148 How To Help Her Into Her Feminine
Please note: This track may include some explicit language. Modern women have difficult dilemma: the working world requires them to be in their 'Masculine' (competitive self) while fulfilling relationships require them to be in their 'Feminine' (interdependent self). As a man who dates women, you can help her enter her Feminine at least at home. Not only will you reap the rewards of high polarity intimacy, it's an opportunity to level up as a man. This episode draws on some fringe experiences in BDSM, and of course evolutionary biology.
Transcript
It's a bit ironic,
But the things about my wife that made me interested in committing to her are not the same things that make me interested in staying with her.
They're not the same things that have me be attracted to her.
And in fact,
The somewhat dark truth is,
In certain contexts,
It's actually the opposite of what makes me drawn to her now.
These things about her that made me interested in committing to her we might call her masculine side.
These traits that are competitive advantages out in the external material world,
Independence.
She had a successful business.
She still has one,
But she's on maternity leave.
Having forethinking,
Intelligence,
All of these traits,
I admired them and I still admire them.
They made me interested in life partnership.
They're simply practical things to have in a partner.
Basically being with someone who brings in a second income,
Who you don't have to really be concerned about.
These are practical survival traits,
Competitive advantages in terms of survival.
But now that we're together,
They don't really do that much for me,
Actually.
And especially through watching her enter these new layers of femininity through pregnancy and now motherhood,
I still admire them.
I'm still glad that the mother of my daughter is a strong woman who can model those traits.
But as far as our connection goes,
As far as the quality of our relationship,
It doesn't do that much.
In fact,
In certain contexts,
It can take away.
Whereas when she's in her more feminine side,
As she's been going into more deeply through pregnancy and motherhood,
Everything is great.
When she's in her feminine,
I'm so eager.
I'm very attracted to her.
I feel very in love with her.
I'm eager to do things for her,
For us.
And this idea of a woman being in her feminine versus her masculine has been coming up in quite a few conversations I've been having with guys.
This number of guys I'm speaking to in different types of relationships.
Some have been in long-term relationships.
Some are in newer relationships.
And this is even relevant for guys who are not in relationships,
But they want to be better at dating.
Maybe for guys who end up being friend-zoned a lot because they don't know how to enact polarity in their interactions.
This question of,
Well,
How do I help a woman into her feminine keeps coming up.
I mean,
This has perhaps always been a concern of men on some level,
Even if not conscious.
I think it's more common now than ever due to our culture's drive towards androgyny.
In many episodes,
I've spoken about the feminization of men and how to resist it and how it's been damaging to the male psyche as individuals.
But here I also want to speak about the masculinization of women.
In many ways,
These cultural shifts have more greatly necessitated women to become masculine.
It's just that I've blamed consumerism.
I've blamed feminism in previous episodes.
I think it's maybe not the most accurate way to frame it because even feminism itself,
Even the most hostile elements of feminism are kind of just another symptom of this drive of our culture for us to all see ourselves as independent units rather than interdependent the way we evolved to be.
Wherever it comes from,
We can blame certain abstractions.
But the fact is,
In the 21st century,
Women kind of have to be masculine.
Everyone has to have certain masculine traits simply if they want to survive.
Economies kind of require it.
And in this episode,
I mean,
Certainly this is an episode directed at men,
But a third of our listeners are women.
I want everyone,
The men especially,
To understand the challenges of women.
It's not simply,
Oh,
Why isn't she in her feminine?
It's because she's not being cool or she's not liking me.
It's actually a very big challenge because everything in school and work kind of force women to be in their masculine side.
That's just the way our cultural reality is right now.
But even though people,
Women are raised this way and the economy maybe requires people to lean more heavily on their testosterone-driven traits,
Our reproductive instincts,
Which govern our relationships and intimacy and romance and love and fulfillment on that plane,
Still runs on these pre-cultural circuits.
In shorter language,
When a woman is in her masculine,
When a feminine person is in her masculine,
In her relationships,
The relationships tend to suffer.
She's not happy.
The man is usually not happy.
Usually physical intimacy suffers.
There's a lack of fulfillment.
Whereas,
At least in relationships,
When there's polarity,
Things are just better.
Many years ago in New York,
I was in this men's group or actually I auditioned or I went through a screening process for this pretty clandestine men's group.
It was actually kind of cool,
Although everyone was much older than me,
So I decided not to join.
But this is one guy I remember.
He was maybe 45.
He was married.
He would always say this line,
Which he said it so often that I really found it irritating,
But now I hear him in my head a lot because it's true.
He would always say,
If mama ain't happy,
Nobody's happy.
He would always say that whenever his relationship came up in discussion.
Every time my wife is passing through a postpartum period,
His words keep ringing in my head.
If mama ain't happy,
No one's happy.
In a polarized relationship,
The feminine pole kind of dictates the feelings of everyone in the household.
The men don't get to feel fulfilled.
They don't feel like men.
Usually sex life tanks or suffers or sometimes nonexistent,
And the women suffer.
Even though the business world may necessitate it,
Women aren't really – I mean,
We can argue that the working world,
Especially the corporate world,
Was kind of created by men for men.
So for women to behave in these testosterone-driven ways is very stressful and unnatural for women.
Their cortisol levels spike.
It doesn't feel good.
But a lot of women,
Because they were raised this way,
Because this is how our culture is,
They don't actually – it's not easy for them to switch into feminine mode.
Good news is,
If you're a man who dates women,
There are many things you can do to help a given woman who are in some form of relationship with – you can help her enter her feminine,
Which is good for her,
At least in the relationship setting,
Good for you.
This episode is,
Of course,
For anybody who dates feminine people or who wants to interact with the feminine side of whoever you're in an intimate relationship with.
It is probably easier for someone in a more casual setting,
Dating early,
Short – new relationships,
Short-term relationships.
But I specifically want to speak to what in the red pill community they call playing the game on hard mode,
Which is a man in a long-term relationship where perhaps for many years the polarity has been lost.
It's been like a – to use red pill language,
It was a blue pill relationship.
Because then you're not only trying to change yourself and how you show up as a man,
You're kind of going against perhaps years of negative conditioning and evidence that for your woman,
She doesn't feel safe or comfortable entering her feminine.
She may have good reason for not wanting to enter her feminine and it's extra challenging to correct that.
So hopefully – well,
My aim with this episode is to address this hard mode situation because,
Of course,
If it works for a guy playing the game on hard mode,
It should work for everyone else.
Of course,
As with all my episodes,
We're going to start with a little evolutionary biology to ground us in these principles,
The general thing being that a polarized relationship is an interdependent one,
Which is how we evolve to be.
And all of our circuitry when it comes to intimacy and lust and love,
They evolve long before our cultures develop to try to control our instincts.
The first part of this episode is going to speak a little bit about that and then the latter part,
We're going to speak about the practical how-tos.
And a lot of that I'm actually going to draw from my experience in the BDSM world because if there is any setting where consenting adults enter a hyperpolarized scenario,
It's in BDSM.
So this is not to say anyone should do BDSM or obviously it's not for everyone,
But we can look at certain principles and see how they work in the BDSM world because obviously if they work there,
They definitely work in,
We can say,
A more vanilla-relating situation.
Right now you're listening to episode 148's How to Help Her into Her Feminine.
There are two components to a healthy polarized relationship.
And by healthy I mean mutually desired and mutually fulfilling.
The first is asymmetry,
Meaning you are not the same thing to each other.
And the second is connection,
Meaning you're connected emotionally.
This is kind of like the yin and yang of a healthy polarized relationship.
And just like the yin-yang symbol represents,
They need to be in balance.
If you have all connection with no asymmetry,
You basically have,
Well,
You don't have polarity.
Maybe you're best friends,
You're roommates,
You're in the friend zone.
This does happen with sometimes happily married couples where they become best friends,
But there's no asymmetry.
They're just life partners,
Co-parents.
The chemistry is gone because they're the same thing to each other.
They're peas in the pod,
To use theater language.
Whereas if you have all asymmetry with no connection,
You have antagonism.
Perhaps there are different people to each other.
Maybe there's an aggressor and,
For lack of a better term,
Victim.
Or sometimes in domestic abuse situations,
There is a lot of asymmetry.
Sometimes the aggressor and the victim,
More literally.
You have some sort of antagonism,
But it's certainly not a fulfilling relationship because there's no connection.
It's not desired by at least one party the way that they're relating.
This is the yin and yang of a healthy relationship in that these two forces need to balance each other out.
I like to think of them as bank accounts.
Maybe you have two different currencies,
The asymmetry currency and the connection currency.
If one ever drops really low while the other one goes up,
It kind of throws things off.
It messes with your relational economy,
If you will.
Sometimes it is necessary to make withdrawals from one account and send it to the other.
If you're trying to reconnect after a fight,
Fights usually have a lot of antagonism,
Often have some asymmetry.
You as the man may need to take a withdrawal from the asymmetry account in order to reconnect.
You reduce the power dynamic.
You certainly reduce your aggression,
Hopefully remove your aggression in order to reconnect.
That is useful,
But you can't do that too much.
It works if you have built up the asymmetry bank account enough that the dynamic between you is kind of solidified.
Yes,
You can withdraw from it.
But if you withdraw from it too much,
Well,
You create a friend zone situation.
You ruin the physical chemistry.
On the flip side,
There are times where this is maybe more of a taboo idea,
But there are times where you need to withdraw from the connection account in order to increase polarity.
And I've seen this a lot in BDSM workshops where a happily married couple that doesn't have sex shows up.
They sometimes need to withdraw from the connection accounts,
Which may be simply spending less time together,
But sometimes maybe increasing a little heat,
A little playful antagonism,
And I'm going to speak about how to do that later in the episode,
In order to increase polarity and lust and bring back their spark.
Of course,
This only works if they've built up a connection.
