115 How To Be Masculine While In Love

Many guys fear intimacy because when they fall in love they lose their masculinity. Hormonally, love increases oxytocin which has some opposite effects to testosterone. However, there is a way to avoid going soft in relationships. And actually, romantic relationships can make you more of a man... if you do it right.

Please note: This track may include some explicit language.

Transcript

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So there's a fear that a lot of guys have when it comes to romance and interacting with women and that is that falling in love will somehow turn you into a little bitch or falling in love will make you soft.

Love makes you soft.

And in the pickup community they used to call this betasization,

Like a guy who's normally alpha or who's trained himself to be alpha.

In most situations he can be very masculine and very grounded and very dominant.

When he falls in love all that goes out the window.

He turns into a beta male,

He turns into a nice guy,

He supplicates because he's now become attached.

It's kind of a theme in a lot of rom-coms in the reverse like a guy or sometimes the woman becomes super hard,

Avoids this kind of experience.

And nowadays we can see this in more extreme with like say the MGTOW community.

The MGTOW guys have recognized that there is a truth to when a guy falls in love when a guy gets attached.

I mean attachment comes from the oxytocin receptors,

From oxytocin.

The behaviors that correlate with oxytocin,

What we would call feminine behaviors,

Are kind of the opposite of what we would call masculine behaviors,

Behaviors that correlate with testosterone.

So it's an understandable and very real fear that when a guy falls in love he starts acting a little less what we would call manly.

And basically what the MGTOW guys do is they try to avoid all of that.

They recognize,

Okay,

Loving women makes you soft or being attached to women makes you soft,

I'm going my own way.

And it makes sense from a purely logical perspective.

But as I spoke about in the Love It archetype episode where I analyzed the myth of Odysseus and the sirens,

That is one way to go through life where you just completely avoid the island of women,

You completely avoid the sirens call,

You never know what those experiences of life are.

You could do that.

And that's basically what MGTOW guys do.

But you're also missing out on one of the most beautiful experiences of the human experience.

The reason why guys who have otherwise trained themselves to be tough and be alpha and be masculine and still have a tendency to throw it all away when they fall in love with a woman is because those feelings feel so good.

So my criticism of MGTOW is like it is kind of a cowardly thing to just avoid that because there is a way to not only stay masculine,

Stay grounded when falling in love,

But just like Odysseus there is a way to hear the sirens call,

Relish in all of the beauty and wonder and poetry making magic that is falling in love with someone but also becoming more of a man,

Not crashing into the rocks the way true betas do or weak minded men do.

So I definitely was one of those who for a long time associated commitment and love with softness because as I mentioned it's kind of a tendency.

You fall in love,

Your oxytocin is flooding through your system especially if you're not used to that.

If you're not used to feeling soft it might just make you fall apart or if you've gone most of your adult life or maybe most of your teenage years being hard and invulnerable,

Cracking open and really being connected with someone,

Really becoming attached to someone feels really good.

I mean attachment is an important part of developing psychologically healthy.

For a long time I used to think this and in many different relationships I mean I've had every kind of experience where I was too much of an asshole,

Where I was too much of a nice guy,

Where I was kind of a bad boy at first and then I got soft,

I got betasized,

I became domesticated and all these things.

I'm at this stage of my life now where I'm at least as most aware as I've ever been,

Certainly the best relationship of my life and I was actually,

I'll show you because I'm sitting right here,

I was putting up that rope swing in the background,

You know,

Something,

Not a thing that I would build in my home if I was single or just,

You know,

If I was just living here by myself.

Actually I probably wouldn't live in a big house by myself,

I'm kind of a minimalist especially when I was single I was.

But I live here with my,

The love of my life and I'm in this amazing relationship and I notice that like I'm not doing all these house chores to appease her or please her or get her to like me,

I know she loves me,

Right?

I don't have to do any of that stuff.

There's something deep and archetypally masculine that I get out of doing these chores.

But anyway,

So I was putting up this rope swing and I'll be honest,

It was a pain in the ass.

Like I've never drilled into the concrete before,

I've never,

I didn't even know what an anchor sleeve was,

It was actually something I had to look up,

I didn't actually know how to connect it.

Anyway,

It was a huge pain in the ass.

I started kind of late in the afternoon,

The sun was already going down,

Actually the sun had set before I had gotten these,

It's a whole process to get bolts into concrete,

Especially vertically.

