How to naturally attract women. If you want to find your purpose look at where you struggle to embrace your fuck-ups embrace those mistakes embrace those I wish I had a do-over I could have done it different now don’t let your brain go there just ask yourself what do I need to learn people will say to me Robert you know you’ve got a purpose.
You’re living with passion you’ve written a book you’re changing the world you know you decided where you wanted to live you’ve got a great life and you know how can I find that kind of purpose and passion and um honestly I’ve never asked myself what is my purpose I never have but guys all the time ask me how do you find the purpose you’re living with purpose I am but I’ve never asked what’s my purpose but what I’ve done I’ve been kind of looking back on my life what I’ve done is every time I’ve struggled with something struggled in a relationship struggled financially struggled to learn how to meet women when I became single everything I’ve ever struggled within a sense has become my purpose right I don’t like not knowing how to do something I don’t like doing.
What I do does not work very well for anybody else like that so I’ve never had to ask what’s my purpose I’ve just always tried to figure out why wasn’t working in my life because I’m a communicator by nature both writing and speaking that’s just what I do I’ve just communicated about what I’ve struggled with no more Mr. Nice Guy about my struggles dating essentials for men my second book is about what I’ve struggled with and I just happen to write those struggles down along with some stuff that I learned so I’ll just kind of throw this out as a freebie if you want to find your purpose look at where you struggle to dive into your struggles you’ll find purpose.
Is anybody familiar with Mark Manson some of you read mark manson’s books I wrote models and then the subtle art of not giving a and then his most recent one I think everything is people used to ask me all the time do you know mark Manson and I did not I mean and people would say well he quotes you in his book and in models that are back before subtle art of giving the had come out.
I was you know he and I actually have had some email contact but I never knew what he said about me in the book models well I got really sick two years ago at this time I was really sick um dying and nobody could figure out why so I just obs stomach cramps all the time no energy so I slept a lot and I read a lot.
I’m gonna read models and find out what mark Manson said about me you know that’s what you do when you’re dying right so um so I’m reading it’s a good book I mean it’s about being authentic that’s what all this stuff’s about being authentic and it wasn’t until the epilogue right he finishes the book and in the epilogue.
He mentions my book and he said that he thinks no more Mr nice guy is you know a great book that every man should read and I’m paraphrasing him and he said and a part he took from it was seeing everything as a gift what if it was a gift and um and that had a big impact on him he told a story about a tragedy that happened in his life and how he turned it into a gift and probably helped make him who he is today.
So what if your struggles were a gift what if the struggle you’re having with the woman you’re in a relationship with was a gift what if you do not know how to talk to women and get a date what if that’s a gift what if you not knowing what your purpose is a gift what if whatever you struggle with is a gift, an opportunity a chance to learn, and a chance to really dive into the depths of your purpose, and then I love what mark shared you know, and then give that to the world give it to the world.
Whatever you guys are learning to give it back to the world and I often say that no more Mr nice guy is not a chronicle of my successes is it’s a list of my fuck-ups it’s everything that I got wrong and had to figure out why is this not working so embrace your fuck-ups embrace those mistakes embrace those I wish I had to do over it could have done it different now don’t let your brain go there just ask yourself what do I need to learn from it why did you come this weekend let go of fear and shame.
I’m going to write some of these things down speakers which color is the best one the blue do they all suck usually they do it in hotels oh this works fine to let go of fear and shame, oh the other thing you need to know as a public speaker is a how much time you’ve got how much time do I have up here today what someone just tells me when I got 10 minutes left all right when I got 10 minutes left somebody shouts out 10 minutes.
I can take six a day if you’ll give them to me right now I’ll go now someone just shouts out 10 minutes I won’t worry about it okay let go of fear and shame other hands why’d you come what you just said that last part I can’t that’s one sentence right there you got one left the part about uh finding the purpose and then all the falls together purpose yeah I’m right at you man two sentences I’ve been at this a long time I’m still really bad at approaching can approach you came here to learn to approach yeah okay by the way I don’t teach approach but I’ll teach you some cool stuff.
I came to confront my mommy issues we can do some cool stuff around that too all right let me use this to tease something up um before I go to talk Lynn correct ask me a question about my book two questions that I get asked most about no more Mr nice guy one is about what I meant what does being monogamous to mother mean okay and so I get asked that a lot so that that’s mommy issues the other question that she asked is a common question where I say the opposite of crazy is still crazy and I have to admit anybody here you don’t doubt yourself, anybody, in has done 12-step programs.
You know what I’m talking about right I stole that from 12-step programs is it we’ll talk about the opposite of crazy being crazy and really all that means and I don’t know I think that might even be something Einstein said that if you’re at one extreme of something and that that we’re going to call that crazy because it doesn’t work let’s just say that it just doesn’t work and what a lot of people do is they’ll go well if this isn’t working I’ll just do the opposite.
I’ll go to the other extreme if being a nice guy doesn’t work I’ll just be a that works women go for right so you’re going to go from this extreme so if you’re reacting to this if this is the place you’re going to react to and you go the opposite direction you’re still going to end up in a reactionary place which is still crazy I’m going to be the opposite of my father.
