I promoted it on my channel as well okay awesome awesome I'll probably once people it's a little early for my audience honestly honestly same for me too what's like your audience breakdown is it it's mostly American uh but I do get folks from all over the world I started a member community in October okay and I have about about twoth thirds of the folks are based in the Americas somewhere Makes sense and the reigning third in Europe and Asia East Asia all right are we live guys let us know how's it looking how's the audio
and all that what's good what's good where you guys all tuning in from I'm super excited for this this is like the first time I'm doing like a imperson stream oh really yeah first time first time it's F you've done this before just like oh sure yeah I just feel like the vibe is So much better in it is it is and I think the fact that we can get live feedback like this is just going to be like I mean it's already the future of podcasting I just feel like every podcast should do it
live at this point if it if you can do it live and in person yes right have you started a podcast or thinking about that I mean your I guess your format is kind of like a I guess what I do technically is a vlog though I hate that word yeah it's a Very ugly word in my mouth uh I toyed or actually had invited guests on my channel for a while and I noticed that it was being being pun by the algorithm so I decided to cancel that for the time being though I might
start a new channel where I host long form discussions and I think that would be better for to kind of Silo those two formats and I think the reason why I'm super excited to talk to you is I feel like a lot of people right they're always so hung up on the Word expert expert like where did he go to school like I don't think anyone can say that about you you're a doctor you have your PhD you can I mean you can talk about my my school and where I got my diploma or say
that people always going to have some sort of excuse sure yeah but I think like a lot of people that talk about dating right and and this isn't calling anyone out whether that be fresh and fit or the whatever podcast I feel like a Lot of it isn't um sometimes maybe not in like the best faith I think for you you at least bring some sort of like expert perspective that makes it really interesting well I appreciate that for the record though I rarely call myself an expert because I try to avoid arguments of authority
uh I don't enjoy them myself when they're leveled at me I think that if the argument is sound and rational And makes sense and fits with people's experience they should be willing to consider it regardless of whether somebody has a degree or not right that's fair that's a good point yeah because uh how how important is school going to be these days in the future learn very much in my classes that was useful to helping people right um well awesome let me start from promoting this on Instagram so uh yeah where you guys uh tun
oops where are you guys uh tuning In from Texas Washington let's see is the distance from the mic okay yeah H how's uh how how are we s sounding by the way audio wise just want to make sure we get all the technical stuff out the way Vegas Ontario bellus Mexico so yeah one thing that's cool is that my audience is 50% us 50% International that's very interesting yeah yeah that's great yeah I mean I Guess we do kind of like topics that is applicable around the world of course it's like America Centric but it
seemed like your most popular videos were about Brazil well there's a lot of controversy around that but yeah I spent I spent a good deal of time in Brazil in the past it's oh you did yeah my girlfriend's from Brazil actually ah Portugues poito poito oh [ __ ] see yeah yeah wow you you speak it um well so sorry guys is the audio Coming in okay just want to make sure what we can do is I can boost it up a little bit what the hell is going on okay yeah sometimes you get the
spammers in the in the chat too let's see put up the game okay how's this is this coming in a little bit better testing one two yeah it can be louder audio seems fine to me you're always going to get a bunch of different opinions when it comes to Stuff like this let's see too loud gen is loud now are we too loud the audio is perfectly fine okay we're good okay well um just make sure how is it focused on doctor as well cool okay there it is perect perfect um yeah let's start it
um well doctor uh nice to officially meet you you can call me Orion Orion okay Orion's a lot better um who are you and why should people listen to you for Relationships and dating H well uh who am I a complicated question isn't it nature of identity but in terms of my professional experience I have a sidea doctorate of psychology I've been in private practice since I graduated in 2015 so I have nine years of Private Practice experience during that time I focused on men's mental health so all of my patients were men and I
started psyx which is a YouTube channel about Three and a half years ago my motivation behind that was was that I was working with a number of guys in my private practice and I could see that they were getting better they were improving their lives and I thought oh that's cool that made me feel good and it was nice to see but I figured that those 30 guys I was working with every year weren't necessarily special or unique and if what we were doing together helped them it might help potentially 30 million men So I
decided to take some of the insights and interventions I was using to address the problems that were coming up in my clinical practice and I wanted to launch them in front of a wider audience to see if it might help folks on a grander scale I think one thing that's interesting about you is I think there's a lot of people who talk about dating these days uh especially in the modern context right and a lot of people I feel like unfairly have also been kind Of uh blamed as misogynistic or blamed as red pill or
kind of just like Cast Away as like look these guys aren't experts why should we talk to them one thing that's interesting about you is that you come from a psychological perspective right you went to school you have actual Private Practice experience would you say your ideas are controversial or do people just not like hearing the truth well those two things might be the Same thing I think that controversy is often used as marketing these days but one of the what I call Batman rules about my channel is that I try to speak the truth
in a way that neither enrages men nor alienates women because I don't think that the world needs either more of either of those type of people and men and women seem to be having difficulty coming together these days and I don't want to be part of the problem I want to be part of the Solution that doesn't mean that we can't it's wrong to just get on a camera and say everyone hold hands and sing Kumbaya because there are misunderstandings and uh issues that need to be resolved both intrac psychically within men and within women
and and interpersonally between the two genders right right so uh that's kind of where I come from like I don't stir up controversy like I it would I'd have 10 times as many followers if I used click Baity titles or I used really provocative extreme language and to be honest I think I made an episode about this some years ago there is a PLL for Content creators to do that I don't know if you've experienced that yourself but yeah like for example I started psyx and it took about a year and a half for the
first episode get any kind of attention whatsoever sure YouTube's a hard game then it's tough you know it was the 97th episode I created and it went viral Several months after it was published for some reason but it's very difficult to keep I posted an episode every other day for about a year and a half and it was getting three views five likes it was you know it's tough because you're putting a lot of effort and energy into it and hits your ego right like have to it didn't really hurt my ego so much is
it just made me feel uh you know after about a year I was contending with some measure of hopelessness in the sense Of I had a dream for this Channel and I was uncertain as to whether I would be able to fulfill it but that's why I gave myself three years before I would allow myself to give up anyway during that time I definitely felt a pull to do more extreme things in order to Garner some kind of attention and there was this little voice in my head that was basically like no one no one
cares anyway like you could say whatever the [ __ ] you wanted and it's like the three People who are watching you aren't going to cause anything so it's like on some level the internet requires or pulls not requires but pulls people to enact more extreme versions of their personality in order to attract attention that's the attraction and especially in dating I feel like I think especially because there's so much you can say about it that confirms people or I don't know you yeah there's a lot of bad advice so there's a few perennial Um
subjects that I think are never going to go away there's sex and dating and relationships that's I'm in that obviously there is money and finances there is politics and current events there is health and fitness and there's definitely in every one of those domains ideologues people who tend towards extreme perspectives and misinformation and untruth so uh I don't think it's Unique to to love and dating it's just one of the things that people are Perennial interested in that's well said that's well said so I'm curious on what your audience is like right I already started
reading your book by the way guys check it out the value of others and one thing you said like in the introduction was you're not just speaking to men right you're you're a man yourself you're actually trying to speak to both men and women because it takes two to tango sure right um but I'm curious on what your audience actually Does look like right like we always strive to reach as many people as possible but like you said there's a pull from the AUD you start creating a core audience what does your YouTube audience breakdown
look like is it mostly men is it mostly women curious so yeah I mentioned that in the book the book was not written exclusively for men and I I didn't make pyak specifically to speak to men either sure my private practice was about that but this was for A much larger audience so my first episode that went viral tended to go it seemed to go viral with women so for a while the primary breakdown of my channel was majority women maybe 70% female and in fact my very first invitation was on a female Le podcast
so I've been on a few of those uh over time the demographics have shifted I think right now it's about 80 to 85% male 15 to 20% female yeah but it gets you know YouTube alone gets it's like 70% male or Something like that well that's I think that's true but I would say my channel last month got over 6 million views so that's at least a million female viewers who are watching which is a fairly sizable audience interesting so I think one thing that I'm curious about is you know you talk a lot about
dating and relationships if you don't want me asking why aren't you married people love to ask about my personal life so um which is really interesting I'll answer That question but that's what I've seen one of the criticisms that's leveled against me it's like why would you listen to relationship advice from a guy who is unmarried and I am unmarried and to my mind like I was saying just a few minutes ago saying you should listen to me because I'm married is another version of an argument of authority it's like saying listen to me because
I'm a doctor sure frankly it costs 80 bucks in An in an hour of time to get married it doesn't require much at all to actually get the marriage license so saying that you should listen to me because I'm married is kind of like saying you should take my medical advice because I'm CPR certified like CPR might actually take more time to complete than getting a marriage license at City Hall right so to my mind that's not a very persuasive rationale for why you should just uncritically accept another Person's advice like I said you should
listen consider that there might be some truth in it apply it in your own life experimentally and if it works keep it if it doesn't you can throw it out I don't mind so uh I think it's more Germaine to ask whether I have the kinds of relationships in my life that I would prefer to have and I would say that I do and I think that's the better question to ask like it's no success to be married if you don't want to be right It's no success to not be married if you want to
be right so it's like do you are you able whether you're a man or a woman to have the kinds of relationships that you would prefer to have with the opposite sex assuming you're heterosexual uh if so maybe you have something worth saying that could be of value to other people so to answer your question about why I'm unmarried is uh I mean I've said it before I I don't quite see what I Would get out of that situation as a man I don't know how that would make my life better um it seems like
it would be a lot of risk without any real upside which on some level is unfair if we're going to ask someone to assume greater risk then there should be some possible greater payout like you go to Vegas if the the riskier bets tend to pay out more and that's sort of symmetrical and just on some level but To my mind if I've you know I've read the license I've read the contract that's kind of drawn up by the state and I've talked to hundreds of divorced men and I don't think it offers any real
protection to either men or women in terms of like it can be dissolved at will at any time by either party for any reason whatsoever I mean that anybody who thinks that an agreement that can be broken under those terms offers any kind of security or safety whatsoever is Insane like it's a false sense of security um also it generally unless there's a very strong prup and prenups don't always get upheld in court uh in many cases one party is incentivized often unconsciously to uh terminate the relationship because they can get cash and prizes as
a result so it's like I don't think that it's from a behavioral perspective wise to incentivize the dissolution of a Relationship we should in invent incentivize the maintenance of the relationship if we want to keep it so to to my mind my relationships tend to be safer and better when her happiness is tied to my happiness and not that necessarily our best interests are opposed to one another so I definitely want to tap into that um but before I do one question I do want to ask is do you want kids or is that also
not really important to you You know I go back and forth um there have been times in my life when I've really wanted kids and there have been times when I really didn't for me it would be very important for my life to feel very stable and prosperous for a sustained period of time and there have been times when I've approached that and then something unexpected happened and it kind of threw my life for a you know a little bit of a tumble and I had to rep pivot and build again as an Entrepreneur I've
had to do that a few different times in my life and that seemed like not a very wise or responsible moment to start a family so I also know because I've seen it up close that children require a great deal of time and energy and money and those resources have to come out of somewhere so you know if I was Raising involved in raising children I might not be here today talking to you I might not have written a book uh or it Would have taken me five times as long to write that book per
se so there are costs associated with raising kids and I think that if I approach that I want things to be stable and prosperous and I have an abundance of resources to devote to the children without necessarily sacrificing some of the other personal and professional goals that I have so you mentioned uh something earlier when I asked about do you want to be married you said that uh your relationships work When her happiness is tied to your happiness yeah can you explain that a little bit well um I think if we examine history that uh
the greatest Corruptions and abuses occur when people cannot be removed from their position or removing their position uh comes with sort of like a golden parachute you can see that in some CEOs some people can get really fantastic Severance packages they're put in that position and then they don't Give a [ __ ] anymore and they run the company to the ground because they don't give a [ __ ] you know they get fired they're going to walk away with $200 million or something like that so the what I think is best is to have
very few on some level very few safety precautions is what keeps a relationship from going off the rails this seems paradoxical did you see the the Batman prequels the Christopher Nolan like There's this great scene in The Dark Knight Rises where Bruce Wayne is trapped in the pit that no one can get out of because everyone's attached to the tether and Wayne can only make that jump when he takes his safety net off and it's like that awareness of additional danger and risk is what actually motivates him to make the jump and everyone unconsciously wasn't
putting as much effort into it because they knew they Would be okay if they didn't make it on some level right right so let me give you an example uh I've been in private practice for nine years I don't have any kind of minimum number of appointments I don't have any contracts uh associated with how many sessions people can have if you look at my calendar it's completely empty like 3 weeks from now and that's been that way since I started this practice it was That way when I started previous businesses the point is is
that I have to show up and do the best job that I can every single session like I don't get to phone it in even if I've worked with somebody for years it's like if I put in too many poor sessions too many in a row I'm going to lose that client and I think that's fair like the fact that I'm not guaranteed that client's business is what motivates me to show up as best as possible every single day Like we need Stakes to be able to perform right yes I don't think anyone should assume
that just because we have a shared history or we've done some good in the past that we can be reasonably assured of continued relationship whether it's personal or professional indefinitely into the future I think we have to kind of rearn our commitment every and I think that's what motivates both men and women to show up in the best Most attractive light possible interesting so I think one thing I'm curious about is how did you come up with like your philosophy was it based on your own personal life experiences obviously but was there like a particular
