:29.140 to any one woman, because that just goes against some of his, let's say, more biological incentives.

00:17:34.580 So I make the argument later on in the book that women's success is actually making society a little

00:17:38.740 bit more polygamous, because fewer men are controlling a greater share of all of the sexuality.

00:17:44.860 And those men, when put in that position, are going to be loath to give up that privileged

00:17:51.580 position. So that's another liability. You want to respond?

00:17:54.960 Well, yeah. Well, I was thinking about one thing I heard you talk about, and I can't remember if it

00:17:59.600 was in the book or a podcast. You talked about women controlling primarily the sexual marketplace

00:18:05.700 versus men controlling the commitment marketplace. Is that at odds with what you're saying right now,

00:18:12.880 that fewer men are going to then be able to determine the sexual marketplace? I hope that

00:18:17.900 makes sense. So the way that I and other people, I think, usually say this is that women are the

00:18:24.160 gatekeepers of sex and men are the gatekeepers of commitment. And I do talk about that later on in

00:18:29.480 the book. So what we're getting at is just like women's, let's say, material success and social

00:18:37.820 success still motivates her to seek out more successful men. And there are fewer of them.

00:18:44.200 A man who has lots of sexual optionality will be loath to dispense with that in favor of one woman.

00:18:50.600 And if he ever does that, she is going to be more attractive than her competition.

00:18:55.480 Do you see? So it's like, just like there are going to be fewer men who can successfully capture

00:19:01.760 the sustained attention of a successful woman. There's going to be fewer women who can capture

00:19:08.280 the sustained attention of a very successful man. And those are going to be extremely attractive

00:19:12.480 women, just like they're going to be extremely successful men. And there's just so many very

00:19:18.380 successful men, and there's only so many very attractive women. But that's how the incentives go.

00:19:23.220 And it's not really a question of man and woman. Like, I think we have to be careful about

00:19:29.180 naturalizing some of these. I think they're economic. And whoever has, like, our standard shift

00:19:35.700 given the available opportunities that we experience at any given stage of our lives.

00:19:40.960 And sometimes that changes. Sometimes people can become wildly successful. Sometimes that's the

00:19:45.920 most destabilizing thing that can happen to a long-term relationship, is one person becomes wildly

00:19:50.140 successful, becomes very rich or very famous, or enters into a new echelon of society. And suddenly he or

00:19:55.920 she is exposed to more and potentially, probably more attractive sexual opportunities. So now what

00:20:03.700 used to be okay, maybe that was a virtue that was made out of a necessity. And now there's not that

00:20:09.300 necessity anymore. Now there's possibility and opportunity. It's going to cause people to

00:20:12.580 reevaluate their criteria for mating and dating. And that has nothing to do with men and women. That

00:20:16.820 has to do with power. That has to do with optionality. That has to do with attractiveness. I talk about

00:20:21.320 that more in chapters seven, eight. So you're right around there in the book. Yeah. Well, it is interesting

00:20:26.380 when you talk about it from an economic standpoint, because I imagine the precision in the way that

00:20:31.220 you talk about it might, for some people, strip away the, uh, some of the nuance or the romanticism

00:20:37.920 through relationships. But it is, I, you said good? Well, not good so much about the nuance, though

00:20:45.360 that's somewhat unavoidable when you talk in population level generalities. But yes, strip away the

00:20:50.540 romance. Let's get rid of it. Chapter nine is love has nothing to do with relationships.

00:20:54.260 And it's my favorite chapter of the book. It's generally the best received chapter of the book

00:20:58.520 as well, is that maybe part of the reason why we've had a terrible success rate with marriage

00:21:04.560 and long-term relationships over the last hundred years is that we have conflated multiple roles into

00:21:11.340 one single person. And most notably, we do that in the creation of the love marriage. Like throughout

00:21:17.240 most of human history, the wife and the mistress were not the same person, but now we want them

00:21:21.520 to be the same person. And it's extremely difficult for one person to discharge both of those roles

00:21:26.240 successfully. This is a little bit of the, uh, and I, and I heard this just over the past day or so,

00:21:31.180 the Madonna whore complex, where you may not be as attracted to your long-term female counterpart,

00:21:38.260 um, or, or partner. If you see her as solely the mother of your children instead of your,

00:21:44.940 your lover, if I'm understanding it correctly. Yeah, that's where it comes from. The Madonna

00:21:49.600 issue, I think traditionally comes up after a woman becomes a mother and it's bound up in the

00:21:56.100 psychoanalytic literature with that man's own idealized relationship to his mother. No one likes

00:22:01.760 to think of their own mother having sex and being a sexual partner, uh, which is why what's the biggest

00:22:08.880 schoolyard insult is I fucked your mom kind of a thing. You know, no one wants to think of their

00:22:13.120 mom as a sexual object who is, uh, satisfying a man's lust, but that might be how she got there.

00:22:20.140 That might be how you got there. Who knows? So, uh, that does tend to mess guys up. Now I'm in the

00:22:26.260 process of creating a series called why men lose interest in sex. None of those episodes have been

00:22:30.900 released yet. As of now, I don't know when this conversation is going to be released,

00:22:34.700 but I do look into some of the misunderstandings about male sexuality. I think the common perception

00:22:41.620 about male sexuality is that, you know, as long as it has a pulse, we're interested, you know,

00:22:46.560 and it's always the men who are clamoring for more sex. And it's always the woman who has the headache

00:22:51.580 and certainly that can happen, but male sexuality is actually far more complex than that. Maybe not as

00:22:58.580 complex as female sexuality, but still complex in its own right. And I do think that one of the

00:23:04.660 things that is at the heart of male sexual drive is objectification. I think that it's easier. It's

00:23:12.900 harder to fuck someone you love. I'm just going to say it's hard to fuck someone you love because when

00:23:18.460 you love somebody, you know them, you care about them. You don't want them to experience pain or

00:23:23.360 distress. But a lot of sex is actually aggressive, whether it's actually aggressive or it's, let's

00:23:29.800 say, sublimated aggression. It can be dark. It can be perverse. It can be wild. And that's not

00:23:38.660 something you do with someone you love. You want to keep someone you love safe. You want to keep

00:23:42.300 them, you want to protect them. But that doesn't make for hot and heavy sex. Like you can maybe make

00:23:47.120 love to someone that you love, but it's very hard to fuck someone you love. That's why sometimes it's

00:23:51.380 easier for guys to do all kinds of wild, exciting, fun stuff with women that they don't really care

00:23:56.940 about. The woman on the inside, the person on the inside is still mostly a cipher. So the guy doesn't

00:24:02.840 have to worry about that, even if he wanted to. He doesn't really know the person. He's just

00:24:07.380 interacting, let's say more or less lustfully, with the physical body that he now has access to.

00:24:12.540 And they're two bodies experiencing and exploring pleasure. And you can almost dispense with the

00:24:17.140 persons involved, which is sometimes leads to great sex. And so what I say to women sometimes

00:24:25.180 in long-term relationships who are suffering from a decline in attraction from their partners

00:24:28.760 is that on some level, it's important for her husband to be still to be able to objectify her.

00:24:35.740 Like there's a little switch that a guy needs to cultivate in his mind, where it's like no matter

00:24:40.200 how much he loves and cares about that woman, he needs to be able to flip that on and just see

00:24:44.280 a nice pair of tits or like this fat ass that he wants to just bend over. And I think that is a

00:24:50.880 way that he can keep the spark of sexual interest alive because that's what the male animal desires.

00:24:56.980 The male animal desires to do that. The male animal doesn't know anything about love. That's a human

00:25:01.340 concept or a higher animal concept. Let's put it that way. That's, that's, I think that's a fair,

00:25:06.840 but, but I also think women don't generally, they don't mind that, you know, we're, we're talking about

00:25:13.460 from, from the concept. I think that's true. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think when you use the word

00:25:19.000 fuck, it seems like you're doing something to somebody, but at their expense, well, but at their

00:25:25.060 expense, but I don't think women are uninterested in being objectified to some degree, as long as

00:25:32.260 there's other elements that they appreciate, emotional, mental connection, then they're willing,

00:25:37.100 it seems like, to give themselves to a man who's willing to take and ravish them.

00:25:40.820 Absolutely. Women have no problem being objectified by the men. They want to objectify them.

00:25:47.860 But if you are trying to objectify a woman and she does not want to be objectified by you, then

00:25:52.280 you're going to get the HR complaints. So it's not the objectification per se that's problematic.