There has to be something to withdraw from because if either account goes to zero,
Well,
Then that's not good either.
First I want to define what asymmetry is just to make it clear,
And we're going to use a non-romantic example.
This is actually a bit of a semantics tangent.
This is something that Alfred Korzybski,
Father of general semantics,
Spoke about.
Often he pointed out how a lot of our language is based on assumptions of symmetrical relationships when in nature the relationship between two things is almost never symmetrical because everything in reality is in some way unique.
So I'll use an example from my real life.
I have a brother.
He's 10 years younger than me,
And we can label each other as brothers.
That's a symmetrical relationship because I'm his brother and he's my brother.
It's interchangeable.
But that doesn't really describe our actual relationship because I'm the older brother,
Elder brother,
And he's the younger brother.
I'm his elder brother doesn't mean that he's my elder brother,
Right?
Obviously,
Right?
There's other kinds of clearly asymmetrical relationships,
Parent to child.
And then of course in a sexual setting,
The man and the woman or the masculine and the feminine poles.
And Korzybski drilled that if you want to speak and think accurately,
You should recognize that basically with everything there are asymmetrical relationships.
Like you might have neighbors to either side of you,
But the neighbor to your left is to your left.
The neighbor to your right is to your right.
The neighbor to your left,
You're not on his left.
You're on his right.
I mean,
This might seem like nitpicky.
Actually,
Most things in semantics seem nitpicky because we've gotten so used to inaccurate language.
But to just recognize the truth of this is important because very often it causes inaccurate modeling of reality,
Which causes problems later on.
So one example would be with the rise of communism in the 20th century,
There is this idea that everyone in a communist movement are peers.
So they would call each other comrades as opposed to having hierarchical titles.
But as satirized in George Orwell's Animal Farm with the phrase,
All animals are equal,
Some are equal than others,
The fact is any time a group gets together,
Asymmetrical relationships form and hierarchies form.
Even if you label it as all animals are equal or we're all comrades,
As we could see through history,
That just isn't reality.
It goes against all of our social instincts that hierarchies will always form.
Now when it comes to the sexual relationship between,
Say,
An adult man and an adult woman,
I actually think our language is still limited because one thing I want to drill is that any time,
Especially when a man speaks about polarity,
There's a feminist criticism that he's saying that men are better than women.
And I would actually argue that the perception that polarity means that one is better than the other is also a limitation of our language.
Actually,
I would even say it's what we might call patriarchal paradigms,
Kind of just like so deeply steeped into it that we kind of just view things as better and worse.
So when we think of a hierarchy,
We often think of it top down,
Like who's above you,
Who's below you,
And some settings that is accurate.
But I would say when it comes to human relations,
Adult human relations,
It's better to look at this hierarchy or this order as concentric circles.
It's not about better or worse.
Whenever we paint pictures as top down,
This assumption of top is better.
So I think it's better to look at it,
And more accurate,
I should say,
To look at it in terms of external and internal.
I like to look at social hierarchies more like concentric circles.
Social hierarchies where everyone's a willing participant,
Not obviously a forced hierarchy.
It's more like concentric circles where,
As we spoke about in the last episode,
Speaking about a man's anima or a person's – we might call the feminine pole of the unconscious.
You can think of it as a bunch of circles.
So with the individual,
As we spoke about last episode,
An individual has his or her internally driven processes,
Emotions,
Subconscious,
Creative thoughts,
Dreams,
The stuff of Jungian psyche.
Then there's the external attention,
Focus on the real world.
You can think of that as a circle where there's a perimeter and an internal.
There's the perimeter that deals with the outside world,
And then there's the stuff that's just inside of you.
Then you can move it on to another concentric circle where that individual is now in a polarized relationship.
Let's say a man and a woman where one person is more – especially in moments of polarity,
One person is more focused inward,
Both inside of her,
Let's say,
But also the internal parts of a relationship and biologically,
A woman being pregnant is the most inward,
Is like the most important internal function of any human group.
Whereas that leaves the other person,
The one who doesn't get pregnant,
Let's say,
To focus on the outside.
Men and women have evolved to have certain traits based on this biological reality.
Then,
Of course,
There are more concentric circles beyond that.
This is more stuff that I cover in the History of Man podcast where from the family unit,
There's the clan or the tribe where the men form the perimeter around,
Let's say,
The women and children.
But then there's also a chief,
Which is coming from the biological alpha male who takes on the most,
We could call,
External function of the group and so on and so forth.
Actually,
On that note,
In the prologue of the History of Man podcast,
I cover different masculine versus – or male versus female behaviors in different species across the evolutionary timeline.
I do point out how humans,
At least as far as our biological structures go,
Are a monogamous species.
We're a pair-bonding species.
Our physical structures suggest that.
We have relatively low dimorphism even though men are slightly bigger than women.
We're actually a lot more close to monogamous primates like gibbons.
Even the shape of our genitals is more similar to monogamous animals with one exception.
That one exception is the alpha male of a group or what may be evolved into a chief or a king.
Even in pre-civilization tribes,
Usually the chief had multiple wives whereas all the other men had one.
This points to a biological term known as the polygyny threshold where if an individual male – and the polygyny threshold is typically – or the term was coined referring to birds who have a choice.
A female bird is a choice of being a male's second wife or second mate or another male's first mate.
The polygyny threshold is the amount of surplus resources that a polygynous male bird can offer the second wife that makes it more useful for her to be with him than to be the only mate of another bird.
In other words,
He has so much surplus external resource that it's actually better to share him rather than to be someone else's one and only.
This is all to say that I'm not advocating for any kind of specific form of relationship.
I'm happily monogamous with my wife.
However,
I think for most guys,
It is a nice ideal to think about and strive for to be so useful to have such a surplus of – we can say masculinity,
But like such a surplus of providing that it actually would be rational for a woman to share you rather than to be someone else's.
It's just an ideal to strive for,
I think,
Because obviously if you can do that,
Then you're really doing well as a man.
You're really doing right by your woman.
Now,
Back to the human polarized relationship,
Our romantic intimate sexual relating requires this asymmetry.
Asymmetry is what triggers our reproductive instincts,
Which is why power dynamics are often seen in the bedroom where in other social settings,
You wouldn't.
Another way to look at it is that we've evolved,
Men and women have evolved to fill different roles for each other down to the simplest sperm and egg,
Penis,
Vagina,
Top and bottom.
There are different social roles of external functions and internal functions that any person can succeed better with a little bit of specialization as opposed to what consumerism pushes which is the idea that each of us can exist completely independent and separate from everyone else and if we have enough money,
We can just exchange with the global economy for it.
That works when it comes to products,
But it doesn't work when it comes to emotional fulfillment because our wirings,
When it comes to these kinds of feelings,
Evolved long,
Long before we could care about things like money.
So what we might call the feminine archetype is the part of the psyche that is focused on internal processes.
In the last episode,
I used Jung's term,
The anima,
It's the part of us that's part of the human unconscious that is focused on the creation of life,
Primarily baby making,
But you can extrapolate this to other processes.
And the thing that perhaps postmodernists or consumerists or certain kinds of feminists don't like to acknowledge is that the feminine requires interdependence.
If you just look at the biological level,
Imagine hunter-gatherer times out in the wild,
A woman can't be pregnant and deal with external survival things at the same time.
And actually,
This is another thing I covered in the History of Man podcast,
But if a female mammal is under significant stress,
It'll actually change how she reproduces.
A female mammal can't be pregnant and deal with external functions.
Even though Paleolithic women were probably way stronger than most modern day men,
They still couldn't be pregnant and hunt at the same time.
They couldn't be nursing and dealing with,
Protecting against the elements or making big decisions on where the tribe should move,
Which is why there's this natural interdependence.
And I'm of the opinion that prior to the creation of civilizations and states,
There was a natural balance between this yin and yang,
This masculine and feminine.
There's this natural interdependence.
If you look at the mythologies of pre-state cultures,
Very often there is a greater celebration of femininity in their mythologies.
You have the Great Mother Gaia,
You have various feminine entities who were more greatly worshipped.
Whereas as you look through the timeline of civilization's history,
It's gone more and more focused on masculine is the only good.
The obvious would be the Abrahamic religions where there's a single male god.
But even before that,
The polytheistic religions,
There's usually a male that was the head of the gods.
Whereas if you look at animist religions,
There's very often more of a balance,
Or there's more of an appreciation of the feminine.
And what threw off this balance,
I don't think is any evil or insidious plot to oppress women,
But simply when,
And this is an abbreviation of the first couple episodes of the History of Man podcast,
But as humans create a civilization,
They hoarded wealth.
The wealth incentivized war.
In the Stone Age,
There was no war because there was no reason to invade each other because resources were so abundant.
And because of the constant threat of war,
There was a greater need for masculine values,
Like just the need for security was way greater than other survival needs.
And that's what led,
If you compound that over many,
Many generations,
Thousands of years,
That's essentially what created what feminists would call the patriarchy,
Like this set of male-oriented cultural assumptions that I think organically developed because of certain things,
Like agriculture.
And what I care about more when it comes to relationships is that with this modern day patriarchal consumerist paradigm that most of us are steeped in is this assumption of separateness,
Which is not good for relationships.
Now,
I want to stress this again because I think it's very important for men to understand,
And you know,
I'm not bringing this up for moral reasons,
But for practical reasons.
Women are under a lot of stress because they're kind of incentivized in both ways,
Whereas to be secure in the world,
They need to develop a masculine side.
They need to develop their own perimeter because we don't live in interdependent tribes where she can lean on her father or lean on the men of her tribe to take care of that for her unless she's in a relationship.
A couple of generations ago,
It was common for a woman to need to find a man and just depend on him.
But actually,
And this is sympathy for even the militant feminists,
The reason why that kind of militant feminism developed is that men kind of dropped the ball,
Right?