figure that potentially uh inspired you I know in your interview with um soft white underbelly you mentioned Patrice O'Neal a couple of times Patrice is great yeah um I'm curious where your influences are from Well a lot of that book more academically is from lwig Von misus who was an Austrian Economist who I think was absolutely brilliant his book uh Human Action was just a banger man it's it's like 900 pages long but every single paragraph was just filled with Clarity and insight I loved his perspective and uh he moved economics well beyond the simplistic
supply and demand because that's clearly not enough to explain why Certain things have the values that they do so uh a lot of what I've come up against it's like it's not taught in schools and it's very rarely written in books um I came up against I developed this philosophy experimentally in overtime uh to be honest it came out of a heartbreak so I was really crushed by a relationship that didn't work out I ended it but it It needed to be ended and there I was and this wasn't the first time I was heartbroken
and I was I had to confront the possibility that if I knew what women wanted if I knew what made relationships work I wouldn't be heartbroken yet again so maybe maybe my fundamental premises my fundamental assumptions about who women are what they want how relationships are supposed to work maybe maybe they were wrong like It took that many experiences of pain for that long to really come to my first principles and doubt them which is a very serious kind of crisis of Faith to go to what you assume to be so true that you can
barely even put it into words because you think it's just it's like the fish can't see the water as it were so I basically said okay [ __ ] it I'm going to pretend that I don't know anything that just this alien that's landed on this planet and I don't what's A woman what's going on how do you do this I don't know and I'm instead of having these ideas about what should work and trying to apply them on reality I decided instead to let outcomes guide me and to use that to build a model
based on what should work right rather than the other way around and on some level that's kind of what we would ideally expect of Scientists scientist doesn't come with precon Notions about how nature or reality operates you test It HTH the scientist is like I'm I'm a teach me what I should believe by observation right and so I decided not to have contempt prior to investigation which is often what keeps people siloed into their maladaptive beliefs so that that's wrong or that's negative judgment word or that would never work and so they don't even take
the time to consider if there might be some truth in that perspective any case I started to uh research stuff on The internet watch videos on YouTube read books that I might not have read before and decided to approach dating like a behavioral scientist and during that time I must have gone I think in one year I probably went out on at least 300 First Dates 300 First dat yeah yeah that's pretty much once a day oh yeah it was pretty much I was going on like maybe five six dates a week yeah were you
like going on dating apps to find them or at that time yeah I was and uh It my my threshold for who I would go out on a first date with was was pretty low because I wasn't I guess it was a little disingenuous I wasn't really dating at that time for a relationship if it happened great I wouldn't be opposed to it but I was dating more to to kind of figure out what worked and also to refine my dating practices I wanted to get good at dating okay and uh you a person might
have to put in hundreds of reps to get good at Something like there's very few I think people just sort of assume that they should be good at relationships or they should be good at dating or seduction and I don't know where that comes from but uh very few things can be mastered in just a few attempts or just a few iterations so if you're really serious about this I would encourage folks to to practice more okay um so I I went out with a lot of different women and I I started to listen to
them I started to Apply different things some of these things I'm like oh this would never work I'm like no you know that's that's potentially the older Ry let's try some new things out and I'd be surprised it's like holy [ __ ] she responded well to that that's not what I expected at all so over time and it took about three years of um of kind of experimentation to arrive at a pretty consistent model of what seems to work in terms of anything from getting a date To escalating an interaction towards a sexual encounter
if that's what you want to maintaining interest in a long-term relationship and I feel pretty confident and once I kind of got that more or less set in my own life I began teaching some of those principles to other guys who are coming to me hey I'm having trouble meeting women hey I'm having trouble with my wife or my girlf friend I said okay well based on what I've learned this is what you might want To try they try it out more often than not it helps them out another confirmation great so do that another
thousand times and start making content about it write a book and now here I am so let's get into the Core Concepts and theories right um one thing I read in your book so far is you describe relationships traditionally as men being captains and women the passengers historically yeah can you explain this Dynamic sure So the metaphor I use for the sexual Marketplace is that the sexual Marketplace is like this old timey dock where all these ships are mored right and at every slippage there is a ship and a captain standing in front of that
ship and that person is trying to attract passengers on board and the passengers are walking up and down the dock trying to find let's say the most comfortable pass to where they want to go so there's a kind of complimentarity To captains and passengers but also there's also a fundamental antagonism like they don't they need each other but they're not really aligned with their goals on some level like for ex just think about kind of commercial airlines think about the relationship between how they handle their business and how you buy a ticket if they had
their brothers they'd just cram us in their like cattle yeah cattle class right like I've seen some pictures where you don't even get To like sit down and you're just sort of like kind of perched on a little half pray to God you're not sitting to a fat person I mean it's it's it's tough um definitely if you if you can afford it business class is the way to travel but um it's it's really expensive so uh like they would just want to cram as many people into their cabins as possible for as much as
they can get away with and they just want you to like shut up be docile and be taken to where They wanted you to go on some level passengers on the other hand they want the most affordable ticket they want Comfort they want um to be kind of taken care of lots of leg room um they want a variety of times and and destinations to choose from so the way that they approach making a decision is kind of antagonistic but they both have to kind of make concessions to the other if they want to do
business with each other like if a carrier really did cram people in Like cattle but its competitors didn't that would be a poor business decision by the same token a passenger who was way too picky probably isn't going to go anywhere does that make sense yeah okay now historically men have been captains I use this awkward construction they have they've had to be and they've gotten to be captains and women had to be and have gotten to be passengers and I put it that way because it's sort of wrong to assume that one is necessarily
Better than the other both roles come with Privileges and responsibilities benefits and liabilities it's not that being a captain is is all roses and being a passenger is just this passive um uh disadvantaged position some passeng ERS wield more power on the ships than their captains right I talk about that in the book as well um and this is just because I mean I think until even late in the 19th Century in the west women couldn't even own private property so they couldn't they weren't in the workforce how are they going to build a boat
and learn to sail Like For Better or For Worse that wasn't an option that was held out to women so men historically have had to be and gotten to be captains and women have had to be and have gotten to be passengers that's no longer true though so as I talk about in the book captains and passengers are technically Gender neutral terms and we can and do have female passengers and female captains and we theoretically can have male passengers as well but that's much less common yeah I see so how has modern dating changed this
Dynamic well it's changed it significantly in a number of ways so modern dating to my mind is the beginning of dating app in app based culture so we can talk about how apps have changed it in a in a moment but Let's talk about how just introducing female captains has changed the dynamic because it's that's done so significantly so um one of the main issues with relationships now that women can be captains is what I call the two- body problem are you familiar with that no okay the two body problem is is I I heard
it initially in the context of graduate school did you go to grad school at all okay so grad school is a a Dreary not good times place it's where it's where happiness goes to die in in many cases unless maybe if you go to business school I hear you got of get to party andoo a little bit but in most cases no it's not you're getting your PhD it must be no it's you should only do that as a last resort yeah if there's no other way to do the thing that you want to do
without it okay so uh it's not a happy Good Times place um and it can take to get a PhD an inordinate Amount of time like in the states 49% of folks who start a liberal arts PhD do not complete it within 10 years that's insane like in 10 years you could be a master of a craft you could be a grandmas of Chess and you don't even know what the pony does you know it's like and PE half of the people who start that track don't finish right so it's an it's extraordinary commitment in
terms of time and energy and opportunity cost like I talk about in the book to become A Captain uh you need to build a ship learn to sale and plot a course and each one of those things can take a great deal of time I think it takes at least 10 years to become a Captain minimum right okay now the thing about being a captain is if you go through all of whether it's a PhD or building a business or etc etc if you actually go through the sacrifices and devote a decade of your life
to ascending to that captaincy like what's the chances that You're ever gonna become a passenger on somebody else's boat you can't it would it would be impossible like that that other Captain's boat would have to be so much better and so much nicer and go to places that your ship could never sail and still you would have to surrender on some level some measure of Prof in order to make that jump right so when folks invest that much time and effort into their captaincy it's something that They're very reticent to surrender as they should right
it's why go through that just to jump ship right so that's kind of the situation that we're in now that we have female captains it's like it could very well be that the male Captain and the female Captain have both spent a decade ascending to their captaincies and making a great deal of sacrifices in terms of time energy and money and what's the good argument that it should be the woman who surrenders Her captaincy and not the man like just because that's historically been the case or because of his genitalia I don't think that's a
very persuasive argument right and so you get to this situation where neither one really wants to surrender the captaincy so how do you really sail together you can't have two captains on one ship like that just creates confusion a monster is with two heads right so there there needs to be one Person at the end of the day who makes the call and sailing their own ships to the same destination is inefficient and a waste of resources like there there's taking turns creates a lot of Confusion And inefficiency so like you have to be really
committed to this uh this value of egalitarianism at a very high level to accommodate the ineffectiveness and the inefficiency That goes into trying to get two captains to sail together it's just so much easier when one person is the captain one person is the passenger then the other way around right it can also lead to competitiveness between the within the couple which is generally not a good thing especially if they're they're in the same field so that's the origin of the two body problem is that let's say a man and a woman go to grad
school they Complete their PHD and they both want a teaching position it's very difficult to get a teaching position in Academia like there are at least 20 times more new phds minted every year than there are new academic tenar track positions so most people don't get one most people don't get more than one so the idea the the likelihood that both people in the couple are going to get an academic position at the same University is functionally zero right now I'm making a Video on birth rates and one very interesting statistic that I found is
that apparently 80% of PE of women who didn't have kids was not by Circ but was by circumstance so they wanted to but they involuntarily childless right they they waited too long or they weren't able to find like the right partner which is a pretty significant number if you think about it only 10% are childless by choice yes I've read that same statistic I think I've talked about That on an episode it just takes longer to do this than most people think I mean we don't like to talk about it but I mean really I
don't I I think you should date for a onee minimum before you decide to marry somebody or to reproduce with them you know obviously people do what they're going to do and there might be exceptions from time to time but one year seems like the minimum due diligence for a lifetime Commitment um most people take longer and then um they so let's say you're single it takes maybe 6 to 12 months to find somebody that is a plausible candidate that you connect with then it takes another year or so to to date and if that
doesn't work out it's not like your heart is made of Teflon and you're just going to get right back on the dating scene the next day to be able to make yourself emotionally available to a new Potential partner so you generally have to spend some time grieving and getting over the previous relationship so like it can take 5 years to get like one really good chance okay and in general let's just for nice round numbers say that women's reproductive window is between 20 and 40 well that's 20 years 20 years divided by 5 is four
so maybe women get four Good chances at having a family and imagine that they don't want to have their family in their 20s in their 20s they might want to get a master's degree or focus on their career or travel the world or date around and have lots of different fun experiences like I don't want to blame women for wanting those things the diversity of experience it seems like so much of life in the world is at our finger tips these days through social media and why not me right I want To feel all the
feels and write all the rides too right but that means that if you really only turn your attention to it in your 30s maybe you only get two good chances you know that's that's not a lot men For Better or For Worse have a longer timeline to figure it out which is good because we tend to mature more slowly right uh but we also don't have infinite chances we might have twice as many uh if we're lucky so this idea that um we have all the time in the world Especially women who are interested potentially
in having children is incorrect so what you you mentioned competitiveness throughout um and one thing that I'm curious about is you said that everyone is unique but also replaceable of course can you elaborate on that well it's one of the paradoxes of of Human Relationships whether they're romantic or professional is uh I mean no one the world is not going to fall apart if one Person dies or loses their position and thank God that's what allows civilization and businesses and individuals to persevere through time like we don't want everything to fall apart we don't want
one person to be that important that in the their absence nothing can proceed right so like we're going to get a new president pretty soon right we're we're every company will have a new CEO eventually um like Nobody is so important that everything falls apart without them yeah like if I die today like someone's gonna replace me there's yeah No One's Gonna Be again yeah that's the unique part like you're going to bring whatever unique flavor you bring to this channel that has never been seen before and will never be seen again even with AI
EI will AI sorry AI will will never be able to fully replicate you it'll imitate you hope not it'll imitate you and and it Will imitate you very well and convincingly but it will never truly in my opinion generate new creative content it will just be able to move stuff around in um which I guess is a form of creation but it won't I don't think it will be quite the same thing so no one will ever do what gen does again but absolutely not we don't even have to wait for you to die you
know there's already thousands of other people who are having conversations just like this Today right and when you stop doing it your loyal viewers aren't just going to say well I'll never watch YouTube again they'll find somebody else to follow and as as should be like no one should be that important in my opinion so that's sort of the Paradox is I mean think about human life in general that human life is incredibly precious and special it you know the the Buddhist talk about how the chances of being incarnated as a human being are Like
the chances of picking one particular grain of sand on a beach like it's like a trillion to one that we can't potentially underestimate how rare and precious life is in general in the universe let alone human life as far as I know the only place that it exists right and we're here really for a very short amount of time and yet think of who thinks of the billions of people who came before us and are now laid to rest you know it's Like life we've seen unfortunately through history is incredibly cheap and on some level