00:25:57.980 And this is why it's actually very dangerous and bad for, in many respects, bad for women on the

00:26:03.860 population level. When we come out and say things like, you should never objectify women. You should

00:26:09.160 always respect them, respect all women. I've been in an episode about this a long time ago. The

00:26:13.820 concept of respect, in my experience, means different things to the average man and to the

00:26:18.960 average woman. To a man, respect is based on honor and admiration, and it's devoid of sexuality.

00:26:28.680 Like you would never respect your buddy by sexualizing him. You know what I'm saying? It's based on,

00:26:37.000 in any ceremony or ritual or event that's designed to confer respect, like a graduation or a funeral or

00:26:45.260 a military decoration ceremony, it would be inappropriate, if not disgusting, to bring sexuality

00:26:50.860 into it. So respect and sexuality are like almost anathema to each other in the male imagination.

00:26:58.780 And when men are told to respect, respect, respect, and they want to do that because they want to give

00:27:05.720 women what they want in a good faith effort to say, like, I can be a good partner. I want to be a good

00:27:10.400 partner to a woman. Then they remove a lot of that sexuality, which turns them into nice guys.

00:27:15.420 They don't understand why women think that they're great, but they, they think of them like a brother.

00:27:21.800 They don't feel that spark or that chemistry. And the guy gets even more distressed when he sees the

00:27:26.760 woman go off with some, you know, asshole or toxic narcissist or whatever it is. It's no consolation

00:27:35.800 that she thinks that he's awesome, but she won't fuck him. And I think that has to do with the way that

00:27:40.200 he, he, he treats her sometimes.

00:27:43.020 Well, I think a lot of nice guys will look at the quote unquote bad boys and ask themselves why these guys,

00:27:48.460 these dicks, these jerks, these assholes get all the women. I don't think it's the, that they're a bad boy

00:27:54.040 or they mistreat them. I think there's elements of that behavior that makes them very attractive to the

00:28:00.600 women that they're out seeking.

00:28:02.760 Oh, certainly. That is absolutely true is that we can play with the linguistics and say, okay, they're not,

00:28:07.220 they're not cocky. They're confident or they're not arrogant. They're self-assured or bold. So

00:28:14.040 like, and clearly there are, those are different constructs that are adjacent and it's very hard

00:28:19.260 to walk those lines. But again, sexuality is not squeaky clean. Like there's darkness and

00:28:26.800 the bedroom plays by different rules than the rest of society. It's like the wild west.

00:28:32.280 And there are women who get off on being disrespected.

00:28:37.060 There are men who get off on being disrespected. So it's like the idea that

00:28:41.340 these women just want these men because

00:28:44.460 they're confident isn't necessarily the case. Like

00:28:48.780 what people are attracted to

00:28:51.460 is a labyrinth. It's a morass. It's very difficult to tease apart.

00:28:56.020 It's very difficult to understand. Is it even necessary to understand as long as it's not breaking

00:29:00.700 any laws? Um, you know, and, and both people are into it. Like what's the problem, but to say that

00:29:07.180 all women get off at just being treated respectfully by a confident man, that nice guy's mistake as an

00:29:12.700 asshole is also incorrect. Yeah. I, you know, I, as you were saying that I saw a funny video the other

00:29:17.540 day, uh, where it was, it was a video of a husband and wife trying to act normal after they had done

00:29:23.900 quote unquote feral things to each other. And I thought that's, that's good. That's a good

00:29:29.520 relationship. They're in the bedroom. They're, they're both consenting individuals. They're,

00:29:34.520 they're using each other for pleasure. They're giving each other pleasure. And then they come

00:29:39.460 back into quote unquote society or, you know, like, like more sophisticated or whatever and act the way

00:29:46.260 that they should. But I think there's a misconception about what should happen behind closed doors and what

00:29:51.640 should happen in the bedroom. Yeah. I had made an episode a while back called every woman is two

00:29:55.720 women. And what I argue is that there's the front facing woman that you see at work at the grocery

00:30:01.380 store going about society. And then there's the woman in the bedroom and they're very rarely the same

00:30:07.460 person. And men fall into all kinds of fallacies when they believe that the woman's going to act in

00:30:14.900 the bedroom, like she acts in society. And this can go a couple of ways. First of all, is you get the

00:30:20.500 idea that this is a competent, confident, successful woman. Maybe she's a boss bitch type

00:30:25.100 of a woman. That doesn't necessarily mean that she's going to be dominant in the bedroom. She can,

00:30:30.640 but you don't know. Like it's, it's almost impossible to tell by the same token.

00:30:35.640 I wonder if she may not even want to be that because she is so much that energy in public life

00:30:41.080 that she needs something to balance that out in a way. I would say that that's probably more likely,

00:30:45.600 but you never know the individual case until you're actually there and you're exploring that

00:30:51.160 and you're communicating about that. So you can make a reasonable assumption, but you know,

00:30:56.140 people hate to be the object of incorrect assumptions, right? But I, to corroborate what

00:31:00.720 you were saying, I dated in college, a woman who went on to be a dominatrix in a dungeon in New York

00:31:07.500 City. And this was 20 years ago. And she was getting paid a thousand dollars an hour by these high

00:31:11.800 powered lawyers and whatnot to come in. And these were men who basically got their way all the time

00:31:19.220 in society that weren't told no very often, if at all. And she, so what do you think the most asked

00:31:25.340 for services were at that dungeon from these high powered dominant men to be catheterized, to have

00:31:32.580 their balls stepped on, like to be humiliated. I mean, because that's what they don't have.

00:31:39.420 They don't get to feel that anymore. Uh, I I'm making an episode again. This is also in

00:31:44.580 pre-production. A lot of pornography is wish fulfillment. And if you look at a lot of the

00:31:51.180 pornography that men use, it's very transgressive. It's transgressive in a couple of ways. It could

00:31:56.280 be actually violent or aggressive. Like some of it can border on non-consensual or be, you know,

00:32:02.900 in the play of it, be non-consensual or it's just really aggressive. And the guy is just drilling

00:32:08.060 a corner or it can be, let's say, socially transgressive, which is that this is taboo.

00:32:13.940 We shouldn't be doing this. These boundaries shouldn't be crossed and yet they're being

00:32:18.020 crossed. So in both cases, the wish fulfillment of transgressive pornography is power. It's

00:32:23.900 I'm powerful enough to take what I want and to not suffer the consequences. I'm powerful enough that

00:32:29.600 women who shouldn't be fucking me are fucking me because they can't resist me and they're going

00:32:34.380 to suffer the consequences. The wish fulfillment of most pornography of men is power. And that's

00:32:40.180 because most men are powerless. When you look at the fantasies of powerful men, it's not the same

00:32:46.120 as the vast swath of male humanity. You get the opposite is that they want to experience what it's

00:32:53.440 like to be abashed and humiliated and put in their place and to be potentially dominated. Again, this

00:33:01.860 isn't a universal thing, but it does tend to that direction where people want to experience what

00:33:07.020 they, what they haven't experienced yet, what they don't get in other parts of their lives.

00:33:13.020 Men, I'm going to step away from the conversation briefly. I want to mention, I'm very happy to tell

00:33:18.160 you that the Iron Council, our exclusive brotherhood is now open for business. It's more than more than

00:33:24.440 just a group. It's, it's like a set of brotherhood, like-minded men who are committed to taking ownership

00:33:29.780 of every aspect of their lives. So if you're tired of drifting through life without direction,

00:33:35.220 this is where you'll go to build a battle plan, set objectives, build accountability with men who

00:33:41.440 will not let you slide or settle. We have weekly calls, frameworks, accountability. And really what

00:33:48.020 I want to do is help you forge discipline and purpose in your life. There's no fluff or BS. It's all

00:33:53.340 real results. It means that when you join the Iron Council, you're stepping into a tribe, a group of men,

00:33:59.500 and a band of brothers that values strength and integrity and growth. So if you want to become a

00:34:04.640 better father or husband, a leader of men, this community will give you access to men who are on

00:34:11.560 the same mission. And you'll have, again, all the tools and challenges and frameworks that are going

00:34:15.940 to help push you beyond your current limits and achieve better results. So again, we're open right

00:34:20.780 now. Check it out at order of man.com slash iron council. That's order of man.com slash iron

00:34:27.060 council. Do that right after the conversation. For now, I'll get back to it with Orion.