I kept dropping them,

I didn't have enough light,

I was bouncing on a ladder that wasn't very stable and every couple minutes I was getting ungrounded and you're like,

Fuck shit fuck,

Because I would get my finger caught in something or drop the washer that I needed,

All of this stuff,

Right?

And then I finished finally,

I finally got it done and it felt victorious as every challenge feels,

When you've gone through something hard and you stuck with it and you complete it,

It feels good.

Then I thought,

Why did I do all this?

Why did I spend all of this time working on this thing,

Because honestly I don't really care about the rope swing itself,

Right?

I wouldn't have ever put this up in my own home if I was just living here single.

Like there's a reason why I'm doing this,

It's not that I'm doing it for her really,

Right?

Because I mean,

I don't need to do anything for her to like me,

I know she loves me.

I don't need to do anything so that she does some other chores,

Like that's,

You know,

We'll talk about that in polarity,

Like it's not that kind of exchange.

But there was something I was getting and there was something,

Because when I was done,

I really felt like a man.

Like I really felt like I had done something like primarily important,

Even though obviously again this rope swing really doesn't mean anything,

Right?

But it was a representation of something and the thing I was getting in return was her appreciation,

A woman's appreciation.

And this is the key here,

This is the key of how the difference between a guy losing himself and losing his masculinity and becoming beta-sized and becoming a little bitch when he falls in love,

Which has happened to pretty much every man at some point,

Right?

There's a difference between that and where you actually feel more like yourself,

Where you feel more polarized,

More empowered,

More able to conquer the world.

And one of the reasons why I'm so happy in my current relationship is that I never,

It's more than not having to compromise myself,

I feel more like myself and more like,

I mean there's no other way to put it,

I feel more like a man in this relationship because of the way she appreciates me.

Because I know,

On some,

Because I mean I didn't put this thing up thinking that she's going to do this,

But on some primal level I knew as soon as she saw it,

She was going to look at me with a level of adoration and appreciation that makes it all worth it.

Not only makes the exchange worth it,

But actually it empowers me,

Actually at least from my perspective,

There's a net gain I'm getting from doing these physical chores where I'm using my man brain and my hands to build something.

So the thing I want you to get from here is there is a way to enhance your masculinity,

To become more grounded,

Become more of yourself through falling in love,

Right?

It's not the thing that I guess what MGTOW and guys like that,

Guys who are afraid of vulnerability try to promote thinking that,

Oh if I'm hard enough,

Yes if you're hard enough you won't get your heart broken,

But you're also missing out on not only one of the most pleasurable experiences in life,

One of the most fulfilling experiences that has people write poetry or great music or art.

It's also one of the critical keys to becoming a man.

And I spoke about this more deeply in the lover archetype episode,

I did a deep analysis of the mythology such as Odysseus mentioned,

But also how this part of us that interacts with the feminine,

What we would call,

Or what Gillette and Moore would call the lover archetype,

It has to interact with the feminine for us to be to complete.

If I go deeper into that episode,

For the rest of this episode I'm going to speak about how exactly falling in love or how you can fall in love in a way that actually makes you more of a man as opposed to more of a boy,

Which is the tendency.

And I just want to say as a quick aside,

When a guy becomes a boy when he falls in love,

When you may have experienced this,

You feel a little bit too soft,

You feel a little more anxious,

A lot of people will from a superficial level be like,

Oh if you like her too much you become anxious,

So don't like her too much,

Basically don't fall in love and you won't be a bitch.

That's again one way of just avoiding the island of deep intimacy,

You could do that but then you're missing out on something really awesome.

So a man only loses his masculinity when falling in love,

When that falling in love,

When that attachment becomes codependent.

There's a lot to say on codependency so I'm not going to go too deep into this but essentially from the male perspective.

Our first interfacing with the feminine,

With the female representation of life comes from our mother.

When we're a little boy,

Whoever mothered us,

Probably your little mother or mother figures in your life,

That would represent to the feminine.

At some point a healthy male,

A healthy male who grows through puberty into adulthood both physically and psychologically learns to re-categorize the female or re-categorize the feminine as a lover.

And this is,

Actually I speak about this pretty deeply in the episode on slaying Medusa,

Overcoming the mother complex,

I speak about the Oedipus myth in there and even milf fantasies and why in this whole genre of son-mother thing,

Like why this exists is basically a whole generation of men who never completed this part of their psyche.