that's the Paradox is we're in just like basic stuff we're in the meat suit there's nothing really special about that but there is something specially unique about whoever is inside of that whatever that happens to be hopefully that's not too abstract no that makes that makes a lot of sense um I'm kind of curious to hear your Thoughts on this um I I personally believe that a lot of things that we do is motivated by sex in some sort of way oh yeah absolutely do you agree with that notion and why um yeah I mean
I think Freud got gets a lot of flak these days he's a fairly unpopular thinker in the 21st century but I I don't think he got everything right but he got a lot of things right and one of the things I think he did get right was the primary driver of of sex as a motivator in human Behavior because sex is ultimately connected to reproduction which is life itself so sex isn't only about sex sex is about what gets you up in the morning and motivates you to like struggle and overcome to perpetuate your own
life and life throughout time and when people don't have that drive then it's not like they're just not interested in sex but they're these vigorous go-getters like those two things are often related to one another Another thing to keep in mind is his concept of sublimation have you heard that term before okay so he basically not only talked about how important the sex drive is to human beings but he understood that this these impulses were really socially unacceptable and that on some level civilization was predicated on human individuals ability to repress these sexual instincts if
we just gave into them all the time it would be a bakanal Origy and there would be all kinds of transgressions and nothing would get done and it it wouldn't be a good scene right sounds like San Francisco oh well you know I guess only if you work in Tech so um the idea here is uh Bak all so uh we have to suppress these impulses for like to be able to get along with other people all right um if they're repressed too much people can kind of get a little weird and neurotic so ideally
what happens is These impulses are channeled or sublimated into socially acceptable Pursuits one of which is like artistic creation yeah I mean you could have the nastiest dirtiest sexual impuls but if you put them in the lyrics of a song you can you can say whatever you want on some level you know what I'm saying if if it's a work of fiction you could have the most depraved sexual fantasies played out on the page and you could say it's a it's just a work of the Imagination right so that's one way in which sexual impulse
can be sublimated in a socially acceptable way I mean they call it sex transmutation essentially right they even talked about it in Think and Grow Rich like the source of creativity is SE is sexual yeah and I think in particular we underestimate how much what men do in general is related to getting and keeping women so is it different for women Though uh yeah I think it is why um why is it different for women well um because and this is often said but men are The Gatekeepers of relationship and commitment and women are The
Gatekeepers of sex it's not very difficult for women to get sex they might not always be able to get sex from the men they would prefer to get it with but I guarantee if they were so motivated they could get laid tonight Yeah right a lot of guys are extremely motivated and won't be getting laate tonight you know they will be trying very hard and trying all kinds of tactics and it still won't work right so there's this huge asymmetry in the experience of men and women between the availability uh of sex okay so basically
there's this obstruction that men have men still want sex right but like they have to uh they have to get around it now one of the Fundamental premises of the book is that okay where do I start with this is that people enter into relationships based on a transaction of value right people go towards other folks that they want things from and they don't have anything to do with people they don't want anything from or have want nothing to do with that seems very reasonable to me um and in general men attempt to exchange resources
broadly defined for sexual Opportunity and women use their sexual opportunity for the transaction of resources so basically in the economics of the situation men have something that they really want from women that women have some measure of control over whether they give it to men or not namely access to their bodies and sexual opportunity and so it's like well what what can you trade for this opportunity on some level we're not supposed to talk about this in so blatant explicit terms And people get very upset because it seems to reduce all of relationships to this
this materialistic transaction which case it's important to remember that resources is not just about money like that's just the the most obvious tangible example of resource resource is anything of value broadly defined and it's for the woman to decide what she values for some women it will be money for other women it will be the willingness to have a family for Instance Not all men would do that right the willingness to marry her not all men are going to be willing to do that those are values to a woman anyway so the idea here is
well as a man let's do business like let's trade I can give you something that you want and you might be able to give me something that I want um and I think that's a big driver of why men work longer and harder than women in general in the marketplace I think that by itself explains let's say The um uh the pay Gap more than sexism or discrimination is that money is valuable to everyone but it's more valuable to men because in general that money has as many uses as it has to women plus the
use that it can be used to attract and to transact with women for relationships yeah you can't afford to be broke as a guy you need a j o if you want to mess with me right isn't that what Eddie Murphy said a long time ago that's right Um I mean you can but you have to have other things uh it is wrong to think that money is what makes women open up their lives to men yeah cuz you said that when you were a broke actor yeah you got more play than when you were
a successful Rich doctor yeah because no one knew who I was as a successful Rich doctor for a while like I could have been the best therapist in the world and only maybe my 30 clients knew that and I wasn't Allowed to talk about that right right so um on some level what a waste if I were the one of the better therapists in the world to just kind of leave that in obscurity right so one thing that does seem to be very attractive to women is some measure of the ability to command attention I
can talk you can talk about that as being a contextual Alpha uh whether which is basically like you are the Top Dog in your little social hierarchy no matter how big that Is that's interesting and attractive to most women so the ability to command attention the uh occupation of a high status position within a social hierarchy those things um are more attractive to most women than just pure net worth so one thing I'm curious about is then are all relationships friends family business are they all just transactional by Nature I say that all consensual relationships
are at heart Transactional so there are non-consensual relationships which are basically the relationships between parents and children and between siblings like I did not choose to have my sister in my life and she did not choose to have me I did not choose my particular parents they didn't choose to have me like they didn't know who I was or who I was going to be and we have duties and responsibilities under those circumstances that should be respected Because they they aren't consensual right though family relationships change when everyone becomes an adult and you don't have
to continue to have a relationship with a family member just because they're a family member like it should it should be respectful and and loving and it should make your life better or you know don't set yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm on some level right but um yeah I think that in general all consensual relationships Are transactional you get something out of spending time with that person and if you didn't or it was a loss to you for too many consecutive occasions you're going to re-evaluate that relationship because it's going to be
too expensive for you and and I think a lot of people might hear that and kind of form like a nihilistic opinion about the world but I actually think it's it's honest like for example you wouldn't [ __ ] be here if I didn't have a channel right like we we Are exchanging value your fans are coming here we're exchanging Community like there is a good thing about that and hopefully we can still be friends of course but like I think after a certain age especially as a man like like there needs to be some
sort of value exchange or else like what the hell are you doing yeah it's interesting you brought that up so I made an episode about this about how to make friends as a man in as an adult because it's very Difficult the older you get the harder it is to make new friends especially as a guy and what I've discovered is that the hack is to be of value to other men is that I've met a lot of really interesting people through the YouTube channel and the pretext is always some sort of collaboration or interview
but then we get to know each other we we be we fraternize we become friends over time and and it's almost like the interview is a pretext to hang out yeah Because it could be potentially strange or of too great of an opportunity cost to just call up a guy and be like hey you know let's hang out in the middle of a weekday it's like dude I like you but you know I got to take care of business over here so is there a way that we can kind of like hang out and take
care of business or create value it's like yeah we can kill two birds with one stone right and this is really interesting because um you know I I've been able to get some perspective on especially really what I imagine really beautiful women's subjective experience to some extent since becoming somewhat famous and successful okay um because I I made an episode about this too I think that being famous is like being a woman like that's the closest a man will ever get to knowing what it might feel like to be a beautiful woman because like what
you just talked about It's like I wouldn't be here if we weren't doing this right okay and why did I accept this invitation why did I come all the way out to Austin Texas on my own dollar to talk to you well because you had a big enough audience and I liked your take right now I get invited on podcasts every day sometimes dozens of times a day but some I look into all of them but I look into some of them and it's like the guy's got 20 followers and he's just started the Channel
and it might he might be an interesting guy it might be aligned with his mission but it's like I can't be I can't be doing interviews for 20 people at this stage of the game because if I did that I wouldn't be here talking to half a million people so the opportunity cost associated with choosing the 20 follower Channel over the 500,000 is enormous right so it's like I can kind of see what it might be like to be an attractive woman who gets all of this Kind of attention from men all the time made
an episode about this I call it the $50,000 beer which is like the reason why you're not going to see really really conventionally beautiful women on say like a dating app is because they're getting inundated with male attention in their real lives and on social media the idea that that beautiful woman is just going to accept some random strangers invitation for a beer Loc bar is never going to happen because she's also Getting invited to the Burge Dubai by some like Italian football player this weekend and he's going to fly her out first class so
it's like the cost of that beer is $10 for you but for her it's a weekend in Dubai with a famous footballer you know what I'm saying and she doesn't have to be this shallow crass materialistic human being to decide that it's a better option for her to go to Dubai than to have a beer in the dive bar with a random nobody yeah It's like I would do that they're just not hitting me up you know i' I'd love to hang out with meridana or something like that so um that's what I'm getting at
is the more um the more optionality that you have the the harder it is to um to give everyone a chance on some level and so a lot of guys they think ah this woman she's just stuck up or women only care about money or status and that's not necessarily true but it becomes harder And harder and harder to justify to herself and her own mind to go out with this guy and not this other guy over here based on what he could potentially provide that's just rational that's not even people often say that women
are irrational no women make often very shrewd business decisions they're I think in general women often have this patina of Romanticism but they're kind of oh they're a lot more intuitive than us well I wouldn't say intuitive but I Would say they're they're they're making more practical rational decisions about who they decide to get into relationships with whereas men on the surface seem to be I don't even give a [ __ ] I can do but deep down inside a lot of are Romantics and they're just like trying to find that one that they can
love and devote themselves to so I think that's a good transition into this next question because you said yourself that it's a woman's best interest to hunt to Be the nastiest [ __ ] versions of themselves with the man that they want sure how does this serve a long-term interest if most women want to be married most women want to have kids how does that conflate um sure so the hunting is not necessarily related to being the nastiest leish version of yourself which I I Chang the language of that in the book to the the
richest creamiest milk that you can provide but we can we can Use that whatever language you prefer because I've said both um the reason th those two things are not at odds with one another for the simple reason that we live in a society for better for worse in which sex proceeds commit right like you don't marry someone before you sleep with them yeah I don't I don't think there are vanishingly few people who expect that in today's day and age but there's also I guess people Who are religious where that kind of becomes like
the incentive in a sure I've I've dated religious girls none of them were virgins maybe they had lower maybe they had lower body counts than some of the other women but like in fact sometimes they're probably the nastiest bloodiest they sometimes but also sometimes they're they're actually very inexperienced and they they think that their lower body counts are just like Inherently valuable which it can be like sexual jealousy is something that uh triggers a lot of men but also like they this is a double standard that men should need need to examine they they want
a woman to be pure virginal or at least have a low body count but they also want her to like do all kinds of nasty [ __ ] things for him and how is she going to know how to do those things uh she doesn't she she doesn't know how to do them so the Idea is that some wom like intuitively know how to do this even though they've never actually done it with anybody in their lives and they're just waiting for the right man to enact that with I think is is wrong so it's
like if you want someone who's good at sex you probably need an experienced person whether that's a man or a woman and that obviously comes with pros and cons so it's like everything is a trade-off you can't get Everything um but sex precedes commitment okay so what I talk about is that one of the best ways for women to get married to get into a significant relationship is to act as if that's the furthest thing from their minds there's this idea that's floating around about intentional dating which is sort of like the and it it
kind of makes sense on the surface like it makes a ra it makes some rational sense but that's Not how people actually make decisions in the sexual Marketplace the idea here is uh I'm just going to tell you what I want I want to get married I want to have kids I am an intj I am a Leo with a with a cancer ascendant I my love languages are gifts and and acts of service like I'm just going to give you all this information about who I am and what I'm looking for so that you
can just we don't have to waste any time and um that just generally doesn't work it Doesn't work for a number of reasons one is it makes it actually makes the dating process extremely explicitly transactional it makes it into a job interview which most people do not want to feel like one of the cardinal sins is making the transaction at the heart of romantic relationships too explicit neither the men or the women really want that okay so one of the unspoken rules is you're you're supposed to kind of like hide some of that stuff the
more Explicit is the more it feels like we're doing a business transaction okay most people don't want that um it also doesn't work because it's like okay how do I put this there is an asymmetry in the sexual Marketplace between the value of sex which is very cheap these days and the value of commitment which is very expensive and in fact commitment is getting more and more expensive as people have more and More sex like with each other so women often complain that men just want them for one thing um but what the market value
of that one thing is pales in comparison to the one thing that women want which is marriage family lifetime commitment like that costs millions of dollars whereas never heard of that perspective yeah well I mean think of I think it costs at least six Figures to raise one child right uh how much value are you putting into the children and the women obviously that benefits you indirectly to some extent especially if you're committed to your family of course but there's a huge opportunity cost in terms of time energy and money that's devoted here and not