Well, you can’t really be the opposite of your father you’re more like him than you’re different but if dad was not a great dad for whatever reason just trying to be the opposite means you’re just being the opposite of a not great dad it doesn’t mean you’re a great dad or a great human being so just doing the opposite of something does not necessarily take you in the direction of sanity or in what works so that help awesome I love being told I’m awesome okay this side of the room two sentences why’d you come here accountability that’s music to my ears I’m a terrible speller by the way you got it.
Okay I remember when no more Mr. Nice Guy first came out I got interviewed by uh a lot of you know like networks and you know people like that 2020 sent a film crew to video uh like a three-hour workshop that I did and I’m just sitting there thinking as I’m writing stuff on the whiteboard if my sixth-grade teacher you know uh was watching it she probably think he always was such a nice boy and he never could spell accountability we will probably do some accountability exercises.
This weekend that’s something I was thinking about I really do love what mark talked about in terms of the masculine need for initiation and how it is just so lacking for us men and uh he and I’ve had some conversations about the search for the tribe and the need for initiation and a core part of masculine initiation is and tribe is accountability.
We need brothers to hold us accountable I’ll give you just a real quick story of this um a couple of years ago I joined a men’s program I lived in Mexico married for the third time raising kids again um my family only speaks Spanish you know five years ago I could order in Spanish that was about it and I was kind of isolated so I went out looking and I found a men’s program I’ve been in for two years now and it really stresses uh this dynamic of accountability and if any of you here want to change something in your life um and we can dive deeper into this weekend as well I believe you need certain things to change anything in your life.
I think first of all you need a plan you need a direction that you’re going you need some structures to help get you there some containers that you build for yourself you need some support systems you need and in those support systems you have accountability and you need practices daily practices that make this thing you want to learn or change start to feel normal to your nervous system.
So we can dive more into that model but give you an example of the accountability this men’s program that I mean I’m always working on myself and one of the other things I really want to share with you over the weekend is that my personal belief is that whatever we want we want to call it we’re calling it personal recovery personal growth whatever name we’re giving to our transformation process I don’t believe that’s about becoming a different person or a better person I think it’s about becoming more us becoming more of who we are and hopefully the best version of ourselves to do that we need accountability because we do get lazy we do get distracted we do get overwhelmed so we need accountability.
One of the things I found is like when I’m sick two years ago um i was for about three months I just could do nothing I lost over 30 pounds had no energy was sleeping a lot finally a doctor in Mexico found that I had a tumor blocking my small intestine he did surgery left me a nice little scar right here I woke up from surgery looking at the ceiling going number one I’m alive number two I’m back I felt alive again but because then I couldn’t do exercises in for about another three months because you know I had staples in my small intestine sutures.
Got out of the habit of exercising now I’ve got mark’s been to my house, I’ve got a gym in my house right I got free weights I got a spin cycle I got dumbbells I got kettlebells I got a text I got a swimming pool you know I got no excuses for not exercising and to top it off my wife is a gym rat she goes to exercise class every morning and either before class or after she’s in the gym doing squats working out going up to our stairs with 45-pound dumbbells on her pilates on her back so you know and then I’m kind of you know this kind of getting the flabby and lazy guy.
Just kept making promises to keep exercising and it wasn’t happening so I reached out to the men in my men’s program and I said I need accountability would anybody like to form an exercise accountability group with me and two other guys did one guy in phoenix Arizona one guy in London and that was over a year ago and we still check in with each other every day and we say what is my commitment for exercise today and then we check back in did we follow through on it or not and I tell you what that got me off my ass because I hate to report back to these guys yeah I said I was going to do the spin cycle for 30 minutes today but I got distracted and took a nap instead.
I don’t want to have to tell them that by well if it’s the truth I’ll tell them that and sometimes we even um we make ourselves put kind of a consequence like contributing 100 to the re-election campaign of somebody that you could not stand to be president one more time that’ll get you into the gym to do your exercise right and between the guy in Britain and me here in the u.s you know we both have people we don’t like that are in the ruling parties so accountability helps us get past our own inertia laziness distraction so it’s huge all right has this already helped a little bit you gotta have other you have brothers helping you don’t you if you’re struggling to get it done on your own you’ve got to have brothers help you the same thing.
Gave a talk on the commitment a couple of years two-three years ago I just had gotten married again and kind of the theme of my talk on the commitment is that commitment only applies to things that don’t come easy or naturally we only make commitments that we don’t just get up and do every day on its own so a commitment means we’re we’re saying hey this is important to me it doesn’t come easily I see the value in it and so I’m making it a priority and I’m speaking it publicly this is a commitment and to hold your commitments you need accountability doing it on your own you’ll slip back into your own so accountability is huge.
The abundance that is one of my all-time favorite subjects abundance you might think is that too many bees I believe in abundance it’s on camera to okay abundance uh in my practices around abundance I also stole from 12-step program okay up here to get out of your head anybody else struggle with getting out of your head tony and I had a good discussion over lunch with him wouldn’t have lunch with my wife and I and um she doesn’t speak English and she was giving him advice uh on you know changing his internal thinking in the movies and stories at play in his head I’m just going yeah he’s a wise woman so he got bilingual advice for getting out of his head so getting out of head getting out of our heads.
I’ve really already enjoyed just a short time here listening to brian talk some of the other speakers I can tell that there’s a strong influence of mindfulness you know when you hear somebody talking about just starting to notice thought as the clouds floating oh there’s another one and then noticing the space in between the blue sky the nothingness the no chatter and um I would say that you know.