The way this shows up in adult relationships is essentially codependency.

You've probably seen this before maybe in your own relationships,

Other people you know,

A man and woman get together,

At first it's fireworks,

It's sexual,

They feel like adults,

They're having fun but then they start to domesticate,

That evil D word.

And from the male perspective,

The man starts to become a boy,

He stops being polarized,

He stops being grounded in his masculinity,

He eventually starts acting like her son,

She loses interest and of course you kind of know what happens from there.

From the personal male side,

We know that that's where the guy becomes a little bitch or that's where the guy loses his masculinity,

Loses his,

Basically becomes a little too soft because he fell in love.

So I have two keys in this context on how to remain secure in those relationships as a man on how to become closer,

More deeply connected,

More in love with your partner or maybe fall in love for the first time while not only not losing your masculinity but become more of yourself as a man.

The first principle is to take initiative on behalf of both of you.

I speak about consensual dominance in a few different episodes but the general idea and the role of masculinity in a relationship is that a relationship just like a family or a tribe or a unit or a team is on some level,

On the primal level,

A survival unit.

It's a bunch of individual humans,

Individual organisms working together because they'll have a better chance of surviving in the wild.

When it comes to an intimate man-woman relationship,

What you're talking about is on some level the nuclear family.

You're procreating together,

Those offspring have to survive hopefully,

Will survive so that your genes can pass on.

That's where all of our primal behaviors come from.

Women just by being women already contribute so much to the creation of life and the,

Which is the main agenda of this survival unit,

A male-female relationship.

Women on the other hand,

If they're going to carry their weight,

If they're going to pull their weight,

Do two things.

Protecting and providing.

I know this sounds like caveman stuff to some people but this is the root of all of our primal behaviors at least.

This is what governs sexual dynamics and this is also what's going to make you feel still like a man even in a relationship where you quote unquote domesticate.

Because the thing to understand is when two people enter a sexually polarized relationship,

We all have a masculine-feminine side,

She has a masculine-feminine side,

You have a masculine-feminine side.

I speak about this also in the how to get help a woman into her feminine.

But essentially you are merging,

Right?

Your masculine side is being the masculine for the entire unit so that her feminine side can handle all the feminine stuff for the entire unit which is essentially being pregnant and having a child which takes so much energy,

Right?

Your role as a man in an intimate relationship is handling all that stuff.

Now in the modern era,

Very few of us have to hunt for our children to survive,

Very few of us have to fight to ensure that our families are safe,

Some people still do but most of us don't if you're watching this,

Probably that's not the case for you.

The way you protect and provision for your families,

Maybe sitting on a computer doing other stuff but these activities where you take an initiative for building your nest whether something as meaningless as putting up a rope swing or doing something where you are doing basically the man stuff,

Not for her,

Right?

You're not doing it to appease her,

That would be the nice guy thing,

Right?

Oh,

I'm carrying the groceries so that she'll like me or I'm remembering to get her favorite flower because that'll get me laid later or something like that,

Right?

That type of commerce-based transaction always puts a person into boy mode as opposed to I'm the head of the superorganism,

Right?

The survival unit,

This family is an organism with various cells in it if you want to look at it this way and the head of the organism is the one that makes decisions for the same sake of the entire organism,

Right?

If you're identifying with the entire relationship of like this is what my relationship needs or this is what my family needs which may affect one individual in the family more or less,

Right?

But if you're taking that kind of initiative of this is what the family needs which sometimes might benefit her more,

Sometimes might benefit you more but it's always what is going to benefit this unit more,

That is the role of the masculine in any kind of survival unit,

Right?

That is the set of testosterone-driven traits that is needed in every survival unit where again,

Whether you're talking about a relationship or a team or a family or a tribe or an army or a nation,

Right?

I said at the top of this episode that testosterone-driven characteristics are what we call masculinity and oxytocin-driven characteristics are what we call femininity.

Testosterone drives us to competition and other competitive competition-related traits.

Oxytocin drives us to want to connect and belong and of course,

When we become attached,

We fall in love,

We get this huge flood of oxytocin as opposed to when we're competing for mates or we're lusting,

That's when our testosterone is high.

But testosterone and oxytocin don't always contradict.