elsewhere it's it's extremely expensive versus I think the market rate for sex just in terms of sex workers in America is $200 so it's like women bulk it like how dare you just approach me with with sex but it's actually a small ask relative to women who come out of the gate expecting and asking for commitment and provision like imagine if in instead of asking for sex The man asked for a million dollars on the first dat this is what I expect this is what I'm looking for I'm looking for a million dollars like I
don't think a woman would Even know what how to respond to that right so it's in my opinion not a good idea for women to lead with I'm looking for a committed relationship that also puts a lot of um a man's defenses up because it's like if a woman came and said I'm looking for a million dollars it's like okay well I mean that's that's a lot so I'm expecting a lot of you now and I guess we'll see and things like that for better for worse uh and there's one more thing to consider is
the the wi Women don't want to just get married and have kids they could do that if they wanted to they want to get married and have kids with the men they want to get married and have kids with which are generally the most attractive let's say 10 15% of men and like all the women want those men so these men the more attractive they are the more eligible of Bachelors they become the more optionality they enjoy and so now the opportunity cost of moving forward with Any one woman in a commitment becomes greater and
greater because I have to give up everything else right so coming right out of the gate with that's my expectation before you even generate any kind of value is just an enormous ask for one of these attractive guys it's like I'm not going to give up the 10 women that I'm dating just because you want to have a committed relationship you're because it's wanting Is free as I say it's free to want something and it cost me something to give it so it's like I'm not saying you'll never get it but like justify that you
will provide me something of equivalent value or else we really don't have a basis of transaction here do you understand yeah uh one more thing I would say about that which is um um ah so in the context of this I say That offering the richest creamiest milk possible is sort of like the Trojan Horse it is what lets a man's guard down because it's pretty rare for a guy to just say no to a seemingly free attractive sexual opportunity like most guys are not going to pass that up yeah they'll say yeah but most
guys if you come up to them I'm looking for a committed relationship I'm looking for marriage I'm looking for kids they going Be like chill out chill out I don't even met 10 minutes ago you know so it's like but if you're like hey I think you're really cute maybe we can have some f fun sometime it's like oh okay yeah sure and so that opens the gate and that woman might have access to that attractive man that she would never get if she led with just what she wanted in it's like it's poor salesmanship
to lead with what you want can you imagine getting cold called By some salesman and be like hey you know I'm interested in making my commission yeah I get shitty shitty emails like all the time of people emails so many bad pitches it's like you obviously you're there because you're self-interested and motivated to make the call but the only way you get your commission is by on some level pretending that has nothing to do with why you're calling me and demonstrating instead that there's something of value To me to enter into this relationship that a
smart sales you know what I'm saying so leading what you want with what you want whether you're a man or a woman is a terrible stupid idea lead with what the other person wants and in general most men want easy going fun sexual experiences like that's something that it's very rare for a guy to turn down so that's what opens the door the issue is and this is true because some women bulk well Ryan They're just going to have their fun and and that'll be it so how does that lead to marriage and kids like
okay yeah that's phase one though if you get LED in and then kicked out well that's further along than not being led in at all right so you have to be led in to be kicked out so you actually have solved the first problem which is securing access to those most attractive men and you're not going to do that just By Dem you know asking or demanding what you want right you have to give something that he wants but that's just phase one what Works to open the gates doesn't work to keep you in the
city so if all you have to offer is sex yeah you're going to be used as a playmate until the man tires of you but whose fault is that on some level it's like that's not a woman's Destiny so he in general she needs to use sex because sex precedes commitment In the sexual Marketplace today to open the gates but once she's inside she needs to do other things to let's say solidify her position in that man's life and if she doesn't do that yeah her uh tenure there is tenuous i' see interesting I'm kind
of curious too if chat has any any counterpoints to that um because I think you know the reason why I wanted to ask that question is I think a you probably get a lot of push back on this question right I guess Advising women to be the nastiest slightest version for themselves for the women that they want I think one thing you said is that or for the man that they want one thing you said is that you know you only get a few tries right as a woman few really good really good tries in
that instance wouldn't this sort of a vice make women shoot more shots that's misguided not necessarily um because it's about giving that rich creamy milk to the men They really want right so one of the things that gets misattributed to me is saying that they women should just be wholesale [ __ ] and just like be giving it up to every man who wants sex which is not what I'm suggesting at all so it's being more selective about extremely selective way more selective than I see women behaving in today and that's where the hunting comes
in so I have two general approaches to dating there's hunting where you target one Specific prey and then there's fishing in the sense that we're going to cast a wide net into the water and like haul up a bunch of fish and then choose the ones that seem to be the tastiest in most attractive so they're they're very different approaches to dating and in general it's better women are better equipped to hunt than men are the the average woman is way more successful hunting than the average man so then why is it that the expectation
is for men to Approach women uh that's a great question because even in today's day and age with all of our enlightened perspectives of gender and power that one hasn't changed really and um I think for good reason in the sense that the one who approaches is always in a less powerful position than the one being approached just think of the difference between sending out a cold resume to get a job versus responding to a warm offer by a Recruiter it's like you're going to get a much better offer from the recruiter than you would
from the cold call even if you did get a response and you probably won't so it's a more powerful position to be the one who responds not the one who initiates and I think that's one of the reasons why that hasn't changed but do most men even have the luxury to attract the woman if they aren't actively approaching or if they are not actively Hunting uh no to become to switch that power Dynamic a man needs to be recognizably famous like that's the thing that changes the game in my experience it's not about being powerful
there's plenty of powerful people who are totally invisible like I don't I don't even know their names let Al know what they look like in fact real power is invisible yeah right there is plenty of rich people whose names I know But again I don't know what they look like in San Francisco the billionaires look like the homeless people too so it's very hard to tell the difference between them sometimes but somebody who's famous and can command a great deal of attention for whatever reason generally because he's competent to some extent that flips the script
and attracts the women to initiate but as far as I know uh it's either you're you're famous on a On a wide scale or you're that contextual Alpha and so you get approached by people within that specific Community does that make sense and not every man is going to be famous right but every man can find contexts in which he can be a higher status member of that community and that does help to flip that power Dynamic but then isn't it important for men to actively practice hunting themselves before waiting for this Arbitrary date because
most men won't achieve a level of fame most men won't achieve a level of income to be able to Garner that attention I I see what you're saying so yes in general men if we're talking about like pickup in real life men have to approach the women right so that looks like hunting but it's not um hunting is I want want that particular dough when a man gets so hung up on I want that particular dough before he's even approached he's [ __ ] Because any one attempt is very likely to end in Failure so
a man on some level he gets to be with the best woman who chooses him on some level so he can go out and approach women but he shouldn't really be hyperfocused on any one woman because likely she's going to say no and then once he now where is he so even though he might be initiating with specific women he does so in Aggregate and he's going to move forward with the ones who respond to his Advances because that's where he's most likely to get success and hopefully he's attractive enough to move forward as well
right whereas a woman can be like I want that guy and they can often get that guy now hunting is improved the more you understand your Quarry like if you're hunting deer you kind of need to know their habits where they hang out what time of day they're active how they tend to respond to calls or to sounds the more you understand about your quy The more you can set up situations such that you're functionally guaranteed of meat at the end of the day so I often recommend that women do way more research into their
quaries like Snoop on them on social media if they actually have access to them in real life like figure out uh you know ask around about them figure out their habits their interests their likes their dislikes with a little bit of effort a woman can present herself in a way That's going to make her very attracted to that particular man and if she combines that with offering a seemingly attractive no strings attached sexual opportunity very few men are going to be able to resist that onew punch very few men even like get any kind of
positive attention from women at all but if a a woman is not only giving him positive attention but in a very individualized way that fits with his preferences and interests And seems to just like him as opposed to what he could give her children Rings vacations that is he's going to be over the moon if he's at at least somewhat physically attracted to that woman glad you brought that up because one thing I've been thinking about is looks and especially in the context of men we see a lot of I'm sure you know about this
a lot of Trends recently called looking Y and it's especially geared towards men like we've because Women have been doing that for [ __ ] years exactly what do you think about that right there's there's I think a lot of camps and one kind of predominant philosophy around it is called Black pill where they essentially just say that if you're a certain looks level you probably shouldn't even focus on dating I personally think it's a loser mentality but I'm curious to hear your take how important is looks for men every person can be more attractive
Than they currently are and a attractiveness is a form of power that is very particular to dating and sexual relationships and power is important because the more power you have have the better your optionality and the more likely you can negotiate better terms for yourself in whatever structure of a relationship you decide to enter into there is very little downside to throwing money time effort and attention towards increasing your Attractiveness that said I don't love the maxing part of looks maxing because it's a little weird well it's kind of a strange word right but okay
whatever and because I found that optimization is never optimized optimization is never optimized it's like at a certain point the time effort energy and money that I spend to make an incremental gain is significantly greater than any gain I any benefit I receive from that gain so I'm no longer maximizing I'm actually uh I'm losing in that capacity so on some level it's kind of strange but optimization generally occurs around around 85 to 90% once you go past 90% you're spending you're losing in the expenditure of resources relative to the gains that you're making it's
sort of like approaching the speed of light it requires more and more energy to to accelerate less and less as you approach That velocity um so I think the maxing part needs to be like you needs to be chilled out a bit you generally get your best Roi around 85 to 90% now this blackpill idea that if you're not attractive enough you should just give up dating entirely well I think that I mean there there is a grain of Truth to that but I think it's mostly wrong the grain of Truth is um like I
was mentioning earlier the Vast majority of women really only are interested in the top 15% of 20% if I'm being generous of men we've seen from data of revealed preference on dating apps for instance that men generally have a normalized distribution with respect to their perception of female attractiveness like few women are really not so great few women are absolutely beautiful and most women are kind of average makes sense right because we Would think that physical attractiveness just like height is something that's more or less normally distributed in the population women's revealed preference doesn't look
like that at all it's like zero and then like this around for the last 20% so on some level especially on an app like 80% of men are functionally invisible to women 80% four out of five I mean that's that's a lot of dudes right so if you're one of those dudes You have to understand one that dating apps are not your friend you're not going to get anywhere that way um and you're likely going to feel frustrated and hopeless the longer you engage with that platform so dating apps are good for some people for
certain reasons and you need to learn how to use them appropriately as a technology okay so that's one thing I would say but that doesn't necessarily mean that dating and Relationships are completely off the table especially because things [ __ ] change man things change it's like I was a really awkward teenager you know what I'm saying I the fact if I could go back in time and tell my teenage self that hey man you know just wait things get a lot easier and a lot better I would be like really are you sure cuz
they seem really dark and dismal now I mean I remember in high school oh geez I was a student council president one year and But I was very unpopular probably at the bottom of the the social hierarchy that year but I screwed up my courage and I decided to ask this girl I had a crush onto the dance and she didn't even respond to me she just like Turned pale damn and and she ran away just she just ran just ignored your text in person essentially I I went to her this is before texting I
this before cell phones I went to her in person and said hey you know the dance is coming up I'd Love to take you to the dance what do you think and she just blanched and fled we just ran away she just ran away and I was just like oh man I guess I'm not going to the dance ran is crazy yeah oh my so uh you know that I could go back in time and tell that young man look man don't worry about it just focus on yourself focus on other things the tides will
change so one of the things I talk about in the book is That the game changes significantly at 30 for men for men and women because at 30 According to some of the research the average man's sexual Marketplace value exceeds the average woman's sexual Marketplace value for the very first time for the very first time and it never changes after that so the the black pill uh ideology it seems to me is very attractive to young men yeah very attractive to young men who are the most unattractive they'll likely ever be In their entire lives
until they're like old and decrepit because and and we don't talk about this very much being a young man is extremely [ __ ] hard it's extremely hard not only are why well the only young men who can really successfully compete with uh for young women who are in many cases the most attractive they'll ever be and are receiving offers from them and their fathers and their grandfathers and all Their male cousins you know it's like a 22 a beautiful 22-year-old has the World by the short hairs on some level right and an average 22y
old guy is probably still getting High andplay video games for Better or For Worse so the only 22-year old guy who have a chance with 22y old girls are really attractive dudes 62 kind of you know got the ABS very symmetrical looks super confident muscular it's uh it's very Difficult to get young women as a Young Man unless you're very attractive the issue is that it's not that looks never don't become relevant but it does seem that women are less monom maniacally focused on physical attraction than men are right and there's other ways that men
can be attractive to women they can be high status they can be funny they can be uh they can create a an interesting and compelling lifestyle and invite the Women into that but any one of those things generally takes a lot of time energy and money to cultivate so if a guy is kind of smart and makes decent decisions and spends 10 years in his 20s learning some skills building some wealth creating a lifestyle working on himself by the time 30 hits around he starts to get attention from women potentially in a way that he'd
Never gotten attention from women before now at the same token those women might also start to realize actually you know when I was 2 I thought I'd be young forever now I'm 32 I know what 10 years now feels like it happened faster than I thought which means I can think about what it's like at 42 oh what's going to be like at 42 and and the rest of my life they start to make more practical long-term decisions expecting anyone man or a Woman to make really good long-term decisions at 21 is insane uh I