When people ask me what is what’s been the most recent thing that I’ve kind of been working around or teaching or kind of diving into it has probably been around mindfulness and learning to do just that just to be still and quiet enough just to notice thinking as it goes through and to know it just thoughts it’s not reality and to be able to distinguish between that um tony’s a certified coach with me in my program and Mark is as well and um they know I teach a course called ruminating brain and this has been really a big breakthrough.
For me to understand the dynamic or if you have a brain that’s just like a washing machine that spends all the time rehashing the past mistakes missed opportunities creating revisionist histories if I’d only done this if I’d not broken up with that woman or if I talked to that woman or if I’d not let that job how my life would be different or projecting into the future trying to manage every possible outcome and trying to get it right before you take action.
Constant judging and measuring of yourself where you’re not good enough and everybody else can see that and know it and just spinning about that all the time so i teach a course on that and so I’ll be happy to share some of the concepts that i teach in there about getting out of our heads that are a combination of both mindfulness and cognitive behavioral therapy but the core theme of that course and while we’re having lunch.
Tony said so what do I do with this and I said the same thing I tell everybody to practice being the observer, not the believer, and we guys we want more right we want a tool we want this practice of being the observer, not the believer our thoughts are just stories they’re just noise they’re just projections or just our thinkers think because that’s what thinkers do and we get to practice just watching the thinker rather than following it everywhere it goes.
There’s something like chapter five that kind of disturbs me like i can’t go to sleep because of it but i think it’s in the middle of it I’m thinking in the middle of what chapter five no never ask me about something that’s in a certain chapter or a certain page because i don’t remember where everything ended up but clue me into what it was about.
And then you talked somewhere halfway in between like about father like uh something of a father like if a child sees the father and then i just can’t nail it down do you have a copy of my book with you no i do get with him later and revisit the question when you got exactly what you want i’ll be here two more days so I mean to be happy to feel more questions how do you know if the relationship you’re in with a woman you know you know is one sentence how do you know okay evaluating okay this is actually pretty good.
Weekend’s worth of stuff anybody else got anything you want to add about why you came here that would make it worth all your time and expense and effort to have this thing kind of better grasp of it when you leave pardon me the confidence I like that subject too um I’m not a big believer in the traditional sense a lot of the stuff I say is going to seem counterintuitive or paradoxical because everything that’s intuitive to us men kind of just keeps us getting the same we’ve always gotten in our life because it’s intuitive but it’s not actually correct so confidence so since you were so brief in one word rather than two sentences can you give me um context of where you would like to be more confident in both.
Relationships and business okay are you in a relationship you want to be in one I was separated from my wife after getting a divorce and that was two years ago and we’re just now getting into relationships okay relationships business okay this is what’s going to get us started today okay one quicker um I was curious about how you became self-aware of the nice guy and how you differentiated uh giving value rather than covert contracts or something good question that’s a very good question so probably if I use shorter words I’d have fewer spelling problems but codependency versus healthy interdependence is okay we can also call this differentiated state versus fused state or borrowed functioning so there are a lot of terms we can give it.
I think I’ll dive in a little bit that’s what maybe I’ll start us off with your thoughts on getting over insecurities getting over insecurities I’m also not a big believer in the concept of insecurities yes we’re going to talk about them in terms that I’ve already heard used already today in self-limiting beliefs that’s how we’ll use it so we’ll talk about that all right I’m ready for a break okay.
Let me tell you just a little bit about my personal story and um and then kind of wind it into a little bit around the codependency and healthy interdependence and um and then maybe yeah mark talks about having what do you say loving king be the benevolent king all right this is a benevolent dictatorship when I’m up here all right I’m going to give you guys a voice and a lot of stuff.
I’m the decider I’ll be the final say on it so let me tell you a little bit about my story um I mentioned that I was a minister I grew up in a fundamental Christian church grew up with a father that was angry critical but had a lot of good traits as well I loved my dad I liked spending time with him uh he played ball with me he’s always out throwing balls to me pitching to me coming to my practices we went camping and fishing but he was moody and he was critical and any of these depressive states that could go on forever and just would criticize also very demanding very candid.
My mother was a codependent you know didn’t want anybody to be unhappy she didn’t handle conflict well I have a lot of her temperament she taught me to be different from my father as a boy she said I’m raising you and your brother to be different from your father now bless her soul she apologized for that a few years back she said that wasn’t a good thing to tell you or a good thing to do to try to raise you to be different from your father.
So i grew up kind of following my mom’s modeling I was always there to kind of take care of mom I learned to kind of be codependent with her I’d listen to her talk about her problems I’d be your little companion I’d be different from my father tried never to be angry or critical or demeaning like my dad and uh lo and behold I’m more like him than different than him I can be as critical and judgmental as hell but those are just thoughts that I get to watch.
With that family and my fundamental Christian upbringing, you know that if you don’t if you commit a sin whether you know it or not, and if you don’t ask for forgiveness and end your prayer in Jesus’s name amen before you die you’re going to hell for all eternity right that’s the level of harshness and judgmentalness that I grew up with so man I got to be good I got to be a good guy so I grew up trying to be different you know and then I grew up in the 60s and 70s I’m 64 today sam how old are you 63. anybody else in their late 50s early 60s here you you’re not even 50 yet are you 56. all right 56. so we grew up in an environment in the 60s and 70s where were radical.