00:34:33.200 One of the things that stood out to me as you were talking about this concept of communicating

00:34:37.880 these issues. And I have been curious as I've read this book and listened to your videos and your

00:34:45.040 YouTube channel. It seems like we're finding a thin line between how much you communicate about

00:34:52.200 these types of issues versus how much you don't communicate because it might kill some of the

00:34:57.980 natural attractiveness to the opposite sex. Yeah, it's tricky. And of course, every individual

00:35:04.360 couple needs to work this out for themselves. But I would at this point make a little distinction

00:35:10.580 between talking and communication. Okay. Talking is a form of communication, but not all communication

00:35:15.260 is talking. And I do think talking for the most part is overrated, especially around things having

00:35:22.500 to do in the bedroom. Talking about sexual needs and desires requires a great deal of emotional maturity,

00:35:29.520 self-knowledge, confidence, vocabulary even can be obstructive to some people. So it's not like you

00:35:37.320 can't do it, but it's kind of the advanced course in both parties need to be there. One person could

00:35:42.960 be the most competent, accepting, open-minded, effective communicator. But if his or her partner

00:35:50.000 is not, it's going to be very difficult to tease that out. It's not impossible, but it's going to be

00:35:55.020 difficult. By the same token, people kind of tell us what we want, what they want and what they don't

00:36:01.200 want, what they like and what they don't like. But they communicate in other ways besides their

00:36:06.420 explicit words, they communicate with their expression, with their tone, with their proxemics,

00:36:13.380 with their body language, body language, with the eye contact. It's like, and we, we, we need to get

00:36:21.060 better at potentially picking up on, on those cues as opposed to relying on, well, everything needs to

00:36:27.080 be explicit, verbally discussed. There's a time and a place for that, but it's certainly, it does kill

00:36:33.860 the vibe. Let's put it that way. Well, and I wrote down, as you were saying that before you even

00:36:37.660 mentioned it is, yeah, you can pick up on that stuff if you listen. And I'm not talking about

00:36:42.420 listen, like auditory listening. Like a third ear. I'm saying paying attention, paying attention.

00:36:47.360 Being perceptive. How is she moving? How is she communicating? How is she, like you said, eye

00:36:51.920 contact? Is she moving closer? Is her body language open or is it closed? I think a lot of this goes to

00:36:58.360 just paying attention. But I also wonder, you know, how much of this material is for men who

00:37:04.220 don't quite have the ability to do that relative to the men who maybe intuitively understand more of

00:37:10.680 it? I don't know. I hear what you're saying, but if the guy's not good at picking up a lot of this

00:37:17.360 nonverbal communication, he, chances are he's not going to be mature and attuned and accepting enough

00:37:22.880 to have nonjudgmental, warm and welcoming, explicit discussions about sexuality either.

00:37:28.740 I would find that to be very strange. Because why? Why? I don't disagree, but I'm curious why you

00:37:34.080 think that's the case. Because on some level, the ability to kind of tease out another person's

00:37:42.060 inner state is not entirely separate from the ability to tease out your own inner state. Like you

00:37:47.980 have to be comfortable with your own feelings and your own desires. Not what you think you want,

00:37:55.080 not what you think you should want, not what you want to want, but what you actually want.

00:38:00.260 And it's hard to honestly perceive another person when you're not in the habit of honestly perceiving

00:38:07.320 yourself. And once you're attuned to your own fluctuations of feeling and sensing, it's easier for

00:38:15.320 to do it with other people. Otherwise, what you get are more or less scripted conversations between

00:38:21.460 people who aren't very self-aware or not very comfortable. And maybe there's a place for scripted

00:38:25.900 conversations because it creates a structure or scaffold for people to enter into a discussion

00:38:30.720 that they would just be terrified of doing otherwise. But that works more or less about as well

00:38:36.380 as scripted pickup. You know, it's not really embedded in the person. And as soon as you go off script,

00:38:42.200 they might not know really how to deal with it or handle it. So most people who are confident enough

00:38:48.920 to say, hey, I know this isn't everybody's bag, but I really like to be dressed up in a bunny suit and

00:38:54.060 be spanked while I'm sucking on a jar of molasses. Are you into that? It's like that person is probably

00:38:59.740 more attuned to other people's internal emotional states because he's so knowledgeable about the weird

00:39:08.920 quirky thing that turns him on. And he's so comfortable with it. And he's so confident in

00:39:12.880 being able to express it that I think it would be really weird if he couldn't pick that shit up in

00:39:16.780 other people. So would you say that's a, I mean, your, your example is a bit extreme, obviously,

00:39:22.940 and you did it for point, but would you say that's a pre knowing yourself and what you're into and what

00:39:28.160 you're interested in is a prerequisite to attracting the opposite sex? I think it's really powerful,

00:39:34.300 especially for men, because a lot of men, because this is the second part of the two woman problem

00:39:39.660 that I was describing earlier. The first part is people assume that the boss bitches just want to

00:39:43.120 be dominant in the bedroom. And as we've been discussing, that's not always, or even often the

00:39:48.300 case. The second side of it is a lot of men look at women like the average woman, and they just think

00:39:56.000 that she has very vanilla desires. And they think that all she wants to do is be in a committed

00:40:01.120 relationship. Women just want commitment. They want to get married. They want to have a family.

00:40:06.600 They're not into any kind of that crazy. She's a good girl, especially if you like the woman

00:40:11.100 for that type of relationship. You, it's part of the Madonna whore thing. You don't want her to be

00:40:16.260 a slut. You want her to be a good girl, a nice girl. And so she's, oh, she's not into that kind of

00:40:20.600 stuff, or she would never go into that. It's like, that's not true. Women can have all kinds of

00:40:25.980 perverse desires. And they do have all kinds of perverse desires. And this is the flip side of it

00:40:33.980 is that women are generally more open and interested in sexual exploration than most men give them

00:40:40.760 credit for. But that takes a certain level of boldness to be able to suggest that or to move

00:40:47.560 the woman in that direction in an actual sexual encounter. Does that answer your question or did I

00:40:51.800 get off topic? No, it does. It reminded me of the quote, you know, um, how's it go late lady in the

00:40:57.920 streets, you know, freak in the sheets type concept. But I think what, at least from where I sit and my

00:41:03.260 own personality is I want her to do that for me and me only that's the freak in the sheets. It's not

00:41:09.380 available to anybody else. Would you agree with that? Well, yeah. Another quote that I've heard

00:41:15.160 that's useful is that, uh, you know, um, woman wants a bad boy who's only good to her and men want a

00:41:23.060 good girl. Who's only bad for him. Good. That's a good, that's interesting. That's a really interesting

00:41:27.580 concept. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. So I agree that most men want that. It's hard to get because most

00:41:35.360 men, the other quote is like, I try to turn a hoe into a housewife where they take the, like, so how does

00:41:40.420 a woman learn to be that sexually open and accomplished? Like she doesn't do that without

00:41:46.180 practice dude. And she's got to get that practice somewhere. So if she's showing up and she can

00:41:51.500 already do it, I mean, where did she learn that? She didn't learn it from you. So she might not be

00:41:57.140 as much of a lady as you think in this metaphor. So you can get it, but I think the best way to get

00:42:02.720 it is to try to find a good girl who's in the context of that committed relationship is open to

00:42:09.260 exploring less vanilla aspects of her sexuality. And you can over time and in, I would say dialogue,

00:42:16.900 but not always spoken dialogue, though sometimes spoken dialogue in a dialogue between the two of

00:42:20.660 you, like open her up to new sexual experiences. And I think the more a woman is attracted to a man,

00:42:26.300 the more she will be willing to give it a shot. Let's put it that way. It leads me into the idea of,

00:42:33.020 of body count. And I think there's, there is a bit of a double standard and I've heard things that

00:42:38.980 you've addressed with this, you know, for example, you know, men are, I think men, it's more acceptable

00:42:44.260 for men to have a higher body count than it is for women. And part of the reason from where I sit and

00:42:49.800 what I've seen is that you make the case it's because in order for men to have sexual encounters,

00:42:53.880 they have to do something. And in order for women to not have sexual encounters, they need to do

00:42:58.780 something. Yeah, it is a double standard. Let's not pretend that it isn't. And there are plenty of

00:43:04.320 double standards that privilege women. One thing I say is that in sexual relationships,

00:43:09.900 inequality is the rule, not the exception. So both sides generally pick on the double standards

00:43:18.780 in which they are the unprivileged party, but they tend to sweep under the rug those double standards

00:43:25.560 from which they benefit. And maybe the disproportionate number of double standards tend to cancel each other

00:43:30.840 out in the wash. So I don't, I don't think that we should be striving, nor do I think it's even

00:43:35.440 possible to eliminate all the double standards and for men and women to really have the same experience.

00:43:40.580 I don't think that's going to happen ever. And certainly not anytime soon. But the argument I make

00:43:45.400 in the book in chapter three is that this is actually an economic thing. And you see it, for example,

00:43:51.420 in a soccer game. So when one team is up three nil, they switch to defense. It's their game to lose.