And this is not to shame men,
But it's kind of just the reality.
It's like it stopped at various times in civilization history.
It just simply was not rational for women to be dependent on men because that exchange of internal external functions was no longer balanced.
So women had to learn to develop their perimeter,
To develop their masculine side,
Which of course,
Even though it's useful in the world,
Makes them competitive in say the job market or whatever.
Again,
Not useful for the relationships,
Not useful for their own sexuality,
Which creates this internal dilemma.
So I bring this all just – I'm stressing this I guess because it can be very frustrating for a man with a woman who just won't go into her feminine.
You can't connect that way,
Right?
It's like putting the two – the north poles of two magnets together.
Like you can't get too close.
You repel each other.
And it's easy for a man to get frustrated.
Why won't you relax?
Why won't you trust me?
You know,
Obviously it takes two to tango,
So it's a little bit on both sides.
But I see a lot of guys shoot themselves in the foot by demanding something of a woman that is very difficult without recognizing the struggle they're going through and thereby not creating conditions that makes it easy for her to surrender,
Right?
Very often these kinds of complaints or antagonism only reinforces why she needs to keep her guard up,
Why she needs to maintain her own perimeter and not connect.
Because it is an extremely vulnerable thing to essentially dissolve your own perimeter and enter someone else's.
And men should appreciate that.
It is literal dependence.
It's scary.
When a woman opens up emotionally,
She becomes literally vulnerable,
Right?
Not just invulnerable in the way that we often use it in our culture now of like just like slightly uncomfortable.
But,
You know,
A woman becomes super attached to a man,
You know,
Becomes economically dependent on a man and he leaves.
Well,
She's screwed.
You know,
She's pregnant.
She's screwed.
So like women have ways of guarding against that,
Which is why even long before civilization and these cultural paradigms,
Women have tested men,
Right?
You know,
Whether it's the shit test of,
You know,
To use the PUA language or just like any kind of test,
These tests are testing men for these two things,
Right?
On the same lines of asymmetry and connection,
She's testing one for strength,
You know,
Because she needs to know if she's going to dissolve her perimeter and enter yours,
She needs to know that your perimeter is stronger,
Right?
If she's the strong one in a relationship,
She has no reason,
You know,
It's not actually rational of hers,
Of her to dissolve her,
You know,
Tear down her walls and enter your city,
Right?
That's,
She's better off being on her own.
And then she also needs to test for the connection,
Right?
She may see you as strong,
But if she's going to,
You know,
Hypothetically have your child,
You know,
It doesn't have to be literally,
But you know,
Our sexual instincts,
Our screening for that,
If she's going to end up having your child,
She wants to know that you care enough about her that you'll actually look out for her best interests.
And the last conceptual thing that I want to share on this is the masculine side of someone,
The perimeter,
Is what defines a separate entity,
Right?
You can think of it as walls,
You can think of it as a membrane on an amoeba or something,
You know,
Wherever that line is,
Wherever that masculine side exists is what defines something as separate.
So if she's in her masculine side and you're in her masculine side,
You're both perceiving yourselves as separate,
Right?
And that's okay in certain kinds of relationships,
Male relationships or work relationships,
You can see,
You know,
You have these transactional connections where,
Okay,
I'm doing this for you,
You do this for me,
We're separate entities and we're trading,
But that doesn't allow for intimacy,
That doesn't allow for real connection.
You need that separation of like one person is providing or primarily providing the perimeter and the other person is entering within it.
And on the flip side,
You know,
If two people were to enter their feminine,
Well,
You might call that a codependent relationship,
But actually two people in their feminine side,
It would never sustain because one or both people would start to feel like,
Well,
The perimeter isn't handled.
We don't feel secure and that person would end up entering their masculine side.
And I've seen this,
You know,
In terms of attachment theory,
When people aren't secure,
They're either,
They tend to be avoidant or are anxious.
And you know,
I've spoken about that in other episodes.
I have that interview with Joseph Teske,
My friend who's a psychotherapist where we spoke about attachment theory.
But one thing that's interesting is that,
You know,
People have their tendencies,
You know,
Some people lean anxious,
Some people lean avoidance.
But when two anxious people end up together,
Usually one person ends up being avoidant.
Like I've seen this with,
You know,
Female friends of mine who always or usually end up these like end up in this like anxious attached situation with an avoidant man who's like mistreating her and being cold,
But she's like longing for him more and more and more.
But then,
You know,
She might end up with a soft guy who's very anxious,
You know,
Maybe to recover from all the avoidant guys.
And then she gets repulsed by him.
She ends up being avoidant because she just finds it irritating,
Right,
For a guy to lean on her.
And the same thing,
The opposite happens,
Right?
I myself have,
You know,
Have leaned avoidant in certainly my younger years.
And when I was with someone or interacting with a woman who is even more avoidant than me,
It kind of triggered my anxiety because like I was like,
I'm used to women chasing me.
She's moving away and being cold.
It makes,
You know,
It's another element.
And we can say this is kind of like the attachment theory version of the need of everyone to feel like,
Well,
Someone's got to be dealing with the outside world and someone's got to be dealing with the inside world.
I'm not saying these anxious avoidant dynamics are ever healthy,
But here's another example of it.
I stress all of this for men first before we even get into tactical things.
If you're a man dating a woman who is in her masculine,
To recognize that it is a defense mechanism almost always,
Or it might not seem like a defense mechanism because maybe she's just used to being like that.
Maybe she even sees herself as like,
Oh,
My masculine side,
That's who I am.
The way I end up,
You know,
That feminine me,
That more perhaps submissive me that I end up in the bedroom.
That's not really me.
That's just like,
I don't know,
Some weird kinky side.
But who I am at work,
That's my real self.
Even when faced with that,
Even when faced with maybe even more hostile versions of a woman's masculine side,
The best perspective is to recognize that it's a defense mechanism and to have compassion for it.
Because anything you try,
As far as helping a woman enter feminine side,
If it doesn't come from compassion,
It's almost always going to re-incentivize her to put up her guard more,
To re-incentivize her to strengthen her perimeter and keep you out.
Because again,
Why should she enter your world if she's not better off there?
She's not safer,
More loved,
Happier there.
And this is something that's come up a lot in my relationship with Naliyah.
I mean,
Maybe I'll have her on the podcast to speak to this directly.
But she has said as she's entered deeper and deeper layers of her femininity through pregnancy and motherhood,
It's been challenging and confronting because she said to me many times,
She's never depended on a man this much,
Or she's never depended on a man like this other than when she was a little girl depending on her father.
And this might be partially colored by our cultural frameworks of seeing dependence as a bad thing,
But it can feel like going back into child mode.
For an adult woman to no longer be in charge of her focus on the outside world can be very scary.
There has to be a lot of trust there.
And I've thought that this idea of like,
We're entering some taboo territory by the way,
This idea of like the father-daughter dynamic is interesting because anytime you juxtapose a parent-child dynamic into a sexual relationship,
Obviously seen as kinky,
Taboo,
Maybe makes some people uncomfortable.
But if you ask any woman,
Actually I'll first say to the men,
Even if that idea is a little bit,
Maybe you're a little too vanilla for that to feel comfortable,
You just think,
Would you rather,
If you're with a woman you're attracted to,
Would you rather her call you daddy or call you her little boy?
Which one is more appealing?
I mean,
I think the answer is obvious.
And if you ask any woman and any female listeners,
Feel free to respond in some way.
And if anyone disagrees with me on anything,
I would actually love to hear it.
Email me.
I'd be happy to discuss it or see new perspectives.
But as far as I know,
If I were to ask any woman,
When it comes to a romantic relationship,
If it had to be one way or the other,
Would you rather it resemble a father-daughter dynamic or a mother-son dynamic?
Pretty sure every woman would say father-daughter if they had to choose,
Right?
Because with the asymmetry of a relationship,
A woman doesn't want,
Or I should just put it this way,
A woman's sexual instincts,
Her reproductive instincts do not activate when she's the one controlling the situation,
When she's the one in charge.
If she has to look after you as her child,
It's not exactly sexy.
Now,
Many hetero-adult relationships do end up with this mother-son dynamic,
But it's very rarely fulfilling,
And it's usually a complaint by one or both parties.
Perhaps it's caused by the raising of weak men,
The feminization of men,
Mother complexes,
Feminist mothers,
Again,
Rewarding childish behavior or boy behavior and creating the generation of man-children,
Stuff we've talked about in different episodes.
And then also,
Again,
The necessities of women to be a little bit harder,
A little bit more in control can make it difficult.
Even for a woman who wants to enter a feminine side can make it difficult for her to let go because,
Well,
There's a lot of risk and maybe not a lot of reward.
So in all of this,
And I said this in the How to Attract Women episodes,
A woman will typically have sex,
I first heard this from one of my coaches,
Ken Blackman,
But I'm not sure if he got this from somewhere else too.
A woman will typically have sex if two conditions are met.
One,
She has reason to believe that it'll be good,
The sex will be good,
And two,
She has reason to believe that there won't be negative consequences,
Typically emotional consequences.
She won't be shamed,
She won't be ostracized,
You won't make her feel bad afterwards.
If you can meet those two conditions,
It just makes sense,
She'll probably want to have sex.
And the same thing in the polarized relationship,
Because of course that builds off of sexual dynamics,
If a woman can trust that you are strong enough to hold down the fort and you're looking out for her best behavior,
Well then she has every reason to enter her feminine.
So I bring up this taboo idea of the father-daughter example because as we enter the part of this episode on practical how-tos or the actionable steps,
I have to look at my experience in BDSM,
Especially when it comes to DOM sub-psychology.
A lot of what I know and believe has come from conversations with my friend Omer Pani,
Who's been on the podcast quite a bit.
So if you find this particularly interesting,
You probably want to check out his work.
He has a book called Prerequisites to Ecstasy.
It's quite good.