The feminism you know there was the healthy part of feminism that said you know equal pay for equal work equal opportunity all that stuff but there were some really angry aspects of it and lashing out at men and the patriarchy you hear we’re actually going through another phase of it right now where is really pronounced again with the toxic masculine and everything men do is toxic masculine all that kind of stuff I grew up hearing things like um every man’s a rapist an erection is a sign of aggression, uh a woman he’s a man like a fish needs a bicycle uh Gloria Steinem who said that went on to marry a very wealthy mango figure um but I grew up hearing that stuff during a very impressionable age.
I didn’t realize too much later most of that was a bunch of pissed off angry lesbians I mean I’m not trying to be dismissive but it wasn’t women in general but because they had the loudest voices I made an impression because I was already pointed in that direction anyway don’t be a that bad man then of course when you start getting around women young women who are inherently shitty relationship and repeatedly get done to by men and guess what they want to talk about yeah they’re shitty relationships and how they’ve been victimized and this guy did that and that guy’s doing this and as a nice guy what do you listen and you try to be the opposite of crazies crazy I won’t be the that bad man.
I hear women complain about rights so as somebody’s mentioned we repress our sexual intent which as we’ve heard defined is creepy when you repress your sexual intent by the way approach where is it I was way up their approach which I don’t believe in I do in context I’ll give you the context approach guys and there are women in here that can validate it go ask them when you approach a woman and start talking to her out of the blue she knows why you’re talking to her because you’re hoping you’ll get to see her tits am I right you women know that’s why we talk to you we don’t talk to you because we think you’re the most interesting creatures on the planet.
We want to have highly stimulating intellectual conversation women know that you don’t have to hide it but we nice guys don’t want to be that jerk that the women complain about so I’ll hide everything that I heard the women complaining that was me all right on top of that I went to a Christian College where they would kick you out of school if you got drinking or having sex and so like all this was deeply ingrained in me so when I did date which I wasn’t very good at we’ll talk more about that I’m sure this weekend around dating skills um my approach what I now call it nice guy seduction is that you know there’s a woman that you know was not too bad looking but not too good.
Looking you know not too fat but you know okay maybe she’d want to go out with me I’d sit next to her in class or as close as I could get wouldn’t talk to her per se but just you know try to impress her by knowing the answers the teacher the professor asked like that’s really impressive to women they want to get naked too with the guy that knows you know all the answers to the professor it’s just in their DNA they can’t help it actually doesn’t work for my other strategy.
When I was in college is we had to go to chapel every day and were required to go to church on Sundays they had this large auditorium with like theater seats in it really big auditorium my dating strategy was I’d go early you know kind of get a road that nobody’s sitting on and I’d go sit on the as the second seat from the end and leave one open thinking this is a great pickup strategy right that was before the pickup was invented but um no really I’m not making that up and it’s terrible pickup strategy and thinking I’ll leave this seat empty and some woman will come walking along by herself see an empty seat and think oh I want to sit next to that guy anybody wants to take bets on how well that worked excellently.
Two things I didn’t take into consideration women never go to church or chapel by themselves they go with a girlfriend if the if they’re you know what so they’re they have a girlfriend or two so there’s only one seat there they’re not going to sit there the other thing is they see an empty seat next to a guy what do they think he’s saving it for whoever is coming to sit by him it’s terrible but that one those you know.
I had no other strategy so all this nice guy stuff and when I did get a woman I hung on forever you know I’ve got this woman I don’t want to lose her I mean she may not be great I now say I was married for 25 years to my first two wives I should not have dated either one over three dates that I’m not making that up.
They’re both are good people with good qualities but by the third date I now know enough know what to look for there were enough signs I should not date either one I was married to one over 10 years and one over 14 years okay so because I was such a bad dater I was a bad ender I’d stay away too long and put up with way too much and just give and try to make everything better.
Okay bring it forward I was in my second marriage and about two years in I acted out inappropriately now my second wife and I had an affair I was the minister this gets juicy right like I said my books are chronicled my fuck-ups I was a minister she was a member of my congregation we were both married she seduced me I later found out she’d had multiple affairs in her marriage and she was only 26 when I met her so we got together and on our honeymoon she said aren’t you glad that now that we’re married we don’t have to pretend to like sex anymore wasn’t pretending she was the hottest woman I’d ever seen and I couldn’t believe she wanted to be with me and now she’s saying hey we don’t have to pretend anymore.
I’m going wait a minute but I’m such a nice guy it’s like oh I knew she’d quit having sex with her husband but I’m different I’ll we’ll get through this she’ll want to have sex with me because I’m good and she didn’t for 14 years and so about two years in the relationship I had an inappropriate relationship for about a month walked away from it and about a year later that person told my ex-wife.
Why to this day I don’t know so as you imagine that created a little bit of an emotional storm and my second wife said you need to get help said you think you’re such a nice guy everybody thinks you’re a nice guy you treat me like a nice guy and then out of the blue you do these things that are really hurtful to me he said I’d rather be with a jerk at least with a jerk I know he’s going to be a jerk I know he’s going to hurt me with you.