00:43:57.440 The team that's down will switch to more and more offense. It's their game to win.

00:44:03.000 They'll take more risks.

00:44:03.920 Exactly. And so it has to do with power. It has to do with who is in the more privileged position

00:44:09.880 at any one time. And it just so happens that for most of their singlehood, women are the more

00:44:15.220 powerful player in the sexual marketplace. The average woman from 18 to 30 is far more attractive

00:44:21.480 competitive and enjoys greater optionality than the average man. Now that tends to shift

00:44:27.600 from the thirties and beyond. But like a man who becomes very famous and very wealthy, he switches

00:44:33.240 to defense, dude. He's got more to lose by one woman with a paternity suit or somebody ruining his

00:44:40.780 reputation. So it's not really about men and women. It's about being in a position to either gain or

00:44:47.340 being in a position to lose. And we just think it has to do with men and women because most people

00:44:51.320 date and pair up before it really switches to the man being the more powerful party.

00:44:56.360 Meaning that, I don't know that I've heard you say this, but that women will generally in younger

00:45:01.060 ages date for potential before it actually switches to power in men. That's what I'm hearing you say.

00:45:07.520 They should. And sometimes they do. Like I made an episode a long time called Ladies Find Your Dark Horse,

00:45:12.840 which is, I think, one of the best sexual strategies for a long-term mating that women have,

00:45:19.380 which is as women have this tendency, they want the winner. They want the guy who already has the

00:45:25.540 million bucks. They want the guy who already has the social status. He's obviously less of a risk

00:45:31.160 because like my dad told me a long time ago, Orion, everyone has potential. Everyone has potential.

00:45:36.720 Potential is like sand. Every human being could be more than he or she currently is. How many people are

00:45:41.060 actually working on realizing it and how many people are going to succeed in realizing it

00:45:45.080 in an appreciable timeframe? So he told me, don't marry potential. And maybe that's because I'm a man.

00:45:51.960 The problem, if when women try to not marry potential, when women try to marry the successful

00:45:56.560 man, again, if he's successful and she wants him, chances are there's a hundred other women that

00:46:02.320 want him. And what's the likelihood that she's going to beat out 99 of her intersexual competitors

00:46:07.220 for that one man? And what's the likelihood that that one man who has interest from a hundred women

00:46:12.540 to say, no, I don't like this. I just want to settle down with one woman and not really,

00:46:17.200 who needs sexual novelty? What kind of man really wants to sleep with a whole bunch of women who

00:46:22.620 are really into him? Like that, that's just an immature boy. It's like, come on, let's, let's be real.

00:46:27.360 That's something that almost all men would enjoy and find difficult to give up.

00:46:33.900 So the alternative to that is you have to pick the horse before the race is run, because if you

00:46:39.980 wait until the race is run, you're going to have to compete against all the people around the winner

00:46:44.500 circle for that person's attention. Now you're fucked. But before the race, there might not be

00:46:48.640 anyone checking out that horse. And so you have to get really good as a, as a woman in this metaphor,

00:46:54.760 you got to learn about horses. You got to learn about like what the teeth say and what the forelocks

00:46:59.080 say, or whatever the fuck it is. You have to understand horses to be able to make an informed

00:47:04.300 decision about where to bet. So you can get that winner at a discount before anyone is interested

00:47:09.540 in him. But most women don't want to spend the time to really learn about horses as it were.

00:47:16.300 Um, and, but one of the ways what other women are doing, right? You've talked about that in the book

00:47:19.580 is just watch what other women are doing. And then there's, um, but the women are gathering around

00:47:23.920 the winner circle. They're not gathering around a horse before the race. They want the winner.

00:47:29.360 That's the surest thing. And it's the clearest signal. And that's where the biggest crowds are

00:47:33.900 going to be for sure. I mean, every guy experienced this in high school. It seemed like there was like

00:47:37.380 two guys that all the women wanted. It's like, there's faddishness to female desire, which I've

00:47:41.880 talked about in other episodes as well. I've, I've, I've got a lot of questions on this. Okay. So let's,

00:47:47.040 let's start with the first one. I'm taking notes as we, as we document and talk about these,

00:47:50.660 these conversations. It's interesting when we talk about this double standard, because one thing

00:47:55.660 that, um, I've had conversations about and acknowledged is that if a man wants a woman

00:48:00.360 with a low body count, for example, um, most men are willing to engage in behavior that would

00:48:06.860 increase a woman's body count. And then at the same time, they're looking for a woman who wants a

00:48:12.820 low body count. So a great example of this would be pornography. A man will engage in pornography

00:48:17.020 with a woman who has maybe slept with a thousand men, 10,000 men. I don't know, whatever, whatever

00:48:22.980 the number is. And yet they'll engage in that behavior. And at the same time say, I don't want

00:48:29.580 a woman like that. Although they're contributing to the body count of the woman herself.

00:48:35.440 Yep. Yeah. It's a, it's a double standard. And we're trying to figure out how to work with that.

00:48:40.040 It's like if, and I do make that argument later in the book that it's also important for men to be

00:48:46.380 confident and competent with women, both in terms of seducing them in the early stages of

00:48:52.720 attraction, all the way to like being a good boyfriend or a good husband. How are they going

00:48:57.560 to learn? Like, just like the women need practice to learn how to do all the crazy things in bed. Men

00:49:03.380 need practice to pick women up and to be good lovers and to be competent, caring boyfriends.

00:49:10.460 That's not something that's really taught, except in a very general way. That's not helpful. It's

00:49:15.040 just like, just be a good man. Just love her, just et cetera, et cetera. And that's not very specific,

00:49:21.560 actionable advice. That's why I don't find it useful. But I do think the, what, what it comes down to

00:49:27.980 is that men tend to compartmentalize women is that they're the women that they will use

00:49:35.240 for sexual pleasure in the context of a sexual, in the sexual marketplace. And there are women

00:49:40.580 and there are far fewer that they would be interested in marrying and starting a family

00:49:44.760 with and having a long-term emotional relationship with. And, and they're not the same person for any

00:49:50.440 given man, but there might be some crossover between the two of us. Like we wouldn't draw that line

00:49:56.020 exactly in the same place, you and I. And so that's what leads some women to have higher body counts

00:50:03.040 when they're still being targeted for long-term relationships because other guys didn't draw the

00:50:07.500 line in the same place. And this is why Arthur Schopenhauer in one of his infamous essays kind of

00:50:14.620 talked about the Institute of Prostitution. Most women hate female prostitutes, but Schopenhauer argued

00:50:22.500 that there's no rational basis for that animosity because they're actually protecting their virtue

00:50:28.340 is that they're basically jumping on the grenade of men's lust and sexual desire so that they can

00:50:34.500 remain ladies with low body count. I mean, I don't think that's why they're doing it though.

00:50:38.520 No, it's obviously because that's not their purpose. No, no, of course it's, that's not,

00:50:43.600 they're not thinking I'm going to do this so that another woman can get a husband,

00:50:47.400 like get out of here. Right, exactly. Yeah. He's saying that on a social level,

00:50:52.220 women's animosity around sluts is stupid and wrong. And most slut shaming we know comes from

00:50:58.360 other women. It doesn't come from men. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's interesting. There's just so

00:51:02.660 many dynamics to all of this. And, you know, one of the things that it led me to believe when you

00:51:06.360 were taught or think about when you were talking about men's desire for low body count, although

00:51:13.080 they'll engage in behavior that increases body count in women is this idea. And you mentioned

00:51:17.360 it earlier, this, this sexual novelty. And I'm very curious about when it comes to sexual novelty,

00:51:23.900 I think it's probably somewhat innate biologically for men to engage in that behavior with different

00:51:30.500 women, different personalities in order to fill our biological needs, mainly procreate. But do you

00:51:36.300 think it's possible? And if so, how could you create that same level of sexual novelty inside of a

00:51:41.660 monogamous committed relationship? It's very difficult. So this is another one of the forthcoming

00:51:46.340 episodes where I talk about what kills male sexual drive. And one of the things that kills

00:51:51.680 male sexual drive is habituation, the lack of novelty. And this is often talked about with

00:51:57.140 respect to the Coolidge effect. Are you familiar with that? No, I'm not. The Coolidge effect,

00:52:02.640 I talk about it in the book, but you're probably not there yet, is a well-documented phenomenon in

00:52:08.220 male mammals. So it's been seen in human men. It's been seen in non-human primates. It's been

00:52:15.640 seen in ronids, et cetera. There's some evidence. It's equivocal that there's an attenuated Coolidge

00:52:19.980 effect in women. But again, some of the evidence supports it, some of it doesn't. And when it does

00:52:24.780 support it, it's a much smaller effect than in men. Which is basically like, it could be,

00:52:31.100 if we look at life on this planet, since it's split off into sexes, because before that it was

00:52:38.100 just asexual budding or spores, you know, we didn't always have sexes on the planet. But since

00:52:46.520 that happened, all the way back to like trees, pollen producing trees, angiosperms, the male

00:52:51.320 strategy has been to spread the seed far and wide. And we're going to, we're going to, we're just going

00:52:57.040 to go for it. And the idea that we're going to overproduce 99% of it is going to fail because

00:53:03.140 that's how hard it is to succeed, to reproduce, whether you're a plant or a beaver or a man or

00:53:10.360 a gorilla, it's like, it's hard to make this work. We know throughout human history, like 60 to 70%

00:53:15.940 of women have reproduced, but only 40% of men have reproduced. So it's just harder for guys.