It's a good intro especially if all of this stuff is new to you.
But as far as my hands-on side of things,
Prior to getting involved in BDSM,
I read a lot.
I read David Data and I was in one taste where I got – I did also get a lot of hands-on experience there.
But until I started actually playing Shabari,
Which is Japanese rope bondage,
Which is really the only thing in the BDSM world that ever appealed to me.
I'm not interested in whips and chains or any of like the particularly weird stuff.
But I really like Shabari because I mean there's a spatial aspect where you get to learn to tie knots and I guess like the Lego brain in me was interested in that.
But also,
It was a great way to really experience extreme – or maybe not extreme,
But heightened polarity between consenting adults and seeing the effect.
Because for a long time,
And I think this is true for most intellectual people,
Trying to understand why anyone would want to be a submissive in the bedroom is kind of hard to grasp.
I never really – for a long time,
I just did not get it.
Why would someone not want to have control?
Why would someone – what could a woman possibly get out of this?
I mean this is all before Fifty Shades of Grey really became big.
But even still,
Even when it came out,
I was still kind of new to this.
I didn't really get it.
But in practicing Shabari,
I got to see there was something – I couldn't explain it for a long time,
But there was something about when a woman was well-held,
Both we can say energetically or well-held by the man's attention and competence,
But also then literally held by the ropes.
She entered this state that Ohm calls a state of enchantment or in the BDSM world they call subspace,
Where there's like this opportunity for higher level bliss or we could say an altered state of consciousness that just isn't possible when she's in control of her faculties.
There's something about taking away freedom that can be very pleasurable when entered consensually or when a woman gets off on it.
And for another maybe entering the taboo idea of the parent-child relationship in the bedroom,
Or juxtaposing them,
I should say,
Because I'm also a father of a daughter now.
This is maybe kind of a random example,
But someone gifted us a baby hammock.
What it sounds like is kind of a thing for a baby to swing in.
We don't have anything to hang on.
Like none of the trees – I mean,
The only thing I could hang it on was my pull-up bar.
And the only – I mean,
The way I rigged it was kind of with a Shabari riggers knots.
I was like,
Oh,
Okay,
I get to – it's kind of interesting.
And I got to see that my baby daughter enters kind of this blissful state when held by this thing,
Right?
And then it made me – it kind of was a reminder of like,
Well,
What does a woman possibly get – a woman who's into this stuff,
Obviously not everyone's into this stuff – but what does a woman possibly get about,
Say,
Being tied up and suspended?
Well,
It kind of triggers perhaps like this time of infancy where she was dependent and therefore the most open and surrendered to feelings dependent on her parents.
I don't know.
This is a theory many people propose.
But also,
I mean,
It does – is corroborated by earlier on in my Shabari experiences,
I did ask women like – because the first couple of times I experienced a woman in subspace,
I was like,
She must be faking it.
Like what – like why is this pleasurable?
And women gave different answers but one that I remembered was she said something of like – I remember one woman said,
It reminds me of being a kid where I was being dressed up,
Like having these knots tied on me where I'm like in the – something about it is just like pleasurable.
I'm just getting an opportunity.
I mean,
She didn't say these words but she got an opportunity to be dependent again.
And there's something about the feminine archetype that feels really good when being taken care of by someone she trusts.
And even for one more parental example,
There's this thing called swaddling that you do with newborns where you wrap them up so their arms can't move.
I didn't know I had a name until I had a baby.
But it's like this magical thing where like my daughter is two months old.
She doesn't – she hasn't quite developed proprioception so she doesn't know where her hands are.
She often hits herself in the face or scratches her own head and waves it around and causes herself anxiety.
Wrapping her up always calms her down.
And it's – it might be weird to think of it this way but it might be very similar to the subspace experience that a woman has or a rope bottom has when she gets tied up,
Right?
It might be the same emotional circuits,
Let's say.
And of course,
I'm not saying that anyone should get into BDSM but it's just to illustrate these points in more of a tangible way.
So as far as like what you should do or the principle that allows for this,
A principle that proves or allows – inspires a woman,
Let's say,
To let her guard down.
I'm going to reference something that Omrapani says all the time which is if you're in the dominant position,
Of course,
In a DS situation,
The asymmetry is very formal.
There's a DOM and there's a sub.
If you're in the dominant position,
The DOM needs to take 200% responsibility which means he's taking responsibility for his own experience.
He's also taking full responsibility for his sub's experience.
This relates to an idea I brought up in the magician archetype episode which is of course a more spiritual way of looking at this through the world of like the magician archetype in my definition is the part of you that assumes control over reality,
Whether it's true or not.
You take responsibility for everything.
You don't complain when something unfortunate happens.
You say,
Okay,
Well,
What do I do with this now?
You don't assume that the things you want are out of your reach.
You say,
Okay,
How do I figure it out,
Right?
This is a very useful perspective in relationship because at times it seems like,
Especially if you're a masculine person,
It can seem like your partner is just not behaving correctly,
Right?
I think this is – I'm forgetting where this comes from.
Some relationship coach,
I'll remember probably by the end of the episode where it's a tendency of men to look at women as broken men.
It's a tendency of women to look at men as broken women,
But we're different,
Right?
When you forget that,
It's easy to – I've criticized Jordan Peterson for that where he looks at women when they're being emotional and throws up his hands and says,
Oh,
You can't do anything.
Well,
That's not actually true.
If you understand that they're a different creature and you assume that there is something you can do to influence the situation,
Everybody wins.
It's a different form of what Jaco calls extreme ownership where you are taking responsibility for everything because here's another thing that Omrapani says.
A lot of people,
There's that cliché with great power comes great responsibility,
But that statement actually puts the causality in the wrong order,
Right?
The more responsibility you take,
The more power you have over your own life.
More agency in your relationship and it also inspires greater respect in the woman you're with because why should a woman let her guard down with a man who doesn't take responsibility,
With a man who complains when things don't go his way,
When he complains about his lack of competence,
His imperfections,
Which we all have,
Right?
When faced with that,
When faced with – in other words,
When faced with a whiny little bitch,
Why should she?
I mean,
It actually is totally irrational,
Right?
So whenever I'm speaking to a guy who is concerned or is upset that his woman isn't entering her feminine,
That's always the first thing we have to at least address like is he taking her full responsibility because if he's not,
He's actually inspiring her to not trust him.
The core piece of this is that you need to prove your agency and competence to the woman.
It doesn't mean that you're perfect.
But actually,
This is something that I learned from a past lover.
She told me that one of the most attractive things that a man can say to a woman is,
I don't know but I'm going to figure this out,
Right?
Because it doesn't matter whether he knows.
Obviously,
Any mature or even semi-mature woman should recognize that not every guy can do everything or knows how to do everything.
But having the sureness,
Having the confidence that you will figure it out and you don't have to lean on her,
She can continue to lean on you because you're going to figure it out even if you don't know yet,
It just makes a woman relax.
Which is also to say,
In a long-term relationship,
In a good partnership,
Of course it's great for the partners to support each other.
It may be in every way at different times.
But if you want to maintain polarity,
If you want to maintain asymmetry in your relationship,
It should not be a common thing for you to have to lean on your woman.
Because if she has to support you on a regular basis,
She doesn't get to be in the surrendered state.
Now,
There are times,
Of course,
Where it's just necessary.
It's one of the beauties of a committed relationship where you really trust each other.
Bad shit happens to you.
You're frustrated.
Work doesn't go your way.
Parents die.
I don't know.
You know,
Lots of things can happen,
Right?
And of course,
You know,
A good woman in a good relationship should support you in those moments in the way that you would support her in most moments.
But if that becomes a regular thing,
You're basically withdrawing from the asymmetry bank account.
And even if you still care about each other and maintain connection and you're good to each other in every way,
It's going to ruin the polarized connection.
It's going to be – I mean,
You're probably going to – she's probably going to lose attraction,
Which is to say,
You know,
If you've built up a great bank account of asymmetry,
Then that's okay to make withdrawals periodically.
But you have to make sure you're making those deposits.
And you make those deposits by being the strong one.
So you give her the opportunity to be the one who feels more things,
Right?
And that's a win-win for everyone because,
Of course,
Mom ain't happy.
No one's happy.
And on a tactical level,
Everyone does need – with the concentric circles,
Like no one wants to be the outer rim forever,
Right?
That is also stressful.
Every man,
Even the most masculine man,
Needs some sort of support.
It's good to get that from someone whenever possible that's not your intimate partner.
That's the beauty of men's groups.
I mean,
These are your tribal bros or just having good friends.
I mean,
That's what men have done for each other for long periods of time,
I mean,
Throughout human history,
Right?
Because anything else would withdraw from your asymmetry bank account.
Now I have heard some guys say,
Well,
I have to take 200% responsibility.
That's not fair.
Why should I deal with her?
Why should I always clean up her emotions and deal with the outside world and all this stuff?
Well,
It's true it's not fair in a consumerist utopia,
Right?
And I'm saying utopia sarcastically.
In a purely consumerist paradigm where we're all supposed to be productive in control units,
You're right,
It's not fair.
But where it is fair is when we look at the sexual instinct where the sexual instinct evolved long before these cultural paradigms.
It's our true nature,
If you will.
In a polarized dynamic,
It's totally fair because as you care for her and take full responsibility for her experience,
She feeds you with those good feelings and all the great things that we love about women.
And on a small philosophical sidebar,
Aside from me wanting people to have healthy,
Happy relationships,
One of the reasons why I even care to still talk about sex,
The psychology,
Of course,
Is interesting,
But it's also like on a grander philosophical level,
The sexual instinct is one of these things that connects us to nature no matter how far our culture becomes removed from it,
Right?
No matter how much culture shames sexuality or tells us what we should be attracted to or this and that or how we should express ourselves,
The sexual instinct,
It's like so primal that it preserves itself.