I think everything’s good and you do these very hurtful things you need to go get help so I went to get the help I joined a 12-step group I’ve got some therapy all with the idea of trying to find out why my being a nice guy didn’t make my ex treat me better why wasn’t she ever happy why was she angry all the time why didn’t she want to have sex anymore.
Being a nice guy was supposed to work now I was a marriage therapist at this time and I started noticing as I was asking myself these questions in therapy luckily I got into good therapy and started finding out about boundaries and shame which we’ll talk about and making my needs a priority and being honest and transparent I started learning good stuff luckily but I started noticing men coming to therapy with their girlfriends or wives saying the exact same thing.
I was saying I’m a nice guy I treat her better than her ex I’m raising her kids I’ll do anything to make her happy it’s never good enough she’s never happy she never wants to have sex anymore when’s it gonna be my turn and then there were the single guys saying you know I treat women well I’m not one of the jerks I listen to them talk about their problems you know I pay their car payments I help them move you know and all they can say to me is someday some woman is going to be really lucky to have you.
These guys are saying why doesn’t she want me she thinks I’m such a great catch why doesn’t she want me and so you know all these men like me were perplexed why wasn’t this working why weren’t, especially women responding more positively to us being the kind of guys we’ve heard all our lives women want us to be so I started going I do that a lot hmm what’s that about so I started a no more Mr nice guy men’s group we made every other week and I just started writing lessons nowadays we practice blogs just writing articles that I stuff I was finding out about me.
How we became nice guys culturally how we get indoctrinated familial how that happens to us what doesn’t work what works better and guys kept saying you need to write a book you know you need to go on Oprah you could have a best seller so for about six or seven years of writing and about three years to get it published it came out about seven 16 17 years ago early 2003 and I’m just boggled it the majority of you here is so amazing have read that book and it is now you know it’s worldwide affecting people and I think there’s a worldwide men’s movement.
We don’t know that but I think that’s what’s happening I just have to say the music has gotten louder and kind of distracting but I’ll push through it I’m going to hold the frame I’m going to ground myself I’m going to breathe I’ll be fine it’d be better if it wasn’t shitty music just let’s just go dance man let’s just go with it so that’s where no more Mr nice guy came from so to bring it back to the question one of the things that I tell people is that I think all self-help all religion all mindfulness.
Whenever we’re like helping people like change paradigms like old road maps that we thought this is how the world works and how I fit into it and how I get my needs met and get love and things like that whenever we start shifting people’s paradigms we need to tell them it’s going to take a while to integrate a new roadmap all right it’s going to take a while that that’s why when you go to a 12-step program they’ve got the new road map for you and they got sponsors and they got meetings and you go and you talk and there are people there that are further along the road and have more experience and that’s how you get help integrating a new roadmap.
What happens and by the way when you start shifting radically a roadmap which at some point in life probably most of us need to until we get that new one integrated there’s a lot of questions so back but kind of back to the question of the difference between codependency and a healthy interdependence an example I often give when you start doing your nice guy work is you go okay um I don’t want to be a nice guy I don’t want to use my covert contracts let me just throw those three covert contracts nice guys use um and almost every nice guy operates at some level with each of these three covert contract number one is that if I’m a good guy I’ll be liked and loved.
And women will want to me and by the way, there’s I’ve heard a lot if you start if you just kind of put no more Mr nice guy into google search in terms so you get like an email whenever the term no more Mr nice guy or nice guy gets used more and more there are articles in popular media mainly about women writing about these nice guys that have this agenda and expectation because they’ve been nice to you.
You should want to be their girlfriend or have sex and and and those nice guys are not so nice that’s a manipulative thing to think I’m good I’m nice to you now you’re supposed to put out for me and nice guys often are not so nice we get these resentments built up we get passive-aggressive we have victim pukes um and so you know we’re not so nice a lot of the men going their own way thing that Mark mentioned in cells involuntary celibates a lot of these men are really pissed off at women because they’ve been following this nice guy covert contract that if I’m just a good guy and I’m the guy that I’ve been hearing women say they want from a man.
I do that how come none of them ever look at me never want to talk to me don’t want to take their clothes off for me and we get pissed off because we think we’ve kept our end of the deal right so that’s covert contract number one if I’m a good guy I’ll be liked and loved now a few problems with that is none of us are you know that good all the time and not everybody’s gonna like or love us but we believe the covert contract should work they’re all this if-then giving to get covert contract number two if I meet everyone else’s needs without them having to ask then they will meet my needs without me having to ask.
Now, this is a really kind of screwed up a covert contract you know we’re given to other people codependency because we want them to like us we want them not to be unhappy or we don’t we want them not to be mad so we give to them what we need to give not what they need to receive and oftentimes it does typically two things and codependency is just another way of saying nice guy all right is we don’t believe we’re good enough.
If we give to other people they’ll like us and give back to us right the two big problems with this covert contract of giving what we think other people need are number one we attract needy people right broken people kind of in red pill community they call it captain sabaho you know this woman’s needy and broken she’s a poor single mom I can fix that i can rescue her.
So you either attract broken people that are shitty at giving because their lives are usually such a mess they got nothing left to give right or the other thing that we do is is that in being codependent with people we rob them of the opportunity to be sufficient in them their own selves to figure their own stuff out to get things taken care of on their own so we actually make people dependent.