00:53:21.520 I think modernity has made, has maybe, I don't know the concept, I'm going to let you get to it,

00:53:25.940 but I imagine it's modernity has skewed this a little bit with medical advancements and

00:53:30.040 the ease of modernity that has made that less likely to be the case.

00:53:34.320 Less likely for what to be the case?

00:53:36.340 That your offspring won't survive. I mean, the reality is that today, the likelihood of your

00:53:42.320 child dying between the ages of zero to one is significantly less than it was maybe 150,

00:53:49.020 200 years ago.

00:53:50.060 You're absolutely correct. But you have to understand that these are psychological mechanisms that may

00:53:55.740 be based in a billion years of evolution. Just like you could be wearing a virtual reality helmet

00:54:01.900 and headphones and know that you're just experiencing a screen. If we put you on one of those little

00:54:07.300 contraptions where you think you're standing on the edge of a cliff and I push you, you're probably

00:54:10.900 going to startle and panic. It's like, yeah, some of these things inside of us are not very amenable

00:54:18.080 to reason or information. They're deeply rooted unconsciously, almost cellularly in the organism

00:54:26.220 that we inhabit. Let's put it that way.

00:54:29.760 Makes sense.

00:54:30.400 So men spread their seed far and wide because any one attempt is most likely to lead to failure. So

00:54:35.760 you overproduce or at least something sticks. And if possible, something sticks through with

00:54:41.180 multiple females because the genetic diversity will increase the likelihood that at least some

00:54:45.740 of your offspring will survive to sexual maturity under who knows what kind of conditions will occur

00:54:50.520 in the future. So, uh, and that's a very different potential incentive from the female's

00:54:56.000 perspective. Instead of producing a trillion more or less viable sperm in a month, she produces a

00:55:00.880 single viable gamete. And because she's also compromised to some extent and vulnerable in late

00:55:09.000 stage pregnancy and early postpartum, it, it's better for her and the child's survival to latch on to

00:55:16.720 a protector provider. Now, sometimes that protector provider can be the community. Like in the great

00:55:22.540 book, Sex at Dawn, um, they talk about how there isn't in a lot of traditional indigenous cultures,

00:55:30.800 like most of the societies that have existed on the planet have been polygamous. Um, like marriage

00:55:36.680 and monogamy is, uh, it's very prevalent, but that's because one or two societies became very

00:55:42.000 successful. Maybe they became successful in part because of the monogamy. It's a social stabilizing

00:55:47.560 force, but it's certainly possible for, uh, women to believe that they're going to be okay and

00:55:55.520 provided for and protected by the, by a community. And then we see a relaxation of, uh, all kinds of

00:56:02.760 sexual behaviors that are very formally protected in monogamous societies. Well, so I have a question

00:56:09.260 on that before you get to the rest of it. And I'm sorry, I've got a ton of questions on this stuff,

00:56:12.820 but it's great, man. So good conversation so far. Thank you. Yeah, no, it's been awesome, but I

00:56:17.940 understand why a man would spread his seed, so to speak. I get that. And when you talked about

00:56:22.720 genetic diversity, that's something I had not considered that makes sense to me, but what is

00:56:26.860 in the best interest of the woman from her perspective, because it seems like the more a

00:56:31.720 man spreads his seed or, or the more sexual partners he has, the less resources he has available

00:56:38.100 to protect and provide for her? Or is she just kind of left at the whim of, um, it is what it is

00:56:44.820 for lack of a better term. Well, it just depends on how you look at it. So are we on some level,

00:56:51.520 it probably took a while for human beings to even understand that sex makes babies. I know that sounds

00:56:58.340 crazy, but it's actually kind of crazy to think, Oh, that, that thing that we did nine months ago

00:57:03.760 made this baby. Like, I guess we probably figured that out by, by observing animals and their

00:57:11.060 copulation leading to pregnancy and to kind of draw the same parallel. But like in many traditional

00:57:17.660 societies where there were, let's say it was a more tribal, there wasn't a lot of monogamy.

00:57:25.380 It just like the food or the material resources weren't owned privately, sexual partners weren't owned

00:57:33.060 privately. And the idea that you could hoard that woman for yourself would be just as crazy as saying

00:57:38.360 that you could have that food to yourself and you don't have to share it. That's the argument that

00:57:42.880 the authors of sex at dawn make. And so monogamy really only came into vogue, let's say, in tandem

00:57:50.960 with the development of private property. And that only really happened post agricultural revolution

00:57:56.240 when people became settled and landed on some level. Before that people lived in tribes and it was

00:58:02.580 actually in their interest to go to war with neighboring tribes from time to time. And war

00:58:08.560 at this level looked very different. It didn't usually revolve around death and killing, though

00:58:13.280 there was probably some collateral damage involved, but it was, we need fresh stock. We need fresh

00:58:18.920 livestock. If we just keep breeding internally, that's, that's going to lead to complications. Now,

00:58:26.240 did they have an understanding of genetics and inbreeding at that time? No, that's why they just came up

00:58:31.000 with the incest taboo, which is on some intuitive level, they understood that bad evil things happen

00:58:37.680 to people. Like they get cursed when they break this taboo because they saw through subsequent

00:58:43.780 generations of inbreeding. Sure. Deformities, things like that you're talking about. Absolutely. So,

00:58:48.420 and how do they interpret that? They've been cursed. They've been visited by evil spirits. And so this is

00:58:53.700 the unbreakable taboo, but it's the unbreakable taboo because they saw the consequences of

00:58:59.880 progressive inbreeding. And so if you lived in a community of a hundred, 200 people, at least once

00:59:04.820 a generation, you got to go find some new wives. And that's either going to happen peaceably through

00:59:09.440 trade, or it's going to happen, let's say, aggressively by, by rating. Sure. Yeah. And that's,

00:59:15.720 that's mostly why wars were fought throughout human history was for livestock. It wasn't for

00:59:22.240 gold like that. That's a very recent development. Well, I mean, I think you bring up a good point

00:59:29.060 when you're talking about gold and property and land, you know, that's the general thing that we

00:59:33.400 think of regarding wars, but this is a little bit different context, but every fight that I ever got

00:59:39.100 into in high school was over a girl. You know what I mean? So, and, and I like this concept of,

00:59:47.300 or I like the idea or the way that you term it livestock, because this is interesting within your

00:59:52.800 book, you call it the value of others. And you're, you're really approaching it from an economic

00:59:57.460 standpoint, not necessarily the lovey dovey feel good stuff that so many people write about it in the

01:00:05.540 context of, and I think this gives it a bit of depth and framework in which to build maybe more

01:00:12.380 of that emotional connection on. Sure. I don't think it's impossible. Like I argue in, in chapter

01:00:17.740 nine, clearly things like love and loyalty and friendship exist in the context of long-term

01:00:23.060 romantic relationships, but it's almost like those things are overlaid on top and it's like a

01:00:30.100 serendipitous coincidence. The reason why that relationship got transacted and stays together

01:00:35.980 has to do with the exchange of value that undergirds it. And if the value exchange is too skewed for too

01:00:42.240 long, that generally leads to the dissolution of the relationship, or it would never would have been

01:00:45.780 formed to begin with. And when people put the emotions before the value proposition, they suffer

01:00:52.020 and they don't know why they think I'm a good person and they may be right. I have lots to offer a

01:00:57.540 partner. They may be right, but until they attend to the value proposition that undergirds relationships,

01:01:02.900 they're going to suffer. And especially when it comes to marriage, as I make the argument later in

01:01:07.000 the book, marriage is kind of like, certainly traditionally, it's kind of like founding a small

01:01:15.140 business. It's like you're going in with a co-founder to start Family Inc. Like I think the best

01:01:21.540 reason to get married is to raise a family. And so how do you choose a partner for a startup? Well,

01:01:30.160 we have complementary skill sets. We can't both be the CEO. That's not going to work. I don't need

01:01:35.460 another CEO. I need a CFO. I need a numbers guy. So there's complementary skill sets. There's fairly

01:01:42.340 equal competence and effort, because if one person is more competent and trying harder than the other,

01:01:46.660 that's not going to work in a partnership. And it's like, it works. We're here to kind of like

01:01:53.120 get some overarching mission accomplished. To that end, you don't even need to like your

01:02:00.200 co-founder. And I'm sure that happens over the course of a business relationship. But you know

01:02:05.820 what? You can talk to these guys, because I talk to a lot of powerful, successful entrepreneurs at

01:02:11.860 this stage in my career, especially in the Bay Area. And they'll tell me privately, I fucking can't

01:02:15.820 stand this guy anymore. But you know what? He's really good at his job. He gets the job done.