It's something that connects us to reality no matter what abstractions people come up with,
Right?
There's an Aleister Crowley quote that I once published with one of my more risque posts on Instagram,
Which is – I'm actually forgetting.
Basically he's saying that the sex instinct is God,
Right?
He says it in a more flowery way,
Meaning that the sex instinct is this thing that exists and directs our actions no matter what we think,
Right?
It's beyond us or beyond our cultural constructs.
Another thing,
Of course,
Is comedy,
And I've spoken about that in another episode.
The people who have the better sense of humor usually are more connected to real reality.
The next point of after proving that you have agency and control and you're a strong person who doesn't need to cry on her shoulder but the other way around is in practice making mutually beneficial decisions,
Right?
Because part of the perimeter is direction of the group,
Of the family unit,
The social unit,
The relationship,
The tribe,
Right?
It's the alpha male of a given group,
Regardless of the size,
That makes the big decisions ideally for everyone.
He's the one who takes the burden of dealing with the outside world of time and space.
I spoke about this in a recent episode where something my wife said a lot through pregnancy and even still is that she is happiest in this blissful feminine state when she can be timeless,
Meaning she doesn't have to think about clock time appointments.
She doesn't have to worry about what day it is on the calendar.
She can just flow,
Right?
And I can help her with that the more that I deal with that stuff because the feminine – and I even spoke about this last episode in terms of a man's anima – that part of ourselves can't have our attention inward to our internal,
Perhaps creative experience,
And have our attention on calendar time at the same time,
Right?
They're two different,
Perhaps,
Neural functions we can say.
So the more that you can prove to her that you have those decisions handled,
The more that she can essentially chill out and surrender.
One of the guys I'm speaking to right now,
He's had some challenges with his relationship – his wife has a tendency to go cold on him and I was speaking with him through one of these moments of – he was kind of having this dilemma where all the evidence she was giving him was that she wanted to be left alone.
But he had this strong feeling that he needed to break the ice and get in there and insist that they talk through their problem.
And because all of the evidence she was showing him seemed to point to she wanted to be left alone,
He basically came to her and acknowledged that and was like,
I know you want to be left alone and such and such.
I think at some point we should talk to you.
And then she kind of like snapped out of it and she was like,
No,
I don't want to be left alone.
And she kind of revealed that she was in a way giving a smokescreen that she wanted him to penetrate.
But eventually the truth was his gut feeling that they actually needed to talk now was the correct one,
Right?
He was actually on some level reading between the lines,
Let's say,
Reading beneath the superficial evidence of something that was more true.
And this is a critical skill.
If you can develop this and I think everyone is capable of it,
It's essentially developing intuition in a practical sense.
We're going to demystify intuition for anyone who still sees it as this magical thinking thing.
When you can learn how to read a woman beneath her smokescreens,
Beneath,
You know,
Because that's another kind of test,
Right?
There's the test of whether you're strong enough,
You know,
Get her giving you shit to see how you handle it.
There's also the test of her throwing up,
You know,
You know,
Giving,
Throwing out red herrings or false clues to see if you have enough attention on her to see what she really needs and because if you can prove that,
Then she knows she can really relax.
And this is something that I developed.
I got the opportunity to develop more when I was at OneTaste through the Ohm stroking practice where they would teach us,
Don't try to read a woman's vocalizations.
Don't try to read her external cues because sometimes women semi-consciously will actually give false cues to see if you're actually feeling them.
You need to feel them,
Right?
So that in itself sounds a little mystical.
But what they would say is,
Instead of trying to figure out the stroke she wants,
Learn how to stroke for your pleasure.
Meaning,
You know,
So in the Ohm genital stroking practice,
We would learn to focus on the sensation on the tip of her finger,
Which was touching her body,
And see what would feel best to the tip of our finger.
And if we did that,
That was the best,
The most educated guess we can make on what actually feels good to her.
Now this works on the principle of connection,
Which is,
I mean,
What is connection?
Connection is when you and another person are feeling corresponding feelings,
Right?
It's empathy,
Right?
So the more you are focused on the feeling between the two of you,
The chances are,
The greater chance is that what you feel corresponds to what she feels.
So in the orgasmic meditation practice,
This meant that if I really focused on what felt the best to my finger,
99% of the time that was also what felt the best to her.
Now,
This can take some calibration,
Which is why when it comes to intuition,
I often encourage guys to make educated guesses and see what the result is.
Because I would translate this adage of stroke for your pleasure to something I've spoken about in various things online.
My general advice when it comes to dealing with women or developing intuition with women,
I should say,
Is be connected,
Be selfish.
So be connected,
Meaning you're really focusing on her,
Right?
You're really focusing on the feelings between the two of you so you're not up in your head,
Right?
You're really looking for her cues.
And then be selfish means recognize what your feelings and impulses are,
Right?
Because if you are really focused on her,
There's the greatest chance of you having corresponding feelings,
Which means of course,
What you want is something close to what she wants.
Now,
In a non-sexual setting between two people,
This basically means you pay attention to her,
You make a guess on what would be good based on what you think feels good to you,
You see the feedback and you calibrate.
Obviously if this is the first time you're looking at relating with women this way,
If you historically always calculated what to do or lived in your head about things or maybe just didn't pay attention to her and just did whatever you wanted,
Chances are your intuition might not be very calibrated.
You're going to make mistakes.
But part of it is also recognizing you're going to make mistakes and not shaming yourself or going into your head about it because that is not benefiting her either,
Right?
Obviously even still with my wife,
I don't always make the right guess,
Right?
I have certain tendencies.
I don't always do the right thing.
But me,
Shaming myself or making mistakes,
That doesn't help her.
The best thing I can do is recognize the feedback of my guess,
Whether it's how I speak to her,
What I do with her,
Whether I give her more space,
Less space,
Try to anticipate what is beneficial to her,
Seeing the results and then if it's right,
Then I know I can trust that impulse later,
Right?
This is essentially for the guys who are not in relationships,
This is essentially my core advice when it comes to flirting,
Right?
Flirting is essentially,
I mean,
The way that I would recommend anyone engage with flirting is you pay as high quality attention to the other person as you can because the more you take attention to someone,
The more she will reveal things about herself,
Maybe not explicitly,
But you can just pick up on more things and then make bold statements or make bold moves based on what you pick up from her.
Again,
You might make mistakes sometimes,
But this is how we learn.
For me personally,
I'm kind of a cerebral flirter.
So with my wife all the time,
I'm always paying close attention to her idiosyncrasies and what she does and I just point them out,
I tease her about them.
It can be childish things sometimes,
But they communicate to her that I'm really paying attention to her,
Which means we're connected,
Which makes her feel good,
Which is why even when my jokes aren't funny,
She laughs and I believe it's a genuine laugh because it just feels good to be connected and for her to know that I'm really paying attention to her.
The last thing I'll say on intuition is that when I first entered one taste where they heavily trained us in these principles,
Basically,
I mean,
I've said this in different times I've been interviewed on my cult experience,
They taught us a really high level empathy and they knew how to weaponize empathy.
But when I was at one taste,
Especially early on,
A lot of the teachers,
They seemed psychic.
They could make these reads on people they just met and give incredibly specific advice where it was like the first time I was like,
Man,
Did they stalk me and look up things about me?
How the hell did she read this about me?
But later on,
I realized that this is a trainable skill.
It's not a mystical thing.
If you can cultivate high level – attention is an ability,
Right?
If you can cultivate a really high attention span,
A really high level of attention to pick up on all sorts of cues,
You can make incredibly specific educated guesses about someone.
It doesn't mean you're right all the time.
But the more you pay attention to someone,
The more they reveal cues and it's the best chance you can have at guessing because obviously,
Explicit communication is useful.
Couples should talk about things.
You should ask each other about what you like,
What you dislike and all that stuff and that's very useful.
It's better than just putzing around in the dark.
However,
When it comes to asymmetry,
When it comes to a woman entering that timeless,
Thoughtless state where she gets to really surrender,
Speaking about things and having to put things into words,
It doesn't really let her sink into that feminine,
Right?
Speaking about things is great for the purpose of calibration and learning what she wants and learning how to read her better.
But if you really want her to sink into her feminine,
You have to allow her to enter a nonverbal space,
Right?
In BDSM settings,
It's extreme where when a woman is in subspace,
She usually can't even talk,
Which is why in BDSM etiquette,
There's usually some sort of safe words or signals where a person doesn't have to use a lot of words to communicate their experience.
So the next actionable step on helping a woman enter feminine is rewarding good behavior.
And I know that makes it sound like dog training,
But actually,
As we spoke about in the dog brain episode,
Our limbic systems are very similar to that of dogs.
And actually,
As I described in that episode,
A dog's emotions have evolved to be very similar to human emotions.
So this is not saying women are like dogs because men are exactly the same way.
All of us,
Our emotions are very similar to the emotions of dogs.
So yes,
It is a little bit similar to dog training in that if you make someone feel good for doing a certain something,
They'll want to do it more.
And in practice,
This means as far as polarity goes,
When she is soft,
When she is connected,
When she is open,
When she is surrendered in moments that she's trusting you,
It is very important to give positive reinforcement.
It's useful if you know what your partner's love language is,
Whether,
I mean,
I think most women like verbal compliments,
Even if that's not their primary thing.
You know,
For whatever reason,
Feminine people seem to really like words of affirmation.
I believe that most masculine people don't value it so much.
At least that's what it seems anecdotally.
Perhaps for someone who's a little bit more logos-driven,
You know,
Emotional words maybe can seem empty.
I believe for a feminine person,
These words matter a lot,
Even though,
You know,
It's easy for people to lie.
They matter a lot because I believe it's related to public declarations,
Right?
If you're telling a woman,
You know,
If you're giving a woman compliments,
If you're publicly displaying,
You know,
You're putting into words,
You're caring.