certainly didn't and the Brain did I the brain isn't even fully developed at 21 you know um but on some level we're expecting some there's some subset of the internet usually men are denigrating these young women for not wanting to get married and have kids when the diversity of life is at their fingertips and they're kind of like lamenting the fact that they don't have Any perspicacity for their long-term self-interest and it's like who [ __ ] has perspicacity in their long would those same men do that if they had the level of access that
they did exactly and you know Bill Burr has some great bits about that you're a big comedy fan comedians understand more about relationships than most psychologists they're the philosophers of today and they have to talk about the truth otherwise they wouldn't be funny and in Like one of the reasons why I struggle is is because I'm I'm not as funny as these comedians right I can't even be too funny I have to watch it because you know when you present yourself as a psychologist I like to have fun but sometimes you know those two things
are one um if I could put it in a song or I could make a joke about it I could say all kinds of [ __ ] that I just won't be able to say as a psychologist right Fair Um so the black pill oh yeah so the idea here is uh you might feel hopeless and ejected now and you might be right like you might not really have much luck in attracting of very a woman at all let alone an attractive woman but you're 22 like believing that that is your destiny for the rest
of your life is wrong yeah and the game changes significantly if you devote time to building an emotionally compelling lifestyle investing in yourself developing Competence raising your status and then you can become an attractive man in your like dating has become easier for me with each passing decade I [ __ ] you not and I think that's that's the point that I want to hammer home is that I I think the black pill if you take it that way can allow you to divert your focus on improving yourself but I think ultimately it just confirms
a lot of men's bi biases where they feel like they don't even have to try anymore I Feel like more so it creates a culture of just loser mentality unless you're able to see the nuances like you just kind of laid out well let me let me throw these guys a bone because I think that it's very easy to dump on these guys and call them names but I think really if we're going to be um if we're going to give them the most generous interpretation they're people who are in pain who have been having
a hard time so uh for a couple of years I worked at A Cancer Clinic and I was a therapist for folks who were diagnosed with cancer and their caregivers and one of the things that I learned in my time there is that people have a very ambivalent relationship to Hope okay we don't like to admit it but we're all going to die at some point and some folks have gone through treatment after treatment and it's been painful and it's been expensive and their health is still Declining and they see the writing on the walls
and they say you know what I've given up hope of getting better and everyone crosses that point in objective fact like there will be no saving either any one of us at some point and what I've discovered is that can be very uncomfortable to their spouses and to their children who might say you have to fight I'll miss you too much you don't give up there's still hope and what I've learned is it's not for anyone Else to decide for anyone else when hope should be surrendered like that's something that every person has to do
within their own heart and that can lead to some sort of peace and acceptance on on some level right uh the issue is there's a big difference between going through all kinds of treatments and running out of interventions and and then giving up the hope when the cancer is metastasized versus like maybe you got a stage one Diagnosis and you have you've tried like one thing like I don't think I don't think it's really appropriate to give up hope in that situation so it's like how much have you really gone through what are your long-term
prognoses what are things that you haven't yet tried because if if we're honest with ourselves we haven't tried everything to be as successful as we might want and can you really look at yourself in the Mirror knowing that you haven't done everything that you possibly could to get what you want like on some level if you give up too soon you live in bad faith and that means that if you're more committed to that decision then you have to attack and put down anybody who tries to that hope because they make you um uh it's
like a rekindling of that pain I don't want to feel that anymore I'm just going to decide that it's hopeless because I Feel less pain that way fair enough fair enough but like are you sure that you're going to be that way forever are you sure that you've tried everything probably not but it's not for me to decide it's a very interesting perspective yeah I think I think that's where I always come back to is that have they really tried everything I don't think so if they're spending a lot of their time watching these videos
but that is a very very interesting Perspective at 22 23 like by definition they can't have tried everything because they certainly haven't tried being 30 right they certainly haven't tried devoting themselves to developing some sort of competence or or lifestyle anybody everybody can be more attractive than they currently are I want to kind of open it up a little bit to the chat I still have a lot of questions and are you going time by the way oh I'm having a great time yeah yeah Um I do want to open it up I did see
uh a donation from someone that said how do you de uh date a woman with trauma it's kind of a big question but well I probably wouldn't okay I wouldn't I mean yeah like some people are going to be really upset by that but there's this idea I don't know where we get it from But like everyone deserves a partner or should be able to Date and have a relationship and that's not [ __ ] true it's like if if I had a broken leg nobody would think that I deserve to be on the varsity
team doesn't mean that I'll never get to play but maybe I need to heal and go through physical therapy before I can be in good enough shape to be of use to my team and until that happens it makes sense that I'm benched so people have all kinds of issues and traumas and things like that That doesn't mean that they'll never get to play but maybe it's not the time for them to play right now maybe that's a little selfish maybe they need to take some time to heal and go through the equivalent to physical
therapy and so they can actually be more present and available to a partner in a potential relationship and from the other hand it's like there are four billion women in the world man and not all of them are traumatized so it's Like that is an uphill battle right from the start like that relationship isn't going to be easy and effortless and smooth and peaceful it's very difficult to date somebody with mental issues and expect a smooth peaceful loving satisfying relationship but not all women have mental issues so you don't have to shame them I hope
that they get the help that they need and they heal and hopefully they're back in the game before you know it but like You don't have any obligation to be with somebody who uh who who on some level can't truly be present in available to you because they're preoccupied with something else emotionally that's that would be my take Chad do you guys have any questions specifically let's see here I think I saw a couple yeah how do you date a woman with lots of trauma that was the question now the reason why men end up
Dating women with trauma is because they've already decided I want this woman and then they find out she has trauma and they're like oh [ __ ] okay so that's why in general it's a good idea for men to resist the urge to emotionally invest in a woman until six months have passed minimum generally closer to 12 months so don't commit to a relationship until six months of dating uh I wouldn't commit to a relationship but what I'm really talking about here Is less moving your mouth and saying hey we're an exclusive relation ship and
more about emotionally investing in another person because men and women get their heartbroken by people that they're not in relationships with all the time because they they didn't Define the relationship but they still emotionally invested in the other person and now they're really screwed because they might have decided I love this person I want this person the other person might Not even think that they're in a relationship with them let alone um the kind of relationship that the first person would like to have right so I'm not saying that people are liars though they often
are uh if we're going to give the most generous interpretation is that if I'm attracted to you I'm going to want you to like me and so I am going to show you what I think you want to see because I want you to like me that isn't necessarily though Who I am and in my experience after about six months if there's some sort of regularity and routine people start to relax a bit and you start to begin to see who that other person actually is this is especially true if you're attracted to them in
return because you're going to be distorted through the lens of limerance right that's why there's a honeymoon period too right exactly and I talk about in the book The First Crisis that all relationships must pass through is the crisis of disillusionment where either because of one big reveal or small inconsistencies over time you realize the person that you're actually relating to isn't the person that you thought they were which happens to everybody why are you even on a date with this person and not some other person you might not even know that other person we
date strangers in our culture today right you're you're there Because you're attracted to who you to what you see the idea that you created about them who you think that other person is and the likelihood that that idea Accords with who they are in reality is functionally zero but you're there because of what you want to see there but what you hope to see there and by a lot of projections that you're putting into someone based on their physical attractiveness okay but over time you get disabused of those Things and then you it all kind
of shatters and you begin to see the other person for who he or she truly is and that's really when the relationship begins you weren't in a relationship with another person until then you were in a relationship with an idea of a person but once that shatters and you see the other person you're like okay is there actually enough here in reality to justify a successful relationship if not a lot of people bail A lot of people bail because they just don't feel the same way or the magic is gone I don't feel it anymore
um and other times they're like okay there is a kind of a grieving there's a little disappointment that can happen it's not the other person's fault you know it's we have to take responsibility for that but the decision now is okay based on who I think that you might be I do think that we can get along I do think there's some sort of compatibility and I do Think we want more or less the same thing so let's go for it until that happens you're not in a relationship with somebody and that can take six
to 12 months minimum to occur so it's important not to get too invested in somebody before you even know who they are otherwise you're just rolling the dice and then you know it's like you're going all in before you look at your cards and you're like ah [ __ ] bipolar with childhood trauma It's like okay all right let's see if I can play this hand as best I can so one person said um not a question but this is one of the very best Orion interviews and I've been listening daily since February so that's
awesome that's awesome um I'm going to keep uh looking at some questions here let's see maybe we can do some rapid fire on someone had a Dono Hanah how was an anesthetization uhhuh and relaxation different is it ever okay to Anesthetize yeah yeah um e everything has its use let's put it that way like cocaine is used in eye surgeries for instance like there's there's very few things that are so evil and bad that they have no practical use under any circumstances whatsoever okay sometimes anesthesia which is what anything that numbs a person against their
own feeling experience is useful And there's many many forms of anesthesia this could be drugs and alcohol but it can also be sitting in front of a screen and binging a show it can mean uh filling the emptiness inside with food it can be chasing uh excitement through uh dopaminergic activities like gambling or just sex for the sake of sex um there's many many different ways to anesthetize and I do think that under some circumstances it's useful to be able to Have forms of anesthesia I'm like I had a colleague in one of my internships
he came from he was born in Ukraine he had unanesthetized uh orthodontic surgery when he was eight they they didn't have anesthesia in his country they cut out six of his teeth as a child like can you imagine how painful that might be it sounds like Eastern Europe though a man I like oh it but it's like thank God I don't have to feel every moment of Pain that's useful um that said we we generally don't need as much of that as our culture seems to offer us and a lot of that anesthesia is very
freely available and easily accessible and that can PE keep people locked in a stasis for a long time the issue with this is uh this isn't going to be super scientific though there's some basis for this like in the body keeps the score um that if you don't Feel your feelings they kind of get locked somewhere inside of your body and it doesn't matter if that feeling is from yesterday from 50 years ago if you don't feel your feelings it's like frozen somewhere inside of your physical structure and that is actually what trauma is trauma
is not an experience it's not something outside if an experience could be traumatic then everyone who experienced that would be Traumatized it's your perception of it right some people are really hurt by some experiences other people for some reason are very resilient they kind of you know it hurts but they dust themselves off and move on the trauma someone is traumatized when they stop moving when some when like their subjective experience gets frozen they can't feel it because it's too overwhelming and painful and so it kind of gets frozen their chronological Age progresses but their
emotional or psychological age remains unchanging on some level this is why uh a lot of people they're walking around they're they're 30 they're 60 they might have the they're psychologically they might be seven years old they might be 12 years old you know so never confuse psychological maturity with chronological age that's something that we all do from time to time um but the idea here is it's we can't keep moving Forward we can't keep growing on some level we're not even in reality if we can't like bring our emotional sensitivity up to the present moment
if we're still frozen by these previous experiences right so on some level we have to feel it to heal it it must be true because it Rhymes right that's a that's a therapeutic aism so you have to feel it to heal it what I'd like what I often say is that the feeling like the subjective experience of an emotion is That emotion leaving you it's like when you vomit when you taste the food again it's coming out of you if you don't taste it yet it's not coming out of you on some level so the
feeling no matter how painful or difficult distressing it is is you getting rid of it and and as far as I know God I wish there was a way around this there's no way around this you have to feel the emotion to let go of it and some people they have Decades of emotional debt have you ever been in Financial debt yeah it's [ __ ] hard to get out of financial debt because those interest rates are so high and the money first goes to your interest and it's like it can take years and years
to get a of financial debt and with each each passing month or each passing day that you're you're not repaying your debt you're ACR more of it same thing with the heart same thing with the psyche we're ACR emotional debt that just will be bigger and more massive in terms of Its repayment the longer we delay so that's the danger of anesthetization one final one final word about relaxation so um most things that people think are relaxing actually aren't relaxing they think they're relaxing but but they're not in terms of like the body's actual physiological
response the the most common example of that is alcohol alcohol yeah alcohol is a neurod depressant so in the intoxication phase It does feel relaxing but the body in its attempt to restore homeostasis is like pushing up against that underneath and behind the alcohol so that when it burns off you're actually hyper uh activate like there's an INT sympathetic response where people be sweating their heart is racing it's why alcohol is one of the only two drugs that it can literally kill somebody to withdraw from uh without appropriate medical supervision Okay that's not that kind
of roller coaster is not relaxing when you just scroll um I mean anybody who's fallen down a a rabbit hole on Instagram or social media like check in with yourself do you feel better after an hour of that I I had my Instagram permanently like banned for like a two months or so it was were you a bad man what happened I don't even know didn't even give me a goddamn reason but I was it was nice I Wasn't even sweating it I was like I mean I kind of need it for my business to
like reach out to people like you makes that easier but it was like this is nice oh there's definitely real benefits um like a drug dealer it's a good idea to not get high on your own Supply so I don't have any of those apps on my phone oh it's smart and I've had to take break breaks from social media entirely from time to time too when I felt myself too reflexively reaching for My phone it's an addiction Bally so a lot of the things that people think are relaxing if they actually check in with
them themselves they don't feel more peaceful and afterward it's not like a massage a massage is relaxing listening to the rain is relaxing like simple Pleasant attenuated experiences are generally relaxing not in intense experiences with we bombarded with imagery that's that's not relaxing for your mind or your body and we generally Need much less relaxed than we think that we do interesting I need like an hour a day max so just so you guys know I am reading your comments and staying as present as possible too um thank you for those who have donated of