Which is not healthy co and by the way these people when we have this covert contract, uh you know I’ll meet your needs without you having to ask you’ll meet mine without me having to ask another big problem is nobody knows the contract exists they’re covert so you know the women we’re talking to the women are in a relationship with our co-workers our boss they don’t know that we’re given all this stuff so that they’ll give back to us without us ever even saying what we want back now another core problem with this is those nice guys are really shitty receivers how many people are comfortable receiving with people giving you nice things doing nice not a lot of hands going up most of us have had to work at it’s right.
For most of us it makes us uncomfortable when somebody gives us a compliment or tells us something nice about ourselves or wants to do something for us when I got divorced and started dating this is a true story but it’s I is how my perverted mind works my second wife like I said we did not have much sex.
I’ll just be blatant um she would have nothing to do with my penis she wouldn’t touch my penis wouldn’t go down on me blah blah blah blah so when i got out there in the dating world I met women that you know we’re eager to go down on me you know they took pride in their blow jobs and I actually had a hard time receiving and it dawned on me that I thought who was I to deprive these women of the great joy of giving me an amazing.
This I know it sounds so silly I had to consciously work and relax and let myself go and let women give to me right I give that example because you know it gets men’s attention but most of us are not good at receiving so which is another reason why that giving to get doesn’t actually work out very well third covert contract if I do everything right then I will have a smooth problem-free life now has several problems with this covert contract number one we’re never going to do everything right I mean and where is the rule book that tells us how to do everything right now.
I know a few of them have been presented to us over the centuries here’s the rule book but every one of those rule books also says nobody ever gets it right the very rule books say that okay so what’s the rule book that says how to get it right and we don’t live in a smooth problem-free world we live in a chaotic ever-changing world that’s the beauty of it so these covert contracts do not work at all.
et’s say you decide to start challenging your codependency and covert contracts this is the adjustment in paradigm so you’re you know you’re walking you know any big city like this you’re walking up to an office building like some big double glass doors and you start to open a door and you notice somebody walking up the steps behind you and as you turn and look it’s a young let’s say a young woman a young attractive woman all right and without you hold the door and let her walk through she smiles and you go on through and your brain goes oh was that me being a nice guy did I just do it again.
These are the kind of internal struggles you will have around any change of paradigm you’re going to second guess everything you do was that me being a nice guy because I wanted her approval I want her to smile at me I want her to notice or was I just being a decent human being holding the door open for another human being you don’t know okay which is going to bring us up to fear and shame and anxiety we’ll weave this in if not today soon most of the ways.
I’ll just give you the guys a little clue here when you’re changing a paradigm most of the paradigms we’ve been operating by since childhood that we internalized at a very very early age before our thinking brain prefrontal cortex was at all wired up we stored everything in an emotional part of our brain called the amygdala we store every experience we have um at an emotional level at a very early age as mark mentioned children are narcissist narcissistic they have a huge fear of abandonment that was us we were little babies we were totally dependent helpless um needy and living in our emotional brain right so everything happened to us and I think sometime this weekend I’ll diagram this even further.
We’ll go even deeper into it got stored up in our emotional brain for good or for bad and then the emotional brains wired into our thinking brain so uh down here in the brain stem where that emotional brain is the amygdala which is about the size of your little fingernail is wired into every other part of your brain and influences every other part and the amygdala is wired into all your sensory perceptions sight smell hearing taste touch and it experiences things before your thinking brain.
When we’re little children we have experiences that are fearful that are frightening they’re scared we’re helpless right we have and these typically trigger some degree of anxiety because we are helpless and we are dependent and we are afraid of being abandoned and they get internalized to shame children internalize when bad things happen to them going back to that narcissistic self of the child that I caused that there’s something wrong with me I must be bad because mom cries I must be bad because dad gets angry I must be bad because mom and dad are fighting children always internalize that fear that anxiety that shame.
What we do is we create two survival mechanisms one is to try to manage the uncomfortable feelings we’re feeling in that moment maybe as babies we start sucking our thumbs I did I sucked my thumb todd’s in kindergarten that must mean something right I was managing something maybe babies eat a bunch maybe they quit eating maybe they cry maybe they sleep a lot maybe they fuss a lot maybe they become pleasers.
They become rebellers you know whatever it’s all a non-thought out process it’s an the emotional process from a primitive immature brain trying to figure out how do i not feel bad how do I not we don’t name this because we can’t think it but how do I not feel the fear the anxiety the shame that I’m bad so we develop that survival mechanism the second we develop is one to try to prevent these painful things from happening in the future right so if I just do this or don’t do this then these things won’t happen again and better things will happen which that’s a whole nice guy syndrome if I just become this then I’ll get love and approval and get my needs met or if I just hide this from people I won’t get rejected or they won’t be disgusted in me.
So to answer the question of how do you know the difference between your old codependent acting out or just healthy independence like you open the door was that codependency she’s gonna like me covert contract or was that just hey we’re two human beings go ahead the main thing to pay attention to is your internal states around fear anxiety and shame and one thing just you know from what I’ve been hearing so far just today a lot of the work being done in this program is around paying attention to these feeling states to these emotional states you know whether we’re paying attention in our body whether we’re paying attention to other manifestations of them if we can start paying attention.