01:02:20.780 And that's it. Like you put on your professional face, and you do your fucking job together,

01:02:26.620 because you understand that it's the best possible chance of succeeding in your mutual mission. You

01:02:31.100 don't even have to like the guy. The same is true for marriage. I know that sounds very strange,

01:02:35.920 but you don't even have to like them. You're here to do a job. And as long as you are both

01:02:41.160 successfully discharging your roles in the service of your overarching mission,

01:02:45.000 and you don't put unnecessary expectations on that role or that relationship, you can succeed.

01:02:52.140 You can succeed. Now, the problem is, if you and I go into business, and I think, you know,

01:02:58.120 Ryan's the best CFO I can find. I'll be the CEO. He's a great guy. And I want to make a billion

01:03:02.700 dollars with this guy. If I want that, that's already a tall order, right? But if I also say,

01:03:07.000 yeah, I want a guy that I can make a billion dollars with, but I also want a new best friend.

01:03:11.680 I want somebody that like, after we kill at the office, we're just going to go down to a local

01:03:15.820 bar and just shoot the shit for three hours and chase girls and, you know, have like guy time.

01:03:21.000 It's like, good luck finding that dude. Good luck finding the guy that you can make a billion

01:03:25.180 dollars with and drink beer with every day after work. You're not going to find the guy. The guy

01:03:29.960 that's good at the drinking beer ain't going to be the guy that's going to help you make a million,

01:03:33.140 a billion dollars and vice versa. But how many expectations do we put on to our romantic

01:03:38.700 partners these days is I want, I want a mother of my children. I also want a sexy lover, but I also

01:03:45.800 want a stable partner who's emotionally available and who will support me through the ups and downs

01:03:51.120 of life. I want a therapist and a cheerleader. I want somebody who's going to be my business partner

01:03:58.300 because I want a contract. I want a legal agreement and all the privileges that come with it. Like how

01:04:02.320 many fucking things do you want? And that's why marriage is suffering is people want it to be

01:04:07.380 too many things. When for most of human history, it's a very humble institution. It's a protected

01:04:13.620 place to raise children. That's it. You never expected to love really in the sense of feeling

01:04:20.560 that kind of thing to your wife. More pragmatic. It's pragmatic and it was more role-based and

01:04:26.560 duty-bound, which is there are privileges and responsibilities to being a husband and

01:04:31.100 their privileges and responsibilities to being a wife. And as long as we both can do our jobs and

01:04:35.440 we understand like professionalism, like we can get along with each other. And if you want to drink

01:04:40.280 beer, you got buddies down the street. You want to have a love affair, you get a mistress. And it's

01:04:44.040 like, that's how things were for a long time. Now we want too many things. And that comes with the

01:04:48.960 dissolution of community and the extended family network. Well, I mean, in addition to what you're

01:04:52.840 saying, I also think there's this idea that you want the best version of that thing, but you don't want

01:04:57.800 the worst version of what comes with it. And it's a little bit of the scenario of maybe throwing the

01:05:02.140 baby out with the bathwater. So I was talking with somebody very close to me and we had talked about

01:05:07.280 this idea of passion. You know, I, I love passion. I love somebody who's excited about things, somebody

01:05:12.940 who has fire. And if I want that, then I can't complain when that fire, that ire is directed at me

01:05:18.480 sometimes because you can't have one without the other. And I think too many people, men will say,

01:05:25.180 Hey, I really want this woman who's passionate, but I don't want her to be emotional.

01:05:29.880 Good luck. They go hand and they're the exact same thing. They're two sides of the same coin.

01:05:35.420 Yeah. And I've dated some passionate women and I didn't think personally that the lows offset the

01:05:40.960 highs or the highs offset the lows. So I I'm better with more with women with more attenuated emotional

01:05:48.580 expressivity. And I've learned that about myself and that works for me. So just like, I'm not going to be

01:05:53.860 for every woman. Not every woman is going to be for me. And it's that kind of accurate self-knowledge

01:05:58.500 and that reality-based acceptance that, you know, everything that you get comes at some kind of

01:06:03.900 cost or price, uh, like which costs are you willing to pay? And again, to only want a few things to only

01:06:11.660 want a few things from your partner, because that makes it much less likely that you'll be disappointed.

01:06:16.680 If you want 10 things, even if I did nine of them perfectly and you really needed that 10th,

01:06:21.280 well, that's the end of that relationship. And what's the likelihood that you're going to find

01:06:24.920 the next person who can satisfy all 10 of them better than I could in an appreciable timeline?

01:06:29.700 It's very, very small, right? So people are optimizing, but sometimes optimization is really

01:06:34.820 disguised perfectionism and perfectionism is an anxiety disorder. It's a way of managing anxiety in,

01:06:40.480 uh, in the face of risk and uncertainty, uh, and foreclosure, which is a risk that we commit to soon

01:06:47.980 before a better option comes along. Well, I mean, I like the idea of, of, you know,

01:06:52.880 and obviously there's more than 10, but just so we can make it simple, 10 things like I'd rather have

01:06:58.000 somebody who's an eight or a nine and three things and maybe a three or a four and the seven others

01:07:03.560 than somebody who's a four to a six and all 10 things. It's just a matter of priorities.

01:07:10.000 Yeah. I think it's really important to dial in. What is it? What is it that you really,

01:07:14.100 you really want? So just to put this in perspective, Ryan, you talk to a lot of guys,

01:07:18.320 right? In your community. Sure. Okay. How many guys do you personally know who have a job that is

01:07:24.220 high paying, personally fulfilling and low stress? Yeah. Zero. Zero. And that's only three things.

01:07:32.600 That's only three things. Like no one gets three things from work. Maybe you get low stress and

01:07:40.160 fulfilling, but you're not going to make a lot of money. Maybe you get fulfilling and high paying,

01:07:44.420 but it's going to be stressful, et cetera, et cetera. Like you're lucky if you get two things.

01:07:47.960 Most people maybe get one. Like most people don't get any of those things. Most people do not have

01:07:52.260 high paying jobs. Most people do not have jobs that are very fulfilling. And most people don't

01:07:56.200 have jobs that are stress-free. You're lucky if you get one of those things, you get two of those

01:07:59.400 things, you know, once in a blue moon, no one gets all three of those things. And then how many

01:08:04.900 things do people then rattle off? You said it's 10 is a nice round number, but I'll want more things.

01:08:09.620 It's like, dude, that's not going to be good. Want two or three things max from a partner.

01:08:15.600 That also sets him or her up for success. Like if you want 15 things from me as a friend,

01:08:21.860 how can I not disappoint you inevitably? Yeah. I've set you up for failure.

01:08:26.460 You've set me up for failure. I could try with all of my heart and all the goodwill in the world

01:08:31.100 to satisfy you. I just can't be all things to you. You know what I'm saying? So give me opportunities

01:08:37.100 to win, give me opportunities to succeed. And when you want all those things for me,

01:08:41.860 you're just on some level going to, I'm going to let you down. You set me up for failure.

01:08:46.660 And maybe if you're not self-aware, you're going to think that I was the problem when I might've

01:08:51.340 been a pretty good friend. You know what I'm saying? Well, Orion, as we wind things down,

01:08:55.080 I have one other question for you. And I know this might be a difficult question to answer because

01:08:59.900 it's pretty general and there are so many nuances to this, but generally what would you say a woman

01:09:07.560 is looking for in men? Because I think if we understand that we as men might be able to

01:09:14.120 figure out how we can become more, to use your term, viable in the sexual marketplace.

01:09:19.800 Yeah. So I'm in an episode about this recently. It's called What Women Want.