course I don't want to interrupt his flow he's saying some very interesting stuff so trust me I'm doing my best to like balance it all um but I'm going to continue on with like the interview do you need like a Bathroom break or anything no you're good okay cool as long as people don't get tired of listening to my voice yeah chat thank you guys uh for the for the people who've been staying for this whole time um the numbers stay like really consistent so that's that's always good um so I think one thing that
I wanted to kind of hop into is the kind of transactional aspect about our relationships sure this is why I personally don't think that true Generosity exists is that the fact that we as humans we feel good for doing things to other people I'm glad that it's set up this way because it allows us to do more generous things so in that same vain I don't think I think a lot of relationships at the core of it are transactional but I don't view it in a bad way I'm really glad that as humans were wired
this way I truly truly do um with that said do you feel like your advice though does apply to people whove Already had years of a successful marriage who have for years kind of stayed the course do you feel like your advice applies to those people or do you think it's more geared towards initial attraction and getting into that relationship no no there's a whole chapter on the book on a couple chapters on the book on maintaining relationships it's really really important like why conquer a castle if you can't keep it I talk about the
three Phases of relationships every relationship goes through these three phases whether they last for a night or for a lifetime and they are attraction negoti a and maintenance and For Better or For Worse we have an inordinate amount of attention paid to attraction and that makes sense because you have to solve that problem before you can get to negotiation and you have to solve that problem before you get to maintenance so There's attrition at every level of the relationship funnel there's going to be fewer people dealing with the problems of Maintenance at any given point
in the population than people dealing with attraction sure okay so that that makes sense but we're still inordinately focused on attraction I guess because people still haven't figured that out yet okay fair enough but um just because a a marriage hasn't broken up doesn't necessarily mean that it's successful That's another thing yeah so about half 55% of marriages and in divorce but of the ones that stay together another half are kind of unhappy right which I don't see as a victory to be honest right so if we're being very generous it seems like one in
four marriages seem to be okay um I also will interject here that I think it's a moment for us all culturally to consider that the longevity of a relationship is not an Indicator of its success like just because you don't break up doesn't mean that the relationship is a good one or fulfilling one or even a healthy one and I think we should get more generous collectively with the idea that actually sometimes relationships have their season and this person might have been really good for you for this stage of your life and maybe it's no
longer appropriate to try to fit the square peg In the round hole it's like hanging out with some of your high school buddies it's like by this stage of your life you probably taken very different paths I bet if you met today you wouldn't be friends right you you can't make new old friends so it's good to keep them in your life but you know it's not helpful to try to keep people when it no longer is in either one's best interest to do so so that's another thing I would say Uh my argument would
be if a relationship lasts and it's fulfilling and loving and successful it's probably because of some of the things I discussed in the book which is the two people are still very attracted to each other the two the two people uh provide complimentary value to each other the two people uh are engaged with wanting the best for their partner and I think those three things just by themselves Can maintain relationships over the long run interesting but do you feel like if I may just challenge you like the fact that we may overly view relationships as
transactional do you think this will make it less likely for someone to persevere the natural challenges and Peaks and valleys that we do have in a relationship do you feel like in that kind of transactional mindset we're always looking for better we're always looking for the next big Thing uh well it does make it harder but what I would say is that it's not that people need to think consciously about this transactional model the whole point of the model is that people do this unconsciously outside of their awareness all the time on some level we
can't not do it because everyone has goals things that they want and so they're constantly sort of evaluating people things opportunities to see how relevant they are to helping them get Their needs met or getting what they want and we do this unconsciously all the time if I may interject it's like whenever you meet someone especially in America the first thing you kind of ask is oh what do you do and and sometimes I think people say that to evaluate the respect that they want to give to another person oh sure uh but let me
give you a better example with respect to long-term relationship so a lot of marriages go through a crisis around the Time when the kids are launched like they've they're they're all out of the house they're in college or they've started their own lives why well I have this phrase that like no one continues to pay the plumber when your toilet is clogged a plumber is in very high demand after the plumber does his work you don't keep him around and you certainly don't continue to pay him for the job that he did in the past
so for better For work a lot of people enter into marriages because they want to have families and they want to raise children great well the children are raised well now what you might only be in your 40s or 50s you could have another 40 [ __ ] years of marriage left that is a long that is a lifetime still and you can't Coast on the fact that you unclogged the toilet back in the day do you understand it's like you can't Coast on previously Created value so if there's not another way for them to
fit in each other's lives if there's not some sort of overarching mission that they're collaborating towards maybe they've just like you know we're good friends we've raised our children and we're just going to go our separate ways that often happens at that stage of the game because they don't have anything else that they need to do together they haven't found that anyway So it's very important to always have a common purpose and a goal that's what keeps a lot of relationships together I think that's for an example why a lot of religious families tend to
stay together right yes having a common overarching Mission or a goal for your relationship is very very helpful but in general we need to continue to need things from each other and if I primarily chose a woman because I thought she would be a good mother and she would be maternal And kind and the raising of children then I don't really need those qualities in a partner anymore once the children are raised so the sad reality is that woman might become less attractive to that man not because she was bad or a poor partner but
because she gave the man what he wanted the plumber unclogged the toilet and in so doing became much less valuable to the customer so the way to continue to maintain value is you have to continue Continue to be needed by your partner sometimes that means creating needs that weren't there to begin with advertisement does that all the time dive into that a little bit in the tangible sense well like in a coke commercial you know how does it generally start it's a hot summer day and everyone's sweating and parched and then the coke shows up
if it's the other way around it doesn't really work so one of the first rules of advertisement is You create a problem and then you solve the problem with your product so the same basic thing is true it's like a lot of people have this problem I I want to have a family I can't do that by myself right so I have a I have a problem and I'm going to attract and vet uh a person to solve that problem but once that problem is solved in order to justify keeping that person around outside of
just obligation which I don't think is enough To be honest I don't it's certainly not the highest that we should aspire to is just discharging Our obligation until we die uh then I need to create I need new things from that person and if I can't find new things to need I'm going to find somebody else most likely interesting so what I I've done a number of consultations with with middle-aged women recently and that's one of the things that I recommend to them it's like in order to stay relevant If you really value this relationship
and you want to keep this marriage intact you need to create a different project with your husband now that the kids are gone it's like maybe you start a business or you found a nonprofit or you rescue animals and you Foster them or you decide I'm going to we're going to tour the world and start a travel blog channel it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter there's like dozens and dozens of ways to solve this problem but You need to get aligned with something that you both desire and you both need to be needed by
the other person continually and as soon as that need disappears the relationship is on the Rocks I was doing a consultation with a woman once actually before you before you do that I I do want to say that's a very important Point what you just said is that this is a way in which you can view I guess the transactional nature of relationships in a positive light is That the fact that we need each other is a is a good thing right like a successful relationship partnership whatever it's only successful if both parties can come
together and create something amazing together right like you like the fact that we need each other is very important I feel like yes and that's what's make dating so difficult it's like if I just think of the commercial Marketplace I can tell from the name of the store there's Nothing I need in that store I'm not going to go into that store because the time that I spend going into that store where I already know I need nothing there is time I could have gone into some other place where I could get a need discharged
or a desire fulfilled right so one of the most dangerous things about relationships and the dating Market in general is this sense of I don't need my partner or I don't need a man or I don't need a woman that If that's true good luck forming a long-term relationship need is the pretext to bring people together I once did a consultation with a woman and she was having difficulties in her marriage and she was like I just don't understand like you know I have my own money from an inheritance it's like I'd be fine on
my own I don't need my husband for anything and I said even if that's true don't ever say that to him don't ever make him feel as if you need nothing From him and she was like why isn't that a good thing it's like I'm not putting this uh obligation or expectation on him it's like yeah I I can see that there's some truth to that but a man he's married to you he's the sole bread winner you don't work he's going out every day and bringing home the money to provide for you and a
lifestyle if if you just turn around and say that you don't need him anymore then his sacrifice becomes Worthless and valueless and he's going to feel completely heartbroken and like a schmuck because why would he continue to invest in a woman who seems not only to not appreciate the things that he does give her but it's not necessary to do so because she'd just be fine on her own and in general we've come to a place where a woman doesn't need a man and a Man doesn't need a woman men need lots of women around
like without a bunch of women we would not be able to replace our population and civilization would go extinct women need a lot of men around to like maintain the structure and build things and take care of things but like you don't necessarily need a man or a woman anymore that's the unpleasant reality of modern dating I did a consultation with a guy who when his Wife told him that she wanted a divorce and he asked why she said I can get everything I need from you on task rabbit and Tinder which obviously you know
emotionally Evis I'm hurt hearing that but we have to understand leaving aside the brutality of that comment that there's some truth to that like what do we generally need from our partners sex intimacy there's an app for that oh well I need like instrumental Support and you know lifestyle provision there's an app for that or I need someone to like take care of things or give me rides or take help with the child care there's an app for that like all every one of those needs can be discharged in a commercial Rel relationship with a
great deal of convenience at your fingertips through your phone there's there's very few things that can't be bought yeah love cannot be Bought and friendship and loyalty those are the things that I talk about in chapter n of my book the non-trans goods and those are some of the best most noble qualities that human beings can possess and aspire to but that's not generally why people go into relationships with each other they get into relationships and they stay in relationships with people they need and want things from so let's dive into that um because You
called me out uh before starting the stream that you said my thumbnail that I made for you was click babies let's clear that up um so we can kind of get into what exactly love is because I think you previously said love isn't soft or cuddly no and uh can be F uh in something that you actually find in the gut while relationships need rules and boundaries what is love well uh it's a question that I've Examined myself to some some extent in my life uh and the way I approached this question is I I
try to remove everything from the concept of love that has another name so for example there are components of love that have to do with uh attraction and arousal and stimulation and desire but all those have different names and you can certainly have desire without love and Love without desire so they're clearly not the same thing and so I began to separate out all these different associations and components to love to see like what doesn't have some other name and the thing I got to at the end of the day was that love is the
humiliated self exultant it is a spiritual it is a pathway to spiritual Evolution and it is not easy and it is not pleasant the idea that love is a Warm fuzzy feeling inside doesn't make any sense if we're being intellectually honest like for example one of the most famous well-known aphorisms about love comes from Jesus and he tells people to love your enemies how do you feel positively about someone who's trying to kill you like are you psychotic do you think that's what Christ was doing up on the cross he was just like hey guys
this is great man I just love to be I happy to Be included you know I like this um no it's it's not but yet this wise man seemed to believe that it was not only possible but necessary to love your enemies which I think is our clue that love doesn't have to do with a positive feeling I think love has to do with a unwavering in commitment to the wellbeing of the other especially if it comes at some sacrifice to the self okay and I Mean love is very unruly it is very um dangerous
because you can love people who hate you you can love people who abuse you you can love people who exploit you people do every day like a relationship love wants what's best for the other and thinks little of itself that's why I hate hate the concept of Love Languages that is just it's it's a misnomer those are at best desire languages okay because love is not about getting what you Want it's not love is not about can you imagine a mother saying that to a child yeah this really it's about sweetie I don't really feel
loved by you you know I I I like gifts and acts of service you know love is a about putting your own needs aside and doing what is best for the other person sometimes and often at Great sacrifice to yourself okay um so love is not about getting what you want it's about helping the other Person get what they want or even better to get what they need which is not always what they want or often what they want so in the transactional nature of relationships it it seems like love can only only exists when
it's something that's not consensual like a parent and a and a kid no um and in fact many non-consensual relationships aren't loving like the idea that all parents love their children and all children love their parents is not correct I can Tell you that as a therapist I learned that in the first week yeah um so but what I do say is that love and relationships have nothing to do with one another they're two totally different ideas right so think about um if my conception of relationships is correct it's basically that we enter into a
relationship when we exchange value with one another which on some level is kind of a form of doing business so businesses need rules they Need definitions they need boundaries but imagine applying those terms to love and saying no no no you you you can't love these this person you have to love here because that's what the rules say or um you can't love anyone that's not your wife or that's not your husband like there are boundaries there can you imagine Christ on the cross saying boundaries guys come on you know this Isn't cool anymore so
like there's a sacrifice that is generally required in love where the self is diminished like the egoic self is diminished to make more space for uh let's say benevolence and goodness which I think is the closest that we kind of get get to love right so uh love lasts in the face of rules it lasts in the face of boundaries and definitions it loves where it it wants to love and that's what love is it's always given as a gift it doesn't Come with strings attached otherwise it's just transaction disguised as love which is very
dangerous but like I outlined earlier like is there even a such thing as true generosity is there something that is no strings attached yeah it's pretty rare because um you got to something that a lot of philosophers have discussed which is if being a good person makes me feel kind of warm and fuzzy inside isn't that kind of a reward Aren't I chasing that that good feeling or that preferred sense of self and I think you can make that argument it's like that's why they say at the highest level that virtue must be its own