Everyone codependency is one of those things we developed as kids as babies to try to manage our uncomfortable feelings and to try to ensure our survival that we’ll get our needs met we’ll be connected we’ll be valued we won’t starve to death we won’t get thrown in a ditch we won’t be whatever the fear is so this process is a slow gradual process that’s why you know every one of us goes to a workshop expecting good things we get excited and then we think yeah I got the plan I got the method I got the understanding now and then two weeks later we’re kind of back in our old routines and patterns that’s real normal because that’s all of our old survival mechanisms are wired into a really really deep part of our brain.
We may never ever get access to everything we won’t get access it doesn’t have picture memory it doesn’t have word memory it just has feeling memory and again that’s why I really like an emphasis in this program is pay attention to your feelings they’re important information they’re directing you to things that are turning you know the body’s connected to the mind and the minds connected to the body and all of that’s interrelated so whatever you feel is typically telling an old story it’s usually not telling a story about right now just triggered something old they got brought into the present so as we start getting clarity around what is our typical codependent behaviors and then we can start paying attention when we have the impulse to act co-dependently.
The fearful place I might I don’t have anxiety written here but it’s another really big piece of it or am I a shame-based place I want to be approved I want to be liked I don’t want to be rejected I need somebody’s external validation so I don’t remember that was you that somebody up here asked how do we know that difference what did you call it what were the other names fusion and differentiation technical term is the ability.
It got two parts to it one is the ability to ask yourself what do you want what’s important to you what feels right now children cannot do that we don’t live in a culture that encourages children to do that we live in cultures where children are encouraged to do what mom and dad tell them to do we don’t encourage little kids to say what do you want what feels right to you what do you value what’s most important to you know for little kids is I want to put my shoes on myself and for the big people say no that takes too long we’re going to put them on for you.
We don’t value differentiation right the uh okay part one of differentiation is the ability to ask yourself what do you want what’s important part two of differentiation is the ability to follow through on that when either you’re dealing with resistance outside of your kind of all the change back messages or don’t act that way don’t be that way or you know our family our people don’t act that way you know all that message or the noise between your ears in terms of neurotic guilt and anxiety.
If I truly act in ways that I value that are important to me um people will react negatively or I’ll get in trouble or I’ll fail and crash and burn and I’ll be a loser that noise is always going on and again I’ve heard a lot of talk about listening to that inner thought talk so to be differentiated means you can ask yourself what’s important to me, what do I want and then follow through on that’s a mature trustworthy adult that’s somebody that you can go to the bank on because they’ve asked themselves what do I believe to be true what’s important to me and then they can follow through even with the resistance.
To do it that’s differentiation that that’s a healthy interdependent human being the fused state is where maybe yeah there’s a few people on the right anybody watches a star trek next generation the board where you get a simulated into the board fusion is that you give up you and your identity for the sake of you know the borg the hole and there’s no more individual self.
You’re like just exist as part of you know the borg that’s a fusion that’s what happens in our family happens in the church happens in a culture that no you’ve got to do it our way you’ve got to be part of us we don’t do it that way and that can be challenging a lot of families and cultures to overcome again that’s why we need support systems and accountability and practices so I’m going to be a broken record around those themes this weekend.
Okay I know I’m just kind of you know doing a big shotgun approach but any other questions about just in general what is codependency um fuse state borrowed functioning um an application like I said read the book on how how to overcome it but other questions about that or even like the fear and shame and anxiety you know how to let go of these things we got to be willing to honor them and let go of them so we’ve got to be able to observe them again I like the emphasis of this workshop is learning to pay attention to the feeling that stays in your body.
I always love your questions uh are you worried about uh soiling your really white pants ever yeah I am why do you ask I’m going to be really brutally honest with you 25 years ago nobody would have ever accused me of being authentic I try to be authentic all right so since you asked I have hemorrhoid and I got white underwear and white pants and it got me thinking oh no so I actually stuck a little bit extra toilet paper in the back of my white underwear you didn’t even know that did you but thank you for asking that’s just not lunch conversation.
It crossed my mind more than once today thank you for asking that’s why I always call on you tony my real question though is I’m glad you brought up the example you get when you like to go to hold the door for a young attraction well I thought you’re gonna bring up the example of letting a woman give me the holding the door okay the example that you gave when you go to hold the woman to hold the door for a young attractive woman all right click clarify your thinking ground yourself breathe so like a lot of my clients ask the same question they overthink.
Everything they do yeah everything they do let’s see we’ve got that up here don’t answer is and I don’t know if that’s the right answer so I guess I’m asking if this is the right answer but I always say well you know the only time it’s a problem is if you’re there’s nothing wrong with being a nice person.
The only time it’s a problem is when you’re operating under some sort of covert contract so yeah ask yourself am I doing this out of the goodness of my heart or not yeah and that’s a really simple way to approach it because we do overthink it and that’s why it’s good I’ll go back to the 12-step model that’s why like a recovering alcoholic has somebody that you know they’ve just been recovering for three weeks, yeah somebody’s been recovering for 30 years and they’ve overthought everything over the last 30 years and got some clarity right and they can help the person that’s just three weeks in getting clarity quicker right so we don’t have to you know think this out forever.