I think the reason why feminine people care about it more,
I believe,
Is not because of what you're saying to her necessarily,
But because you're saying it out loud,
There's a public declaration element where you are saying to the world that you're committing your emotional resources and perhaps survival resources for her.
And that means a lot,
Right?
Of course,
You can lie,
You can fake words,
But if you're publicly declaring a statement,
It does bind you,
Right?
I mean,
I think a lot of our social norms around courtship have to do with this kind of public declaration,
Right?
Like the engagement,
The norm that a man spends,
What,
Like six months of his income on an engagement ring,
Which I think is a ridiculous consumerist thing personally,
But it's a declaration,
Right?
Like,
Oh,
If I'm committing that much of my livelihood to a woman and that much of my survival resource,
Well,
I'm obviously not just going to sleep with her or leave,
Right?
There's that kind of declaration.
Well,
There's many other kinds of ways of showing your love to a woman,
You know,
Touch,
Cuddles,
You know,
Again,
The more you pay attention to your woman,
The more you should know what things she likes.
To reinforce like,
Hey,
It's a really good idea to be in your feminine.
Things are good,
Right?
It's very important to signal that to her subconscious.
And actually,
You know,
There's a reason why I'm giving these principles and steps in this order.
This only is useful,
Like this rewarding of connection essentially is only useful if you've established some level of asymmetry,
Right?
Like a compliment,
For a woman to receive a compliment from a weak man doesn't mean a whole lot,
Right?
Because sure,
A weak man maybe is committed to her,
A weak man is looking out for her,
But because he's weak,
He can't really do anything for her,
Right?
Whereas if she sees a strong man,
And you see this a lot,
Like women will often publicly say that they love when a guy can be soft and emotional.
But it's not any guy,
Right?
It's not the weak,
Effeminate,
Ungrounded guy who she's like,
Oh,
It's so cute that he's open to his emotions.
No,
No,
It's a strong man.
Like if a strong man is emotional,
Well,
That's really touching,
Not just because of the juxtaposition,
But because a strong man's vulnerability is very useful,
Right?
A strong man is able to do things in the world,
And the fact that he's vulnerable with her shows that he's willing to share his abilities with her.
And to look at this from a more human perspective than labeling it as a dog brain,
It's also,
You know,
These emotions,
These emotions of attachment develop in us,
In each of us,
Long before our rational consciousness is fully developed.
I mean,
These are,
We call it our inner child.
And this is actually something I love about Mr.
Rogers,
The American children's TV show host.
The documentary on his life always makes me cry.
The movie with Tom Hanks portraying him is also pretty good.
But the documentary I really love because it shows his real perspectives on things.
And something he says in that film is a lot of adults are quick to dismiss a child's emotions because of course a child doesn't really know what's going on in the world.
But actually the child's emotions are fully developed.
I'm of course paraphrasing,
But like a child's emotions are no different than an adult's emotions.
A child might not know,
You know,
Rationally what's going on,
But that doesn't mean his or her emotions aren't real.
And I think there's another thing that men need to remember when dealing with a woman,
Especially when she's emotional,
Is that very often emotions are irrational.
Like almost by definition they're irrational.
Or I should say they're completely independent.
Emotions are completely independent of rationality.
So even,
And I have to remind myself of this because I often forget as well,
Even when a woman is being emotional and the emotions don't make any sense,
It doesn't mean the emotions are wrong.
Because emotions are just emotions.
The best thing you can do is to show her love and let her know that she is safe where she is.
I recently attended a father's circle,
Which is,
I guess,
Kind of like a men's group for new dads.
Oh,
They're dads of different ages,
Different levels of experience.
And it was cool.
I learned some things.
I got to reinforce some,
I think,
Good perspectives.
It was just nice to hear from more experienced fathers.
And one thing one guy said,
And it was corroborated by other more experienced dads,
Is there are unlimited ways to raise children.
Everyone has their theories and whatnot.
But one thing that seems to be an absolute is that your kids need to know that you love them.
And a couple fathers asserted this.
One guy,
I think he had nine-year-olds,
He was like,
I usually don't know what the right way is to parent,
But I know I need to let my kids know they love them.
I love them.
Because when you're in a surrendered state,
Regardless of adult,
Child,
Man,
Woman,
When you're in a surrendered state in relation with someone else,
Having love from the person who's defining your perimeter or looking out for your survival is survival to you.
This is why when it comes to child psychology or we can say our inner child's state or health,
For a child to perceive that their parent doesn't love them,
It's like one of the worst feelings.
A lot of adults neuroses come from this.
It probably wasn't true.
Probably all of us,
Our parents,
They love us,
But maybe didn't show it the right way.
But the perception that our parents didn't love us,
It feels so bad because that part of our consciousness,
That those emotional circuits equate it with death.
If your protector who determines whether you live or die doesn't love you,
Well,
You're basically dead.
And it's a good reminder.
It hasn't really come up with my two-month-old daughter.
But actually,
After hearing this from this father,
It made me think about how I treat my dogs.
My dogs have been not so well-behaved,
And particularly the male dog has been increasingly not well-behaved.
I mean,
We had to get him neutered.
We weren't planning on getting his balls chopped,
But he was just being so unpleasant,
And he was getting worse and worse,
And I was getting angrier and angrier at him.
And then when I thought about this perspective,
I'm like,
Okay,
I was doing a poor job of having compassion.
It's a dog,
But still,
It's some level of consciousness.
His emotions are almost as developed as human emotions.
And from his perspective,
His father,
Or the person who determines his survival,
Didn't love him,
And that must have felt like death to him,
Which is why,
Of course,
I was actually thinking about this while I was a little stoned.
So I got really emotional thinking about it.
Oh my God,
My dog Rumble thinks I hate him,
And that must feel so terrible.
So it's a bit cliché,
But I made a point to really show him love,
And as you would expect,
His behavior got a lot better.
And it was a nice reminder.
Because as we discussed in the dog brain episode,
The dog brain within all of us seeks security,
Especially from two things.
One is knowing where we are in the dominance hierarchy,
And specifically who is our pack leader,
Right?
Because the alpha is who determines the security of the group.
And the second thing is what is our territory,
Which I equate with humans to our ideology.
Those two things give us security.
And as dogs evolve to be loyal to the human that provides for them,
The surrendered part of all of us,
The emotional part of all of us evolved to feel love for the person who provides us with security.
So to most men,
Emphasizing words of affirmation and rewarding behavior with lots of love,
It may feel unnecessary because most men,
They don't need it so much.
Actually,
This is a thing that has come up between Naliya and I where when I'm stressed,
She'll sometimes come and give me a hug,
Which is sometimes,
Actually a lot of times,
It's kind of the last thing I want,
Right?
There was this one time recently,
She had had previously a bad day with sleep with the baby,
So I was with the baby the next day,
And I was making a dish in the oven and on the stove and the dogs were barking and there was a delivery man calling and I was holding the baby and she was crying.
I was very stressed,
And Naliya sensed that I was stressed and she came out of the bedroom and gave me a hug from the back.
And I almost threw her off me.
I was like,
You thought I wanted a hug?
You thought that's what would make me less stressed when I'm dealing with all these things?
But on the flip side,
For her,
When she's stressed,
That's exactly what she wants.
She just wants a show of love.
And I need to remember that too,
Because what I would have wanted in that situation is for her to help me with the problems I was dealing with.
And that's sometimes what I jumped to to do with her when she's stressed.
But actually,
What a woman needs,
What the feminine needs more than that in most situations is to know that the masculine presence in her life loves her,
And then she can deal with it.
Because as many men will recognize,
As satirized by that video,
It's not about the nail.
If you haven't seen it on YouTube,
It's very funny.
It's a short film that demonstrates this dynamic.
For women,
It's not about the solution.
It's about whether or not they're cared for,
And this is all because of reproductive instincts.
Now,
There's a couple of sub points I need to state on this whole idea of rewarding good behavior because it's easy to think,
Well,
I'm rewarding good behavior.
Well,
Then I should also punish bad behavior,
Right?
And no,
Not exactly.
I'm going to be more specific.
The first thing that is important is that you don't reward bad behavior.
A lot of guys who mean to be well-meaning,
Who want to validate their woman's experience and be there for her in whatever she's experiencing will reward her with love when she's being disconnected and cold.
And there are,
Of course,
Contexts where it's always important to let your woman know that you love her,
Right,
Because she's not going to open up otherwise.
But you don't want to specifically reward a disconnection.
If she knows that every time she pulls away or every time she mistreats you,
You reward her extra,
You give her extra love,
Then you're incentivizing her to be cold to you.
And that's not what you want to do.
It makes me remember,
I mean,
Basically that's creating an anxious avoidance situation where you're rewarding her for being avoidant by giving her extra love,
Right?
You're feeding the wrong dynamic and you're actually increasing insecurity in both of you as opposed to a secure relationship.
It reminds me of Offspring's song.
This is something that resonated with me a lot in high school when I was more of a beta person,
Let's say.
Offspring's song,
Self-Esteem,
The chorus is the more you suffer,
The more it shows you really care.
I mean,
The whole song is about a guy who's terribly mistreated by his girlfriend,
But he keeps doing more and more for her.
And he doesn't realize that he's actually inspiring her to mistreat him even more.
And actually,
Patrick,
My friend Patrick from Germany,
Spoke about this when he was on the podcast.
When he was in that previous relationship,
He shared that because he was acting so softly,
He was kind of incentivizing the woman to treat him like a slave.
He said that his ex-girlfriend was like,
Well,
I kind of had to treat you that way.
You're just like making me in some form.
And it is a tricky one because you do want to show her love at all times,
But you don't want to show her love because of her defense mechanisms.
You need to let her know,
It doesn't mean you want to punish her for it.
We're going to talk about that in a second,
But you definitely want to make sure you're not rewarding her for being cold.