reward and the most virtuous people perform virtue even when it doesn't feel good like that's the highest test of whether someone loves or whether someone is virtuous is that they do it even if not only do they get nothing in return but they don't even Feel good when they're doing it it's against their best self-interest or desires yeah and interesting and vanishingly few people pass that test so well I I I don't think that love is [ __ ] by any by any extent of the imagination but what a lot of people consider to be
love is [ __ ] that's why we have to be very careful with our words and kind of parse out what we really mean when we say certain Things because generally I mean when do people say that they love something to be honest it's when they get a lot of what they want and not a little and not a lot of what they don't when people get a lot of what they want and not a little of what they don't they love that thing or person man you got me thinking you got me thinking um
why do so many men fall in love with prostitutes only fan creators and strippers yeah it seems like not Even a month goes by where I'm not doing a consultation with some man who's falling in love with one of those is that common yeah apparently yeah apparently are they often married I would say most of the time not most of the time these men are not married sometimes they are but most of the time they're not and I think that's part of what leaves them vulnerable I think married men might have affairs but few married
men are Actually going to leave their partners for their lovers they kind of know this is where I get my nutrition and sustenance and this is dessert on some level and I'm not going to if I get rid of dinner and I just FOC focus on dessert I'm going to get a tummy ache uh so why do so many men fall well because what do these women do Well they um if they're good at what they're doing they're one not only going to provide a Very high quality sexual experience with um low expectations or strings
attached I mean you often pay for it but then you know you forget about it and um they can be really good at excuse me sussing out what this particular client wants how they want to be treated this client might want to be dominated and stepped on and made to feel like a little worm this one might Actually just want to be listened to and to be given the sense that he's a good person a lot of prostitutes they don't even sleep with their their clients they just get taken out because the guy kind of
wants to be seen with that woman or wants to talk to a woman and feel an emotional connection with them right so it's like these women who are servicing many men get attuned to what this particular man wants and needs and they give it to Him which is not an experience that most men get from anybody let alone any women most women are like what can you do for me guy and here's a relationship yes they're paying for for it but they are getting what they need and want from a woman and that's intoxicating most
women don't even care what women what men want or need that's irrelevant but these professionals they cater to men's needs and desires and Some of them are very attractive and very talented at discharging those those needs and wants so I got a question from the chat do you expect to see policy changes to the unfair family court system will this come before alternative marriages my Dems run on this to win to win over males it's an interesting question yeah I don't think we're going to see policy changes in the family court system anytime soon because
whether it's true Or not I think that any attempts to make some of these either their laws or their statutes or just um what's it called precedence uh more Equitable for men will be seen as anti-woman and against women and um sometimes that's true sometimes what's it is sort of a zero sum game like if I as a man getting divorced keep more of my money it might Mean that the woman gets less of my money that's a zero sum so unfortunately I think that in order for any changes to be made there needs to
be a better let's say better branding for men like when I I remember a long time ago when I was a kid like the the the debates about um around abortion have been going on for for decades but when I was a kid I remember it was between it was pro-choice and anti-abortion which was not good Marketing it's better to be Pro that's why today we see it's pro-choice and pro- lifee they're both for something right we could say it's it's anti- life and anti- choice right or we could say it's pro-choice and pro-life and
that's better that's better marketing so um unfortunately the powers that be control a lot of that definition and so making concessions or changing some of this I think is going to just be seen as is anti-woman which I don't think it Necessarily is obviously um but I do think that alt marriages are on the rise and will be the future interesting so uh couple more questions here so uh B asked let's see he wants to know if he should prioritize his looks or money or what and the question that he's essentially asking is what are
the best Roi things to do to increase your attractiveness in the sexual Marketplace uh is this a man I'm going to guess so okay the easiest way For men to get like one point more attractive in the sexual Marketplace you could do it in a weekend is to level up your look like get at least two or three good outfits if you don't know anything about fashion you know what you know what fits your body type or what colors look good on you enlist a a sister or a female friend or even hire somebody like
it's worth it you could throw a a couple thousand bucks at this problem in a weekend and increase your attractiveness By one point like it's amaz I resisted this for so long because I used to think that paying so much attention to your clothes and your was just sort of like shallow and superficial it's like [ __ ] it it I don't care anymore it's like I I've seen the difference in treatment that I receive just because I'm putting on you know a nicer outfit it's like at that point once you realize that it it's
stupid not to do it yeah so I think that's the easiest way for men to become More attractive is just learn a little bit about fashion and and increase your satorial sense if I could add to that like actually before Orion came to to my house I was just picking up some stuff at the Whole Foods like two people one was a gay guy which is the highest of of compliments what praise he was like dude you have a great fashion I love your jacket and uh it was it was good I was like that
that means a lot man coming from a gay guy like that that means a Lot they often do have much better fashion sense they have good taste they have good taste best looking dudes in San Francisco are almost all gay yeah right right oh yeah you're from San Francisco um someone asked so how can you TR so how can you truly know or test if you love someone and someone loves you it's a great question good questions y'all I mean there's a way to do it I don't know if You really want to go out
of your way to test it because um testings always come at some sort of cost like it's not free to do anything no matter what that is and to run a test on whether you love someone or someone loves you is is actually going to be very expensive if you want to get really good information you will know how much you love someone by what you're willing to give up in Order to either retain the relationship or uh for the other person's uh best interests on some this is this is a really interesting idea love
only wants what's best for the other which means that in the vast majority of cases the lover must surrender the possibility of a relationship with the one they love why because the likelihood that a relationship with you is the best possible thing for the person you love Is probably not true you would have to be the very best person on the planet for that other person for that to be true and let's be honest you probably aren't so it's the Final Act of love to be willing to surrender a relationship or a connection with the
loved one and that's why we see that happen in all of the archetypes of romantic love in our literature and film one of the best examples of that is Casablanca where at The end of the movie Rick puts the woman he loves on a plane with another man because she knows it's what's best for her insisting that I should get what I want ahead of what's best for the loved one isn't love it's selfishness so this is a real Paradox it's kind of like why we say if you love something said it free well what
if the best thing for the other person is not to be in a relationship with You then you have to choose like do I want to get what I want or do I want to give the other what's best for them and they often are not the same things now you might suggest that the best um accommodation to that reality is if you really love someone and you understand that you're probably not the best thing for them then at the very least you should do everything you can to be the best version of yourself for
that other person which generally means that you Treat them as as best you can and that you show up as attentive and effortful and attractive as you possibly can be one person asked do you attract or okay I guess what he's saying is are attractive guys polarizing do they have a kind of hate me or love me me me mentality they can what I often recommend to guys is that I have an episode about this it's it's called all men most men are wallpaper the vast majority of men do Not stand out from the undifferentiated
mass of men and that's dangerous it's dangerous it's it's there's nothing there's no greater risk for a man than not taking a risk because life will pass a man by if he doesn't stand out from the undifferentiated mass one way or the other either by being smarter by being more talented more capable more attractive you have to stand out or else you literally are not seen by the female sex okay men are Invisible so what I recommend is that men lean a little bit into their visibility uh it's it's been totally reversed in human culture
relative to Nature in nature it's the men the males who are almost always the spect acular visible sex it's like peacocks are glamorous not P hens P hens are brown and drab and they got nothing special because actually they want to blend in camouflage because we want to protect the females because they're the seat Of reproduction and progyny right so we don't want them to stand out that makes them the target for predation but that's one of the trade-offs is like standing out and being more visible as a sexual opportunity also makes you more visible
for predation and so that's the cost benefit analysis there but in our societies It's usually the men who look drab you know you go to any black tie event and we're all looking like Penguins and the every woman is a beautiful unique orchid in her dress right so for some reason we reversed that uh I think it's good idea for men to learn a little bit about their appearance and to lean into that don't be afraid to take a little bit of a risk in that regard I say to men in general it's better for
you to be more attractive to 1% of the female population than to be less attractive to 99 because women generally want their single best option it's better to be the first choice of one woman than to be the second choice for all other women it's going to be very you're always going to be the also Ram you're always going to be the you're a great guy I'm sure there's a wonderful woman out there for you it's like the worst compliment to get by the way like if someone leads with oh yeah he's a really nice
guy like oh my God call me an [ __ ] at least They probably don't mean it that way but it does you know what I mean but I think like to go off your example it's kind of like why you know there's guys like Pete Davidson or like that Machine Gun Kelly Guy where maybe a lot of women might not view them as like traditionally conventionally attractive but they absolutely do kill it like with a certain look of woman maybe maybe Pete Davidson's not the best like well let's talk we can talk about Pete
for a second Okay um so I I actually almost called it the Pete Davidson effect in my book but instead I called it the Playboy Bunny principal um Pete Davidson is interesting I I've never met him I don't know much about him but uh I was curious because yeah he's not a conventionally attractive guy and he was dating some very beautiful women right um he was dating Kim Kardashian for a while correct yeah every every girl well I think he was the fir I think she was The first really a beautiful woman that's that led
off this chain events is that true way before that okay well the thing about Kim that story that I think is interesting is they got together because she hosted SNL and he was a cast member at the time and after they wrapped that night Kim hosted a party for the cast and the crew and everyone showed up except Pete Davidson he was the only cast member who didn't come to her party and Suddenly who the [ __ ] is this Pete Davidson guy like why didn't he come to did he have something better to do
is there a and like I'm sure against her own will or better judgment Kim started to wonder about this guy who stood out by being the only one who wasn't coming to her party and saying what a great job you did oh you're beautiful you look great tonight you were so funny you know it's like he stood out and he was only able to stand out in that way because 99 % of the other people were probably Bountiful with their compliments and their their praise and their attraction and their a fusion and that created a
contrast it created some mystery it created some uncertainty like I'm Kim I can get any man I want like who is this guy and I think on some level Kim might have seen that as a challenge like I have to be able to get this guy now and uh apparently she did now once a guy gets a beautiful woman It's so much easier to get other beautiful women because women want what other women want why well it's very hard to actually accurately evaluate a man you can't even know generally what their net worth is which
is one of the easiest things to calculate just by looking at a guy Right For Better or For Worse the criteria that men use on women is more immediately recognizable yeah right prerequisite is looks a a big part Of it is looks and you know women fudge that all the time in ways that they can with makeup and bras and things like that but they can't um they can't avoid it altogether the things that women tend to sort for aren't immediately apparent right it takes time to figure that out and women don't have a lot
of time they certainly don't have as much time as men do so it takes time to run the test so most women don't as I talk about in the book when passengers are going around Trying to figure out what ship they want to get on one of the things that they use to make their decision is the size of the crowd that's already standing in front of that ship that's a proxy that woman can reasonably assume that all those in that group of people at least some of them must have done their due diligence and
said this is the best ship at the dock so I don't need to spend the time and energy and the cost to make the Essay I can just assume that you know look all these other women want this want to be on this ship so that must be a good ship um and because it takes so long to evaluate a man and because we understand that a beautiful woman can pretty much get any man that she wants one of the best signs of a man's status or um uh character is the fact that he is
dating and has access to a beautiful woman we We're going to assume that that woman could have one of thousands or millions of men and he chose and she chose that man wow I didn't really think much of Pete before but man now I'm giving him a second look it's like there must be something there man he's really funny maybe he's got a third leg I I don't know but you know it's uh there's got to be something that that's there right it's like the I guess it's like in principle the Winner's effect right like
The more you win the easier it becomes to continue winning sure right and I think a lot of people are going to yeah social proof is huge also if a man like Pete develops a reputation for only dating beautiful women then obviously any woman that he dates will be seen as beautiful right and that's the Playboy Bunny effect is that as soon as you become a bunny you can be assured that there's going to be men who are going to think you're more attracted Than you otherwise would be without that designation it's very interesting someone
asked what are your predictions 10 plus years out when the millions of women who grew up receiving attention on social media age out how insane will they go I wonder um so uh yeah I mean it's an honest question like receiving receiving attention especially receiving attention precociously can really mess women up we don't talk about This because it makes some people uncomfortable but women know what I'm talking about they'll hit 13 14 they go through puberty and suddenly the men around them start to treat them differently the boys in the class the teachers in the
class their friends fathers like they it's just like the vibe changes they they sense something different and you know a a teenage girl is not prepared to understand her own power over men which has been invested In her not by anything that she is or has done but because of those men's own lust or attraction for her it's a very difficult position for a young woman to be in and if she receives too much attention too precociously she may not invest in other parts of her personality or her lifestyle right um and this was true
even before uh social media now you know a woman could be 18 19 years old and have two million followers on Instagram every day She's receiving a 100 legitimate marriage proposals it's like that's going to be extremely difficult to watch EB but I will say it probably won't EB entirely like there's some uh maybe bitter men who are just like waiting for these women's come up in in a sense of shod and Freud but most likely even if she goes from 2 million to 200,000 followers there's going to be men in there who are interested