01:09:23.880 And the true but unsatisfying answer is that women want what other women want.

01:09:30.100 So the best way to get, to be attracted to women is to be attractive to women. Okay. So this is a

01:09:36.740 chicken and the egg kind of thing. Yeah. Circular logic a little bit.

01:09:40.260 Right. So it's true, but unfulfilling. In general, you have to take what women tell you about what

01:09:46.040 they're looking for with a large grain of salt. You have to take that from men as well. In my

01:09:52.240 experience as a therapist, words are more often used to obscure the truth than reveal it. Words

01:09:58.480 are more often used to obscure the truth than reveal it. And a lot of people lie first and foremost to

01:10:02.060 themselves. They cannot give you what they don't have. And most people don't have the unvarnished

01:10:07.400 truth about their own inner workings. Like nobody does. It's just a question of degree. Clearly some

01:10:13.160 people are more self-aware and insightful than others. Okay. So when you talk to women about what they

01:10:18.840 want, they'll say things like, I want a kind man. I want a loyal man. I want a man who makes me feel

01:10:23.780 safe. I want an ambitious or driven man. It's like, yeah, let's, let's agree that they, they actually

01:10:30.680 want those things, but they want those things from the men that they're already attracted to. That's

01:10:35.220 the part that women always leave out and not being attracted to those women and having those things

01:10:41.960 will not succeed with women. The attraction always, always, always comes first. Okay. So the, again,

01:10:50.080 we're getting rid of a lot of nuance, but next level down is what do women want? They want an

01:10:54.060 attractive man and an attractive man is what they sexually respond to. Okay. Now there's some of those

01:11:00.960 things are in your control as a man. And some of those things are outside of your control as a man,

01:11:04.960 things like your height, your facial symmetry. That's about it. Like there's some people just have

01:11:10.080 better genetics than others. Your body composition. I'm sure your muscle mass versus fat, things like

01:11:15.500 that. I'm sure as well. But you can control that. That's my point. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.

01:11:19.660 Yeah. Good point. So a lot of guys spend too much time lamenting the things that they don't have in

01:11:25.020 their control, their height, their facial symmetry, their genetics, and they ignore the things that they

01:11:30.780 do have in their control. It's like, are you, are you lifting weights? Are you at a reasonable,

01:11:36.460 if not attractive, body fat composition? Are you, are you happy and like excited about your life?

01:11:44.460 Like another one of the sound bites I have is that men kind of want the Barbie doll. Women want all

01:11:50.280 the shit that Ken doll comes with. So it's like, do you have an interesting life? Like, have you built

01:11:56.860 up an interesting life? Are you happy in it? Are you excited about getting up every day? Do you have

01:12:02.200 plans for the future? Like another thing, the trap that men fall into is that, oh, I just need to be

01:12:07.180 a billionaire. That's what Orion say. I just need to have six packs. It's like, no, both of those

01:12:11.180 things and many others besides are attraction proxies. I know men who can't get laid on their

01:12:16.640 own super yachts because they just think that buying the yacht, women just throw up, show up and start

01:12:21.620 stripping their clothes off. And that's not how it works. Like you still have to seduce the women when

01:12:27.360 you have a super yacht. Maybe it's a little easier, but you still have to do it. You can't

01:12:31.300 just be like, like my boat and I'll suck my dick. Like that doesn't work. They're not going to line

01:12:36.480 up in front of the, the, the boat. I mean, if that were the case, every guy would just go rent a yacht

01:12:41.380 and invite a bunch of beautiful women and get exactly what they wanted. So there's more to it,

01:12:45.020 clearly. Well, my point is, is that I think men are more into the idea of like, okay, women, all things

01:12:52.460 being equal, which is true. Women prefer a man with more resources to less. All other things being

01:12:57.100 equal. Why wouldn't they? And so men might think, okay, well I'll get, I'll just make a lot of money

01:13:02.780 and they'll work 10, 15, 20 years at doing that. And it's fucking hard to make a lot of money, but it

01:13:08.560 might only take a year or two for them to learn to seduce a woman and to learn how to talk to her

01:13:12.160 and to learn how to engage with her emotions and learn how to be confident in leading her to the

01:13:17.420 bedroom and in the bedroom. And that's the more direct path to getting more women. But a lot of

01:13:23.380 men will take the indirect path. I'll get the, oh no, I'm not ready to date yet. Once I get a six

01:13:28.320 pack, once I get down to 8% body fat, you know, when's that going to be, dude? That might be in

01:13:32.860 another five years of hard work. Maybe you'll get there. Maybe you don't. Oh, I'll, I'll just once I

01:13:39.260 have a million dollars, everything is to be easy. Well, it could take you 10 years. Maybe you get there.

01:13:42.880 Maybe you don't. How about you just learn to talk to a woman in a confident way? And how are you

01:13:46.700 going to learn to do that? By talking to women and fucking up and, and coming off as being awkward,

01:13:52.180 coming off as being creepy. Like you have to, it's like learning another language. You have to make

01:13:55.880 peace with the fact that you're going to make grammatical errors. You're going to make slips

01:13:59.480 of the tongue, but there's no other way of getting better at a language than fucking speaking the

01:14:03.960 language. So you have to go out and practice. Um, okay. So the things that you can control are your,

01:14:10.400 uh, your body composition, your fashion, like this is the easiest one to like, just throw two grand

01:14:18.660 at a few good outfits and you get one additional point, like get, take care of your hair, take care

01:14:25.220 of your shoes and have a couple of good outfits that play to your skin tone, your, your physique that

01:14:31.680 are hip. Um, I made an, an interesting episode a long time ago called most men are wallpaper. Um,

01:14:39.220 it's very easy to stand out as a man. It's harder. Women's fashion is all over the place. You go to

01:14:45.740 the Met Gala. It's like the women are doing one spectacular, sensational thing after the other.

01:14:52.960 It would be so easy to stand out as a guy from a fashion perspective. You know what I'm saying?

01:14:57.480 Sure. So don't be afraid to take a little bit of risk in that department. You don't have to like

01:15:02.240 pretend you're not playing dress up. You're not here to pretend. I didn't show up on this call

01:15:06.440 with a 10 gallon hat and some cowboy boots. You know what I'm saying? Um, we'll be disingenuous

01:15:10.820 and women would see right through it. One would think, right. Um, so you want to kind of lean into

01:15:17.240 yourself a little bit more and don't be afraid to take a few risks with respect to your presentation

01:15:22.020 in general, as a man, it's better to be more attractive to a, to fewer women than to be,

01:15:28.120 uh, less attracted to more. Yeah. I guess that's, that's the logical conclusion to that. It's

01:15:34.000 basically, you want to be, it's better to be fewer women's number one choice than to be more women's

01:15:38.300 number two, or in most cases, like number 10. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. If you can be very,

01:15:43.420 if like 1% of women find you super duper hot, like that's more women than you're ever going to know

01:15:48.500 how to deal with in your entire life. I don't care how much of a Casanova you are. So just try

01:15:52.780 to find that. I mean, that's an eternal principle. I mean, it's, it applies to podcasting. You know,

01:15:56.500 I, I could talk about a lot of things to a lot of people, both men and women, but I don't,

01:16:00.740 I talk to men about these issues and that's more attractive to the men who want to hear it than

01:16:05.300 the billions of people who may not be interested at all. Yeah. I, I learned that in business. You know,

01:16:11.300 when I started as a tutor, I wanted to be, I taught Latin and calculus and American history.

01:16:16.460 And it was only when I dialed in on one particular test that the people were lighting up around the

01:16:22.060 block. When I first got my therapist license, I'll do depression. I'll do anxiety. I'll do

01:16:26.120 relationship coaching. And it was only when I dialed in and said, no, I'm going to focus on

01:16:29.840 men's mental health that I had a wait list within a month or two. So like in general, it's better to

01:16:35.320 be more specialized, but that means that we have to attenuate our expectations for that person.

01:16:39.480 You can't expect the guy, the best plumber in the town to be the best wedding planner.

01:16:46.460 Like that would be weird if that were true. Yeah. And it would, it would, it would confuse the

01:16:52.780 marketing as well. So it's like, pick your lane and stick with it. And you can't get everybody,

01:16:58.020 but you can get enough to be successful and to be happy for sure. So take care of your fashion,

01:17:03.120 take care of your health, learn to talk to women, like just learn to get comfortable with them.