When it comes to a lot of behaviors,

They are opposite,

Right?

High testosterone will make you a little bit less empathetic.

High oxytocin obviously makes you very empathetic.

But contrary to hormones such as like testosterone cortisol which are actually chemically contradictory,

Right?

I spoke about this or covered this in my episode with Dr.

Charles Ryan who's the author of the virility paradox.

Testosterone and cortisol come from the same precursor hormones.

So you can't have,

If the more you have of one,

The less you have of the other which is why chronic stress makes guys lose confidence typically,

Makes everyone lose confidence.

Testosterone and oxytocin don't actually chemically compete,

They just happen to have opposite behaviors because they're needed for opposite times in life,

Right?

You don't need to feel empathy when you're at war.

They're different functions rather.

You can even think of them as different archetypes.

There's the god of war and the goddess of love if you want to think of it that way.

But they also work together.

One of the ways they work together is in getting these survival units to act together,

Act as one.

Even something that seems seemingly as masculine as the dominance hierarchy or the way military is formed and I speak about this in my history of masculinity series.

The interplay of testosterone and oxytocin that allows social units to work together.

And when it comes to you as an individual man in a sexually polarized relationship,

As a man who's perhaps in a situation where he's falling in love,

That oxytocin gives you an attachment over stuff that is beyond your own physical body.

When you're starved of oxytocin,

You feel isolated,

All you are is you as an individual unit against the world.

That's that separation.

When you bond with someone,

The reason why we're wired to bond on some level with our families,

With our loved ones,

With our sexual partners is that when this happens,

We start to stop seeing ourselves as separate beings and more start to see ourselves as a unit.

The oxytocin creates that glue.

And that testosterone,

Those testosterone-driven impulses have you wage wars and want to compete and conquer not for just the sake of yourself and your own isolated individual being,

But the now greater being that you've become in this unit.

This is why it's critical to take the initiative for the greater good of your survival unit.

And we're speaking about relationships here.

The second principle is to allow your deeds to be seen.

Another way to put this is to flex and expect appreciation,

But not flex in the sense of,

Oh,

Look at me,

I'm so awesome.

But flex in the sense of do things that can be appreciated.

Allow yourself to be appreciated.

A lot of people,

Especially in codependent relationships,

Especially the anxious types,

But I think this can happen for everyone,

Have this idea that,

Oh,

Being egotistical in any way is bad.

I'm going to mute myself and not be seen.

And they get resentful typically at their partner later because essentially if you're a man,

You need appreciation.

That's the thing that makes it feel good to keep conquering stuff,

Conquering life or building things or earning money,

Is that appreciation you get from the feminine.

My buddy Zan,

Who is one of the best examples,

One of the best embodiments of someone who actually is the lover archetype,

Has this great line that beauty needs a witness.

And he's speaking about it in terms of seduction,

Right?

Women,

Women who are beautiful need to be witnessed.

Like the witnessing of a woman actually makes her more beautiful and enliven those feminine characteristics that we all love.

But I'll say on the flip side,

I think there's a reverse,

A converse of this,

Which is masculinity needs to be appreciated.

It doesn't feel good or particularly fulfilling to do something challenging,

To go through some huge ordeal for the sake of some reward if the reward is only for yourself or if no one else can see it,

Right?

And a lot of people can criticize men for this.

Guys typically like to brag,

Especially in an all-male environment.

It's normal to start speaking about your feats and obviously there's an egotistical,

Egotistically negative way this could come out or a way this can come out in an insecure fashion.

But this is a natural instinct because men want to be appreciated.

That's what makes it worth it to go to war,

To hunt the buffalo,

To do all the things that are primarily masculine.

Because there's no reason to be in a relationship where you're feeling like a martyr,

Where like you're suffering for her sake or for your family's sake and you never get any words of appreciation in return.

On the flip side,

And I think a lot of people who promote this idea of androgyny in relationships or people who think that men and women are exactly the same so they have to do exactly the same things,

I've seen so many relationships ruined by both parties thinking,

Oh,

We need to divide the chores up equally and that's what's going to make us have a happy relationship.

No,

No,

No.

If you're roommates,

Yes,

Fine.

I mean,

Dividing the chores equally so that you each spend the same exact amount of energy,

The same exact amount of time doing house things,

Yeah,

That's being a good roommate.

Maybe you'll have less roommate battles.