Because she needs to know that when she opens,
That's when she gets all the good feelings because that is actually how reality works.
And this actually shouldn't be so hard because if you're a typical person,
It feels good to be nice to people when they're nice to you.
And it feels not so good to be nice to people who are not nice to you.
So if you actually just follow your gut feelings and try not to get too caught up in your head about morals or anything,
This should come close to natural.
Now there are situations where negative reinforcement is sometimes necessary,
Right?
Like perhaps your relationship has become antagonistic over many years and that's the default for both of you.
Perhaps you were not connected in the past,
So she's developed a really thick perimeter to defend herself against you and now you're trying to flip the script or you're trying to correct things,
But she doesn't trust you yet.
Or whatever the reason is,
Right?
Maybe she has a bunch of trauma,
Which is essentially her reacting defensively to past experiences that are no longer present,
But she's still reacting that way.
There are times where you need to be a little heavy-handed.
She has to know,
This is another demonstration of strength,
She has to know that there are some consequences.
In fact,
In many cases when a person has had a lot of past relationship pain,
They will push your buttons semi-consciously,
And this is both men and women,
Will push your buttons semi-consciously to see where the line is.
Even children do this.
I don't know this firsthand yet,
But I've heard.
And you need to let your partner know that there is a line that if you cross it,
Things are not going to be cool.
In the red pill world,
They call this dread game,
Which is essentially,
I don't agree with the tactic,
But the idea is if you're always threatening to leave,
Or if the woman knows that if she doesn't act the way you want,
You'll leave,
You're inspiring her to act the way you want.
Now I don't like this type of advice in itself because it actually is creating an anxious avoidance attachment style,
Except where the man is avoidant.
And I can see from the typical heartbroken beta male,
This is an improvement because it feels better to be the one with the power rather than the one clinging.
For most people,
Especially men,
It just feels,
Because essentially when it comes to attachment theory,
The avoidance,
To put it in the terms of asymmetry and connection that we've been using,
The avoidant is sacrificing connection for asymmetry or sacrificing connection for power.
They pull away,
They're willing to walk away from the relationship in order to get the other person to chase them.
That's what avoidants do because they're afraid to be met or to meet the other person.
Anxious people do the opposite.
They are so attached to the connection that they're willing to give away all their power to maintain the connection.
So this is what causes the anxious avoidance,
Insecure form of relating where there's one person pulling away and one person chasing and no one's really feeling fulfilled.
While I would agree for men that it feels better to be the avoidant than to be the anxious one,
It's still not a fulfilling relationship.
One of my big criticisms of Red Pill is that even if you can get compliance out of a woman,
And I know I've said this every time but bears repeating in case this is your first episode of mine,
Of listening,
If you're looking at your romantic connection as warfare where you're basically trying to gain power or game the other person,
You can never let your guard down and it kind of just takes away the opportunity for real connection and fulfillment,
Which is one of the points of being in a relationship with someone.
If you just wanted to get compliance out of someone,
You might as well just get a sugar baby or a mail-order bride or something where they're kind of forced to do what you want.
So while I don't encourage anyone to employ dread game,
Because the reason is anytime you use negative reinforcement,
There is a cost.
Maybe there are times where a king needs to employ his army to quell a rebellion,
To regain,
To reunify his realm,
But he's going to create some enemies doing that.
He's going to create some resentment.
In a relationship,
It's the same thing.
There might be times you have to be heavy-handed with your words,
But every time you do that,
You're creating some resentment and on some level,
You are inspiring her defenses.
One example,
This was a hard lesson for me,
Probably my first really deep love relationship in college.
I had been studying a lot of dating stuff and I was coming at it from – I was really focused on asymmetry,
Even though I didn't use that language back in the day.
We had a very high-polarity,
Fun relationship where I did not treat her very well.
There was a lot of dread game.
I didn't think of it in those terms,
But there's always this threat that I was going to leave.
I just basically didn't treat her very well,
Even though I was actually very in love with her.
I didn't treat her very well and I was very avoidant out of my own fear.
After many months of this type of relational dynamic where she was always chasing me and we had high-polarity and the sex was good even though she was always stressed,
I realized,
Oh,
Holy shit,
You know what?
I'm very much in love with her.
I'm being stupid.
Let me commit to her.
I was just like,
Okay,
I actually want to be with you.
Because I finally stopped running away and mistreating her – not that – anyway,
Let's say it's mistreating her.
Even though she had been chasing me,
She hadn't really thought about it.
But now that she no longer had to chase me,
No longer since I wasn't threatening the loss of connection anymore,
All of those months of resentments of me not treating her well all came out at once.
Almost overnight,
Right after I committed to her,
Everything was gone.
I actually took this – and I think a lot of red pill guys have experienced things like this.
Many men have experienced this where they're being mean to a woman and she likes him and they suddenly decide to be nice to her and then she goes away.
They interpret this to mean,
Oh,
You can't be nice to women.
This is a very superficial way to look at it and it doesn't recognize the deeper truth of well,
If you demonstrated your strength and had connection,
You could have had both actually.
You could have maintained the asymmetry and connection.
You could have maintained the polarized relationship.
Whereas if you use threats,
You're building up this resentment that unless you – I mean,
The moment you don't do things perfectly,
She'll leave you.
However,
The one thing I will say as far as the only kind of negative reinforcement that should be in play should be the recognition – and this goes for both sides of the equation.
Romantic love should not be seen as unconditional because it is not unconditional,
Right?
Maybe you can love someone as friends unconditionally.
Parent can love a child unconditionally.
But between partners,
Between adults,
It should not – romantic love is not unconditional.
We should not see it that way.
As much as I'm in love with my wife and we have a great connection,
I know and I'm happy to know that if I drop the ball repeatedly,
Right?
Obviously,
I can make mistakes and I hope I've built up enough connection and asymmetry that I can make some – I can mess up sometimes and it won't ruin the balance.
But if I repeatedly drop the ball,
If I repeatedly become weak,
If I repeatedly don't connect properly,
I expect her to leave me,
Right?
I wouldn't respect her if she stayed with a loser,
If I became a loser and vice versa.
Both people need to know this not as a threat,
Not as an ultimatum,
But that has to be there somewhere because I do see this in relationships where sometimes both parties are well-meaning but there's this – I mean,
We could call this codependence.
There's this assumption that no matter what one does,
The other one will be there and that allows them to treat each other poorly.
There has to be some recognition that there are real consequences,
Not that you should ever threaten someone or there needs to be an ultimatum.
But at certain moments,
Especially if you're going way off course of healthy polarity,
It may need to be reminded.
Like at some level,
Your partner needs to know that if he or she is really not acting right,
You're going to leave,
Right?
Because anything short of that is going to incentivize negative behavior if it's already present.
It's important to separate,
Especially when negative things are happening,
It's important to separate the behavior from the person,
Right?
Just because she does something you don't like and you need to call it out or you need to make it clear that it's unacceptable if such continues doesn't mean she is unacceptable or she is bad,
Right?
For people who are,
I will just say,
Who are not semantically accurate or people who maybe lack intelligence,
It's hard for them to separate these two things.
It's a lot easier on the brain to just draw a line,
Okay,
You don't do what I like,
You're evil,
Which is what we see a lot on the internet and culture wars and all that stuff.
It's semantically inaccurate and it's just not conducive for real connections with people.
There is,
And this is something I hope I employ well as a parent because I'm sure my children will do things that I don't like from time to time,
Is letting them know that the behavior is not cool,
But I still love them,
Right?
This is not for moral reasons,
This is for the practical reason that you need to give them an out.
You need to give the other person a way to reconnect with you,
Right?
In the business world,
You'd say this like,
Or in some sort of adult confrontation,
You might call this saving face,
Right?
Actually,
There was a time where I was very interested in being a hostage negotiator.
This is a totally separate set of stories,
But I didn't really end up doing anything.
Something that's a critical thing when it comes to mediation between people who are really at each other's throats,
You need to give them both a way to essentially save face because they need to have an out where they don't have to lose power,
Where they don't have to submit in a way that is not pleasurable to them.
In your romantic relationship,
Your partner,
Even though you're trying to maybe correct a behavior and let her know,
Okay,
Such and such is not cool,
I'm not going to stand for that,
And I love you and I'm happy to bring back all the connection and love and affection and provide for you in whatever way.
Of course,
When I say provide,
I don't necessarily mean financially,
But that's maybe one element of it.
Be there for you,
Handle the external for you if you come back.
That is always available,
Right?
This principle is true in any kind of negotiation,
Military negotiations.
People are talking about this with the current Russia Ukraine war.
You have to give the other side an out where they can maintain something because if not,
If you're backing them into a corner,
Their only option is to fight to the death.
Same thing in relationships.
Actually,
One thing,
There's a scene from my favorite novel of all time,
Shantaram.
I might have talked about this already.
It doesn't matter where there's this scene about this guy in this slum.
The main character is living in an Indian slum for a period,
And one of his neighbors is a wild alcoholic,
Is terribly beating his wife,
And so all of the men in the slum stop him.
They essentially punish him.
They beat the shit out of him.
They force him to drink more alcohol to be even more fucked up,
And they beat the crap out of him.
After they beat the crap out of him,
They have essentially a reintegration ritual where they give him an opportunity to sober up,
To heal himself,
To recognize the wrong that he did.
They also give him an opportunity for penitence.
They give him an opportunity to reconcile with the community.
They say,
Here's what you can do to make things right,
And we will still love you.
Your wife may or may not get back with you,
But we will still love you.
We're not cutting you off,
Right?
Because if they cut him off,
If they isolate him,
He has nothing left to do but be destructive,
And this is kind of a 12-step principle,
Right?
Our most destructive behavior comes from feeling isolated,
Whereas connection is the opposite of that.