01:17:07.820 It's really helpful for relationships of all kinds to develop a gregarious, if not a personality,

01:17:15.080 then at least a persona, someone that you can kind of turn on and light up in order to like

01:17:20.960 make connections with people. It's not the guys who just keep their head downs at their desks and

01:17:26.040 work really hard who end up being the CEO for better or for worse. It's not always the most,

01:17:30.800 the best person for the job who gets promoted. It's the person who knows how to work the network

01:17:36.500 of relationships that those jobs are embedded in. And the people who do that best are the ones

01:17:41.420 who practice and go out there and they shake hands and they get to know people. Um, we can roll our

01:17:46.740 eyes and sigh, or we can embrace the reality of that and get better at being gregarious and get better

01:17:52.580 at cultivating relationship. Um, what else is attractive? Uh, this gets into kind of darker realm,

01:17:59.540 but men are more attractive to women when their feelings are unclear. So think about it this way.

01:18:06.400 I do a lot of comparisons to the professional context because there are more similarities than

01:18:10.680 exceptions between professionalism and let's say romantic relationships. Let's say that, uh,

01:18:16.160 you're in the market for a job. You're interviewing at two places. The first one says, Ryan, we love you,

01:18:21.520 man. Like you're by far the best applicant that we've received this year. We can't wait for you to get

01:18:27.240 started. We already have your office set up. Just say the word. And if you need time, don't worry

01:18:32.400 about it. Take all the time in the world. This it's yours for the taking. You got it. Okay. It's

01:18:36.980 like, that feels good, but you know, what's behind door number two? Like there's absolutely no risk or

01:18:42.800 loss for me to look behind door number two, because I'm already guaranteed door number one.

01:18:47.020 If door number two is worse, great. I have door number one, but if door number two is better,

01:18:50.840 it's a good thing. I didn't foreclose on door number one and door number two might say, Hey,

01:18:54.360 you know, Ryan, thanks for coming out. Uh, we have a number of applicants that we still have yet to

01:18:59.140 interview. We'll be in touch. Like you're going to be thinking more about the second option than you

01:19:04.880 are about the first. You already know how things are going to go with the first option for better,

01:19:08.960 for worse. So this kind of, you know, when we deploy these strategies or tactics intentionally,

01:19:16.580 we call them manipulative. Right. I was going to ask that. Is this manipulation? I was going to ask

01:19:21.180 you that. Well, probably like, yeah, it's in a gray zone. I talk about it in the book is that maybe

01:19:27.400 we need to re-examine our attitude towards the word manipulation, because there's lots of things that

01:19:34.800 are manipulative and we want to be manipulated. We go to the movies. We want to be manipulated.

01:19:39.900 We don't want to be there the whole time being like, this is just projected light on a screen.

01:19:44.260 These are all paid actors in this role. Am I right? Like we want to be manipulated and that's

01:19:48.620 what allows us to feel something. Now we don't think we have a problem with that because on some

01:19:52.880 level we're consenting to being manipulated when we buy the ticket to the theater. But on some level,

01:19:58.640 when you enter into the sexual marketplace, I would like the woman to manipulate me with some makeup.

01:20:02.760 I would like the woman to show up and let's say, play to her strengths. I would like her to hold

01:20:08.660 in her farts. It's not that she doesn't, she doesn't have flatulence. Let's not pretend that

01:20:13.760 she's the, she doesn't have certain orifices, but like, I would prefer that the experience be

01:20:19.960 manipulated in such a way that we can have a kind of an emotional experience and connection

01:20:24.140 and certain things, if they're not manipulated, will, will prevent that or encourage that.

01:20:29.620 And the question is like, are you doing this solely for your own benefit or at another person's

01:20:35.140 detriment? Or are you doing this without integrity or with duplicity? I think those are really the,

01:20:40.540 the questions to ask, not whether this is manipulative.

01:20:43.040 I, I, I would, I would definitely agree with that. I thought a lot about this concept of manipulation

01:20:47.820 and another word that I've often used is influence. You're just influencing somebody for,

01:20:52.600 for a positive outcome. I think manipulation becomes a problem when you're doing it at the expense

01:20:58.080 of somebody else, but putting your best foot forward is not at the expense of anybody else.

01:21:03.600 I don't think so. Um, and on some level, you mean, yeah, we would call it manipulative. If I

01:21:09.660 was a car salesman and I sold you a lemon, I knew that the car sucked, but I wanted to put my commission

01:21:16.360 over your, uh, likelihood. However, if I show that car nice and clean and in the best lighting,

01:21:23.780 and I highlight all of the features that are relevant to you, I get my commission and you get

01:21:28.700 a car, you get the best car that's available for you. How do we both not fucking win as a consequence

01:21:33.480 of my manipulation?

01:21:34.900 Solid, solid point. Well, Orion, this has been fascinating, man. Um, I've got a lot more questions.

01:21:39.940 I hope at some point we can do a round two. If you're open for that, I'd love to do that.

01:21:44.220 Absolutely. You asked really good questions. You were an excellent interlocutor, as they say,

01:21:50.940 uh, really happy with the way this went. Uh, let me know if there's anything else I can do for you

01:21:55.400 in your community. Awesome. Thank you. Tell the guys where to connect with you. Obviously we've

01:21:59.720 been talking about the book, the value of others. I've read part of it. I know I listened to most

01:22:04.300 of it on my, uh, my commute and my drive. So it's available in, in audio as well, but tell the guys

01:22:09.980 where to connect with you and YouTube is big. You do some stuff over on Instagram as well. Let them

01:22:14.340 know where to go. Yeah. Everything sort of spins from YouTube. So if you're interested in my work,

01:22:18.280 check me out on YouTube, the channel is called psych hacks. Uh, and in the description of every

01:22:24.800 full length episode are links to my website where people can join my free weekly newsletter. They can

01:22:30.380 book paid one-on-one consultations. They can join my exclusive member community. They can get access

01:22:35.940 to the paperback, the ebook or the audio book versions of my book. Uh, and I cut up some of the

01:22:42.220 episodes and put them on other socials like LinkedIn and Instagram, et cetera. But if you want the real

01:22:47.380 deal cause I don't really like shorts, I understand that they're kind of a necessary evil. Uh, but if

01:22:52.360 you want the full story, like check out the full length episodes on YouTube, they're definitely more

01:22:56.920 nuanced than just the 42nd clips that you see on Instagram. And even those are fairly, they're

01:23:02.220 relatively short. You know, I, I, you know, what, 10, 15, 20 minutes are some of the ones that I've

01:23:07.040 caught. Eight to 12 minutes is what I shoot for. Yeah. I don't want to bore people. Yeah. Well, I

01:23:10.980 appreciate it. We'll make sure we sync everything up, um, and get this information out to the guys

01:23:15.140 because this is valuable. And I got to say too, the way that you present it is refreshing. Um,

01:23:20.760 it's not this woo woo mentality where it's hard to really conceptualize. You bring a lot of solid

01:23:27.220 research and information to it, but not in a way that's boring or hard to understand. So I appreciate

01:23:32.860 your work and the effort you've put into making it consumable to other people. Thanks, man. I

01:23:37.300 appreciate it. I also am trying not to enrage men or alienate women. Those are my two goals. It's,

01:23:43.780 it's hard to do both the same time, but like, I like this, uh, modern times too. I want women to

01:23:49.940 succeed. And sometimes they're doing things that are at odds with their likelihood of success.

01:23:56.000 And so that's kind of where I'm coming from is that the more people have loving, stable,

01:24:01.160 satisfying relationships, the better this fucking world is going to be. And we can't really have

01:24:06.580 long-term solutions at the expense of any one sex. So let's kind of figure out what's standing in

01:24:11.800 the way and get on with the business of living and loving. That's how I see it.

01:24:15.100 Thanks, Orion. Appreciate you, man.

01:24:18.380 Gentlemen, there you go. Orion Terriban. I am really fascinated by the way this guy thinks.

01:24:23.900 Uh, I think some of the concepts can be controversial, but if you know where he's coming

01:24:28.140 from, which is to serve men and women in their relationship dynamics, I think it puts a new light

01:24:33.620 on his conversations and his perspective. And of course he's very well studied and researched

01:24:39.060 on these topics. So there's a lot of value there. I would highly suggest if you're interested in more

01:24:43.120 of this, check out his channel, psych hacks on YouTube, and then also pick up a copy of his book,

01:24:48.580 the value of others. Please make sure you tag me and him in anything that you share on social media.

01:24:54.480 And then also check out our exclusive brotherhood, the iron council. You can do that at order of man.com

01:24:59.980 slash iron council. All right, guys, those are your marching orders. We'll be back tomorrow for our

01:25:05.540 ask me anything until then go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

01:25:14.620 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:25:19.220 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - June 17, 2025

ORION TARABAN ｜ Winning in the Sexual Marketplace

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