That's not going to make you feel more like a man and it's not going to make your polarized relationship feel any more intimate or any more polarized.

But there is an exchange and I spoke about this right in the beginning of this episode.

The exchange is when you as a man do something hard in the material world or something representative,

A lot of how we provide for our families is sitting on a computer and not really using our hands the way we used to.

When you do something that represents that,

The thing that the feminine ought to give you,

The thing that you should receive in return for that,

The thing that probably if you're a masculine man,

The only thing you really need in return for your efforts is that appreciation.

A lot of guys are not words of affirmation guys.

If you're familiar with the love languages,

Women seem to really love words of affirmation where guys tend to distrust it or like most masculine guys I know,

It doesn't really mean anything,

These words of affirmation.

I have other theories on why this is that men deceive each other a lot more easily so they don't value that as much.

But that doesn't mean that we don't need appreciation.

Actually there's a certain way my partner gives me that appreciation,

She's walking by,

Where it's not something she does,

It's not something she says even though she sometimes says nice things to me,

It's a thing that actually can't be faked.

It's like when I do something,

Whether it's small like hang up a rope swing or big like for our future family,

There's a look she gives me where I know that's a look of adoration and that makes it all worth it.

It doesn't matter if I spent four hours putting up a thing,

It doesn't matter if I spent 40 hours earning money to pay for something,

Right?

That stuff,

All I need in return is that look of adoration because that can't be faked.

I coach a lot of guys on relationships and a lot of guys reach out to me of course when the relationships are on the rocks or they have an issue and I pretty much never ever,

I shouldn't say this,

I very rarely ever tell a guy that they should leave a relationship.

Even if a relationship ought to end because it's best for both people,

I think it's almost always good to give a good effort.

And if you're in the masculine role,

I think it's kind of on you in many cases to kind of steer the ship as you spoke about earlier.

But there is one thing that I will point to in the direction of breaking up with someone or leaving someone,

That's if you're doing something and you're putting in some real effort for the sake of her well-being or the relationship or something like that and it's consistently being unappreciated or sometimes,

And you see this unfortunately in relationships where the polarity has been ruined a long time ago,

Sometimes she'll make fun of him or cut him down when he's actually trying to put in an effort.

Obviously if you've both been dicks to each other,

You can't expect her to suddenly,

If you've been mean to her for years,

You can't suddenly expect her to look at you lovingly with adoration just because you did the dishes or something.

But if you're consistently putting in effort and you're not getting that appreciation back,

One,

It'll just feel bad,

It'll just feel shitty.

And two,

It's going to disincentivize your masculine virtues to come out.

And the whole point of this episode here,

This whole point of this video is how can you fall in love and stay in love in a way that makes you feel more like a man and less like a resentful boy.

Those are two principles.

Take initiative on behalf of both of you,

On behalf of the relationship and let yourself be seen.

Let yourself be seen so that you can be appreciated.

Make it easy on her to appreciate you back in return.

Because what I want you to get from this is that even though a lot of guys do lose themselves and become beta or become boyish or they lose their edge,

Specifically when they fall in love,

They become a little bit too soft,

It does happen and there's always a risk of that.

But just like Odysseus and the Sirens,

There is a way to take in the beauty of femininity and take in the beautiful experience of falling in love where you don't only not become,

Not only do you lose your masculinity,

But you actually become more of a man that way.

It takes a little nuance,

It takes a little awareness,

But these two principles should help you out there.

Thanks for watching or listening to this episode.

If you want to have discussions on topics like this,

You might want to join my Facebook group,

The Masculine Underground Forum.

There we have some great discussions on topics pertaining to men,

Relationships,

Creative purpose,

Even things like fatherhood and fitness and of course attraction.

That's at forum.

Masculineunderground.

Com or you can search for Masculine Underground on Facebook.

Also,

If you want a more hands-on approach to uncovering your archetypal masculine traits,

You can check out my 21-day Masculine Archetype Challenge.

Info is in the description.

It's also at masculinearchetypechallenge.

Com.

And finally,

I have to say this for my conscience,

If you've been on your phone for more than 30 minutes,

Why not switch to audio format?

Screens are bad for your brain and all of my best content is on the Ruando Podcast and all the podcast streaming apps.

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Get off your phone.

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Say optimum Bad,

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Take the whole thing golden Not stolen,

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