With that,
One thing that I often do to correct any tests of our asymmetry,
Any challenges to correct us from going off course while also rewarding is essentially calling out things that I don't like but with humor.
I'm going to share what I say,
The types of things I say to my wife.
With anything tactical like this,
Please be aware of context.
This is something that I very incorrectly did and I think a lot of men do when they read other people's dating advice online and they start to use lines from other people outside of context.
It never works because context,
Of course,
Matters.
My wife challenges me sometimes,
So she'll talk to me,
Not aggressively,
But kind of playfully give me these tests of telling me what to do,
Right?
She'll command me,
Not in an aggressive way,
Not to belittle me.
But I think on some,
I mean,
I think in her eyes it's playful,
But I think on some subconscious level,
It is a test,
Right?
Because if I answer to her like an obedient puppy,
If she said,
Come here,
I think some part of her would lose a little bit of trust for me.
If I did that on a regular basis,
That would be withdrawing from our asymmetry bank account.
In the past,
And I think some guys when they recognize the importance of polarity,
If a woman playfully challenges the polarity,
They'll get butthurt,
Which is not a good – they'll become antagonistic,
Which is something I've done in the past not knowing how else to deal with it.
I'll say no,
Or I'll get upset that she challenged my – that she challenged the polarity.
Whereas a very simple,
Better,
And more secure way is to call it out with humor and then immediately rush in with love,
Right?
So if my wife tells me to do something in a commanding way,
I'll rush up to her.
Maybe I'll pick her up.
I'll kiss her.
I'll grab her by the neck.
In a playful way,
I'll say,
Don't tell me what to do.
And it's something.
I'll do something to take her slightly out of control.
And of course,
It just ends up being laughs,
Right?
In this kind of context where no trust has been ruined,
It's kind of an opportunity almost when she challenges me to make a deposit into our asymmetry bank account because she knows that,
One,
I mean,
Also our connection bank account,
That I love her,
That I care about her,
But also I'm not going to actually let my wife talk down to me,
Right?
Even if it's playfully.
Physicality in the right context when connection is built up is always useful.
Again,
This is not something that should just be copied blindly,
But something that I often do and have done is some sort of physicality,
Whether it's spanking,
Grabbing,
Lifting,
Tango dipping.
Anything where you are leading and she has to surrender is a great reinforcement.
These are little ways to reinforce this.
Now,
If the polarity has long been gone in a relationship and or your wife or your partner or girlfriend,
Woman you're just starting to see has some level of trauma when it comes to asymmetry,
It's important to be aware of this.
It's important to trust your gut feelings.
Like if you're thinking,
Oh,
I heard on this podcast,
This Ruan guy picks up his wife and it feels great,
But you know,
Or you can,
When you look,
When you pay attention to the woman that you're connecting with and it doesn't feel right,
You have to trust that feeling,
Right?
Because who knows?
Who knows what her past is?
I mean,
If you don't know what her past is,
Right?
If a woman has trauma,
Which again means she has her defense mechanisms active for past pains,
Which maybe came from you in the past or maybe came from other men,
Which have nothing to do with you,
You have to recognize that in her experience,
The connection is low and the asymmetry maybe is too high,
Right?
Maybe she has a fear of the asymmetry,
Right?
She has a fear of letting go of control and it is important to make huge deposits in the connection departments without supplicating,
Right?
You're not saying that you love her showing her love in a servile way because that's not going to make her feel safe either,
Right?
One of the reasons why it's important to make clear boundaries and to let her know that there are negative consequences to her actions is that also inspires a feeling of security,
Right?
If she thinks that she can walk all over you and you're not going to do anything about it,
Then she has no reason to believe that she'll actually stand up for her if she's threatened by some other threat,
Right?
You know,
She needs to know that you have boundaries so that you can provide boundaries for her,
For perhaps your potential offspring.
But if she's carrying trauma from past experiences with men or even from you,
It's important you can think of it as like the connection account has been overdrawn and you need to make huge deposits to repay those debts.
You need to really emphasize creating safety and do your best to also increase asymmetry but heavy,
Heavy deposits on the connection side,
Right?
And you know,
I mean,
The best rubric I could say for this,
I think,
Is just imagining like the asymmetry account and the connection accounts.
You know,
If you know she's afraid of asymmetry,
Just make more deposits than the other one,
Right?
Because her harsh reaction is due to that,
Right?
Her not trusting it.
But also the opposite can be true,
Right?
Some women,
It's usually kind of like almost like an – it could be an alternating set of reactions where maybe say – it could even – it could be her first boyfriends.
It could be even her father who is,
You know,
A male imprint even though it's not a romantic relationship.
Maybe her father was abusive or her first boyfriends were abusive.
Her ex-husband had a highly asymmetric but not connected relationship.
So maybe the next relationship,
She ended up with the opposite guy who's like super connected,
Beta male,
No asymmetry.
That's also irritating.
We might not think of it as a trauma,
Right?
Because like,
You know,
When we think of a woman being traumatized by a man is usually through some sort of violence,
Physical or verbal or emotional.
But a woman could carry a negative reaction from a guy who's too soft,
Right?
If she's used to being with men who are weak,
She might actually feel crazy for not being handled.
We might need a huge deposit in the asymmetry department.
I said this earlier when a couple has great connection but no sexual chemistry,
That's often what has happened,
Right?
We're maybe a withdrawal from the connection department.
So creating more space,
Maybe introducing a little antagonism,
Adding more truth,
Right?
Truth of disagreements as opposed to bottling them up,
That helps,
Right?
That actually helps with connection even.
Because you're really getting out the truth which maybe has some heat in it.
All right,
This has been a longer episode than I expected but I have one final point that kind of wraps up a lot of these ideas in a,
Well,
I think it's just a good idea for any man in a relationship.
And I have to give a shout out to my buddy Chris,
From whom a lot of my discussions,
Especially about relationships,
All of my points are inspired by our voice note exchanges.
But this one actually comes directly from him which is to offer vision,
Right?
Just like the chief of a tribe,
The man in a relationship,
The mask and pole in a relationship,
Part of his role is offering vision and offering where the family is going in the future,
Right?
What reality they live in.
Red Pill calls it the frame.
But there's direct survival reasons for it because again,
For a woman to be interfeminine and to be internally focused,
She can't at the same time be focused on the outside world.
So your direction,
And this ties into making the decisions but also like the reality you live in,
Right?
Painting the picture of where you're going,
The type of life you're going to live,
The type of dynamic you're going to have in your relationship,
That is on the man.
I coach couples sometimes where I'm speaking to both the man and the woman.
And when it's the woman who's leading the fixing of the relationship,
Obviously it takes two to tango and ideally both are invested.
But when it's the woman dragging the man along,
I shouldn't say it's worse than the other way around.
Again,
Hopefully both are invested.
But when it's the woman dragging them along,
They often are lacking in polarity,
Right?
Because direction and vision is a masculine trait.
The woman can't be in her feminine when she's also trying to lead the relationship to greener pastures.
This is a BDSM principle that I think is very applicable in all kinds of relationships and actually all social dynamics,
Which is everybody wants a daddy.
Everyone,
Men,
Women,
Everyone wants someone that they can look up to to know that they're handling the external world beyond them.
And this is true even for men,
Right?
Very few people actually,
And I've used this example a lot in different contexts on the podcast,
But the whole trope of the high powered CEO who hires a tiny dominatrix to stomp on him and humiliate him,
This is because of an imbalance,
Right?
The guy who's always at the top of the diamond hierarchy wherever he is,
Who has immense amounts of power over many people,
People he doesn't even know,
Something feels uncomfortable about that.
So there's two ways a man who's really at the top of a social hierarchy can get that feeling of like,
Okay,
It's not all on,
The burden's not all on me.
One possibility is hiring someone to be on top of him,
Maybe a dominatrix,
Maybe he gets a coach,
Not because he needs guidance,
But it's nice to have someone beyond him to bounce things on.
But the other thing of course is religion.
This is one of the things that religion has done for many people.
You know,
This is one of the reasons why 12-step addiction recovery focuses on belief in a higher power,
Because whether or not there's an actual higher power,
It doesn't matter.
To believe that there's something bigger than you or higher than you,
I mean,
This is patriarchal language to put it higher,
But someone in some circle beyond the circle,
Beyond your perimeter for you to be inside of,
It just gives a sense of ease.
This is one of the pull of cults and religions and political ideologies,
Right?
Even if it's not a specific person,
Not necessarily a specific political candidate,
To subscribe to a certain ism,
Whatever political ideology,
It's another form of like,
Okay,
Even if I don't know sometimes,
There's something beyond me for me to refer to,
Right?
The Constitution of the United States does this for everyone in the legal profession or in government.
You know,
Again,
Cult leaders,
Religious leaders,
Presidents,
The alpha males of the group,
You know,
Whatever,
Everybody wants a daddy.
So in conclusion,
Helping a woman into her feminine,
Being that strong pole that lets her know that she's safe to let down her guard and enter that feeling space,
And perhaps even giving her vision is one of the greatest gifts a man can do for his woman.
And of course,
You as the man in the relationship have much to gain your relationships are gonna be more fun.
You'll have more intimacy,
More connection,
More beauty,
More love,
Everybody plays,
Everybody wins.
So I hope this has been useful to anyone in any polarized situation.
If there's anything I missed,
Because I,
You know,
I was trying to be expansive to cover everything.
I'm actually curious for anyone listening,
If there's some some question you have about this or,
You know,
There's some situation I didn't cover adequately,
Please do email me I know this is a long episode already maybe could have been split into two,
But that's not my style.
But I will make another episode if I need to.
You can email me at hello at ruwondo.
Com.
Thank you for listening.
If you haven't rated my show,
Please and you enjoy it,
Please do.
And if there's anyone you know that would enjoy this episode and gain from it,
Please share it with him or her.
Thank you.
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