If you pay attention to your states fear states anxiety states shame states and for example, you do something for somebody and you think well I just did it because I want because I wanted to right now because I have an agenda or a covert contract but notice if they don’t approve of you if they don’t validate you if they don’t thank you how do you feel example you’re in traffic and it’s heavy traffic and you see somebody waiting to pull in and so you give them a little bit of space.
You let that car pull in front of you just being a decent human being right but what if they don’t give you the wave here we go that was a covert contract right I let him in he didn’t give me the waves that’s how you know if you feel at all resentful done to um any of that stuff it’s probably a covert contract so but and this does take a lot of work how do we get clarity of just being a loving generous giving human being without there being strings attached it does take practice I’m still working on it.
I’ve been working on this stuff for 25 years I’ll still find myself giving you know wanting to be approved of and wanting to be thanked for it wanting to be noticed I still do it so I just I’ve learned to watch it I’ve been at it long enough to learn to watch it, okay there’s another question kind of up here okay and then probably we’re getting pretty close to wrapping it up but okay what do you got I just wanted you to elaborate more on healthy interdependence is yeah we could go into this quite a bit um we need each other okay we are tribal by nature as humans we’re slow we’re not particularly strong we sleep at night when predators prowl, our babies are helpless for years right the odds are not in our favor to survive in this evolutionary world.
Guess how we survived and grew to be the biggest dumb asses on the planet we cooperated we worked together we had a healthy interdependence whether it was the men going out and providing protecting the women looking after offspring we all do what everybody could do for the benefit of the tribe and get ahead we men are too slow to run down.
Most animals for food but guess what you can do with a group of men you can spread out and you can just keep jogging until you know chasing an animal until it does its sprint this fight-flight you know the mechanism and it eventually gets tired and if there are enough men out there that are just jogging along moving that animal around it finally just drops of exhaustion cooperation makes that happen so we need that healthy interdependence and let me just say one thing and then probably this is a good place to wrap it up.
Most of us is here because we’ve got issues around women right we kind of want a good relationship with a woman part of the problem we run into and tomorrow I’d love to talk more about fusion and differentiation and very practical terms not just theoretical because we grew up we evolved for two million years say as humans in a tribal situation we got all of our needs met communally that including food security and sex best evidence is that our tribal forefathers and four mothers everybody had sexual access there were no involuntary in cells no men going their own way everybody had every but that all changed about ten thousand years ago.
When we became more stationary started growing stuff owning land trees cows wives children stuff like that that all changed and we started owning all right your vagina’s my vagina nobody else gets access to that so everything changed now fast forward to where we are in modern-day we all still have all of those needs that the tribe used to meet for us the tribe met the needs and we still want the need for connection, need for love the need for sex the need for you know all these experiences that used to be met tribal so because the tribe’s not meeting them now guess where we go trying to find every one of those needs why didn’t I see that coming with one woman.
If I can just find this one woman who will meet all my needs for companionship for love for sex for validation for you know cooperation for us and we fuse with them like you’re you are now my girlfriend and she’s saying you’re not my boyfriend so, therefore, you should and now we create these fused you should relationships because you belong to me and all of a sudden we’re not getting our knees met and we’ll talk more about this tomorrow probably tomorrow be a good time.
We’re not getting our needs met and so we expect this one person to do it and when they can’t we resent the hell out of them and want to change them or trade them in for a different one and they’re doing the same thing to us because they bought into it too that we should be able to meet all of their needs that’s what fusion does and it’s is trying to get a myriad of needs met in in in from just one person and it can’t be done so we’ll just kind of leave that there and we’ll talk more about how it can be done so we’ll leave you expecting a little bit here’s my belief system is that we are not wired for monogamy that’s not what evolution wired us to do um but we live in a culture that monogamy is the expectation.
I believe that probably expecting as men expecting any relationship with a woman to ever live up to our expectations it’s never going to whatever the male brain thinks a woman can do for us is wrong and conversely, whatever the female brain thinks a man can do for them it’s going to be wrong as well so in some ways it doesn’t matter if you if as a guy we’ve got eight women in our life or one woman whatever our brain thinks they can do for us.
It’s still going to be wrong so the way I look at it is that relationships are a challenge if you’re going to be polyamorous in a monogamous culture it’s going to be a challenge if you’re going to be monogamous when we’re not wired for it it’s going to be a challenge for me that’s why I say all dating all relationships whether they’re monogamous polyamorous are powerful personal growth machines if we approach the work consciously it’s going to inform us about us and it’s going to challenge us and it’s going to grow us if we’re conscious so in some ways, it doesn’t matter if we’re being monogamous or polyamorous.
Still going to polyamorous relationships have more rules than monogamous relationships they’re challenging we guys to think oh I just get to whoever I want it ain’t never that simple okay so it will challenge us so I’m all in for the challenge dating conscious dating is a challenge conscious relationships monogamous polyamorous their challenge, okay remember it’s a gift these challenges I’ve bumbled my way through every relationship I’ve had I had a PhD in marriage and family therapy at 29 years old I’m on my third marriage right I’m still bumbling my way through it it’s just not wired into us but it’s an amazingly powerful personal growth machine so whether it’s being polyamorous or monogamous we can use consciousness to make either one of them amazingly powerful.