in giving her attention and relationships And provision so that's an enormous hedge another thing I talk about is we can see a woman like that potentially as a kind of female Captain a female Captain is somebody who remember we talked about the airlines captains want to cram as many people into their plane as possible and get as much as they can from them okay and females want to change exchange their sexual opportunity for resources so a female Captain is going to use her Sexual opportunity to get as much money as she can from the biggest
hord of men possible and using social media or only fans platforms she can leverage that she can use her one body her one sexual opportunity and mechanically reproduce that at scale at scale it's amazing so now potentially for the first time in human history it's easier for an average woman to get $1 from a million men than a million dollars from one man women still would like to have a Million dollars but how they go about getting it is changing because of the incentives and opportunities in involved okay so um if you and so one
of the strategies for a female Captain like this is to get as much money as you can as fast as you can for as long as you can and let me tell you if you age out at 35 but you have $10 million and still a very loyal cohort of men who are interested and attracted to you you're going to be just fine like and and There's a lot of guys who don't want to hear that but like she's going to be okay even if she wants to have kids there's going to be somebody who's
going to be willing to wife her up at 35 there's going to be someone willing to pay her for IVF at 45 if she wants don't worry about it worry about yourself dude I've been keeping an eye on chat and one people are like a lot of people have been very impressed of how you've been Able to also type points from two hours ago right like you talked about the captain in the ship and then also uh one Lucas said how do you identify and express insights so logically you speak with firm confidence and it's
all neatly compartmental and fit like a puzzle I think this is uh something I'm also interested in as well right and I think this is something that both men and women can employ in whatever situation because communication is so important What would you advise for both men and women to improve that oh well I I'll speak personally first to answer that question I think the reason why I can do this is because these aren't just like casual opinions that I have these are these are ideas that have come from over a decade of very deep
introspec that are bolstered by research and evidence and have met with success in my own life in the lives of thousands of other people like it's very difficult to Um to not have confidence once you reach that point this isn't just something that I want to think is true or that experience or that I just had a thought at a random bar last night over a drink it's like these are these are very deeply um thought out EXT extrapolated models of reality and I try as best as possible to follow a line of thought all
the way to its logical conclusion um so that's that's why I can I think speak with some measure of Confidence so the question is how can like men and women improve their improve their confidence improve how they speak because I think that's the best projection of your confidence well I mean they can do a lot to do that um one way to do that is first of all to listen to a lot of different people like one of the biggest privileges I have as a therapist is I've sat in the inner confidence with thousands of
different people from all Kinds of walks of life without judgment to try to understand their perspective in their experience and that gives me a more unbiased access to data than somebody who's just interested in talking and not listening like you have to listen before you talk and listening could be engaging with other people it could also be reading and and watching content especially um of those that you might Not agree with on the surface a lot of people don't have access to good data because they have contempt prior to investigation and they assume there's nothing
in that for me or I already know what this person is going to say and that really really limits their ability to to grow and introspect and then if you can start to talk and start to talk to people not only that seemingly agree with you but that don't agree with you One of the best ways to learn is to teach so before I was I mean I I've worked in education for over two decades I was a private tutor I was a university professor at a couple different colleges um I taught thousands of thousands
of people in classes and individually and one of the things that I've learned is that I have to be able to take this potentially complex idea and package it in a way that this person who might have a much lower Understanding maybe even a much lower intelligence than me can understand without making them feel dumb or lost which is tough because if you talk too high and you make them feel dumb uh and if you talk too low it's like they feel bored yeah you have to find this Middle Ground the same thing with content
it's true so one of the best ways to clarify what you truly think and believe is to try to teach it to another person Because you'll realize very quickly that how it makes sense to you doesn't necessarily make sense to another person and so you get better almost like a Ab split test on trying to figure out what words in what formats are better at communicating an idea effectively and you can always be iterating and uh optimizing in that respect So I wanted to kind of say this until the end because um I really wanted
to hear from you but one thing that I don't know if you how deeply you looked into my channel but I've actually had a false accusation launched to me [ __ ] uh in college so I'm sure as your experienced as a therapist and then psychology that's probably like the worst fear of many many women and I think that's probably what prevents a lot of men from even approaching women in the first Place how often do you hear about the fear of false accusation among your male clients or even women and do you think it
sometimes used as a cope to avoid the pains and horrors of dating yeah well first of all I'm sorry to hear that man I'm best thing that's ever happened to me really cuz that's how I view it because it taught me how to handle pressure it taught me how to look at both sides it also taught me how to handle myself During very emotionally tough times if I didn't go through that experience I probably wouldn't have been able to build the Channel that I have today what a great attitude man thank you and I'm not
just saying that in like a cringe hopecore way like I genuinely no I don't I don't get that sense and I'm sure that's not how you felt the week after you were arrested or you were kicked out of college Ked out to H lawyers I'm sure at that time you Wer like thank God for this experience really going to help me launch a YouTube channel so that's something that is probably the most resilient um reframe of a difficult or traumatic experience that you can hope for as a therapist and it's something that doesn't happen overnight
I'm sure you had to struggle with all kinds of feelings and deal with the Fallout to your education your relationships your career Reputation I've I've had false rumors circulated about me in communities that I value and it's ex it's extremely damaging and hurtful and it did teach me a lot um from that experience but you know you have to kind of go through the ringer and let some things go and learn some unpleasant truths about reality and it can make you a much stronger wiser Kinder person so you know good on you for that thank
you I will say that I don't hear of many People who actually have had false accusations leveled against them at least to that extent if you were kicked out of college it must mean that somebody made a complaint to the administration so there's a term that some people might want to know you probably already know it's called administrative violence or administrative aggression it's like using proxies to harm another person um this could mean Con making false reports To University administrators or to the police or just spreading malicious gossip um in important communities right so this
is one way in which it's typically women who do these things um show that they're just as aggressive as men can be there's a lot of bias with respect to aggression in the genders and we tend to think that men are more aggressive than women just because we tend to stereotypically believe that aggression has to do with physical Violence and um obviously that's an issue but that's certainly not the only way that you can hurt another person right uh I have I'd say that the number of men that I've consulted with who are afraid of
false accusations outnumber the men who have received false accusations by at least 100 to one at least that said could that one instance be or possibility be so aversive that it's going to make a hundred men think twice Could but um this is what I would say with respect to this because this often comes up in the context of um like pickup a lot of guys are afraid uh that they're going to be recorded that they're going to be Meed they're going to be shamed publicly and um that certainly hasn't been my experience I have
approached over a thousand women in the belly of the beast in woke Progressive San Francisco and I've never been slapped I've never had a drink Thrown in my face I've never been called a name there's never like the worst a woman has ever done is I've gone up to her and say hey I'm Orion how what's your name and she just kind of went and she gave me this quick up and down and she she just turned away without a word I was like oh ouch but you know in two minutes I was talking to
somebody else was over that was the worst and I think part of the reason why is um it has to do with the vibe in Which I tend to approach women uh obviously how you are received is ultimately out of your control but you can do a lot to influence that and I approach a woman generally with with a smile on my face and with warmth and my intention is like no matter how this go is whether she's interested or not has a boyfriend or not who cares um I can exchange I can have a
moment of pleasant connection with another human being for a few minutes regardless of whether I Get what I want and uh if we can't do business that's okay we might be able to do business some other time I don't know but like that's fine don't worry about it it was nice to meet you I had to come over and say something you looked great tonight and enjoy the rest of your night and then you just go on your way so um I imagine that your false accusation didn't come from picking girls up in a bar
though it was uh with a girl that I was already been talking with and hooked Up before so I guess the short synopsis is uh she accused me that I put her down forcefully put my fingers inside of her like a fraternity event that we went to and yeah it led to her going to Title 9 what AM my frat I was kicked out Title 9 Found Me Not Guilty but then it still went to the school board the school board then found me guilty and then I had to hire lawyers take lie detector test
and at the end they admitted that they made a procedural error and that They should have just dropped the case after Title 9 found me not guilty so wow yeah yeah I mean that's a very um God that's got to be a really tricky thing because as soon as you say as soon as as you as you level that claim you're already you're already guilty MH um there are certain there are certain accusations that um in our culture you're you're just guilty until you're proven innocent and often You don't even get the chance to prove
your innocence and this case you you didn't they they just decided to drop the case and you might not ever really have gotten to tell your story on the record which is unfortunately an experience of many men who get caught up in these sorts of ordeals um I so other defenses against this uh one of my mentors suggested that he told me he does this himself that he Always asks for nudes in particular from a woman prior to a date not just pics but nudes before a first date yeah are you serious that's what he
told me okay I mean not it's probably not the first thing hey I'm Orion can I get some nudes it's probably not the first thing that you asked for but you know even if you meet on an app there's some texting back and forth maybe there's some phone calls there's some pre- courtship to the actual first date and his his Explanation was yeah it's like this is kind it's it's not F it's not water type but it's like it's pretty hard evidence that this woman is entering into this interaction consensually and no understanding that it's
a sexual it's it's likely going to be a sexual encounter now obviously women can should be able to change their minds whenever they want but like that makes sure that everyone's kind of more or less on the same page that That sex is at least a strong possibility for this interaction interesting and it and it works uh I don't know if it work he says he does it and um I think that it can also help to reveal a woman's level of attraction for you because if a woman's less attracted to you or just wants
to get certain things from you she's going to bulk at that and then you're like okay well I don't have to invest my time and energy here yeah guess it's like a Filter right can be last question um I'm curious if you give me advice on my own relationship so I think I told you off stream uh my girlfriend is actually in Brazil like lives in Brazil which part of Brazil uh sou Paulo so we met uh because she saw actually one of my videos look at you I'm telling you it's the fame did she
DM you it was uh so I was only at like 14k subs or something like that and she uh followed me on Instagram followed her back cuz I was Like oh she's cute we started texting we talked for two months and then I made the trip to Brazil two years ago since then we've been dating it's been over two years and yeah it's going great right obviously we only get to see each other every two three months you know we're busy and it that makes it hard there's obviously distance but from what I see right
now I would love to take the next step but I'm curious based on all your experience that you've had what are Some things that I should be careful about what are some things that from the limited time that you got to know me what are some things that I should be careful about as I progress in this relationship well I've been in that situation I actually dated a Brazilian woman long distance really yeah back in the day and so I know a little bit about this InterContinental romance sure and I can tell you that Uncle
Sam hates International romance so that was one of The things that we were coming up against is that you might want to take it to the next step but it's very hard to create a circumstance or a Contex in the two of you could date like normal people without getting married yeah like you could she can come on a six-month tourist visa but she's going to act like a visitor while she's here um which is kind of what happened with me she's not allowed to work legally um she might not Have any friends she might
not have anything else to do and you're probably going to be covering all the costs and so you might have a life with your work and your friends and various aspects of your life and and she just came for you that's a dangerous in Balance because what I found is when that occurred she was looking for me to be her family which she left behind to provide her with the Fulfillment with the job that she quit to pay for Everything which was a huge tax on me at the time because I was still a grad
student um to be her friend Network and always available to like talk to her and have and I was working 14 15 hours a day at that time and I didn't have a lot of discretionary income and I was I was stressed out myself and so she was often just sitting at home waiting for me to come home and that was that was not a good situation to be in but the alternative the only Way to kind of get her to build her life in a sustainable way seemed to be to get married which I
wasn't willing to do in the absence of like any sign that we could actually um integrate our our lives together in a meaningful way as I told her I don't believe in the magic ring I don't think when you give a woman a ring it magically makes the relationship better it's like the ring at best should be a recognition of a relationship that's already working and So you'll get the ring when the relationship is working well she's like well the relationship can't work unless I get the ring and that became a Mexican standoff on some
level and ultimately I decided that it would be best if we went our separate ways and she went back to Brazil so that's something to be aware of I will also O say that long-distance relationships are particularly prone to that disillusionment that I was talking about Because the the phone is a very curated peephole she's going to show you the picks from the right angle that she wants you to see she can think about and edit her responses it's a it's not the same thing as being in real time with somebody and certainly not the
same thing as um as as like living together or dating like normal people so one of the things that I would for is to not it's going to be hard because you're like well it doesn't work if I don't do This but to not do things for the person that you wouldn't do for somebody that you're living in the same town with because that's already creating like these unrealistic expectations this relationship is going to be even more than what I would offer somebody who's actually giving me more because I'm living in the same place at
the same time with them does that make sense yeah that makes sense so um I'd often go down there or she'd come up Here but even then it was like we were on vacation and there was a lot of great times and a lot of good sex and it was fun but that also wasn't real real life and um you can you can present a version of yourself through the phone and you can keep it together for I mean everyone can be the best version of themselves for a week on vacation you know what I'm
saying but that doesn't necessarily mean that's who you would get if you sign up For a long-term partnership so what I would recommend if possible which is what I was trying to get with with this girl back in the day is she if she if she want if you want to bring her up here she has to have another reason to come besides you it might be a convenient pretext but like get her make sure that she can have a job make sure that she has some sort of community um she has to come with
a purpose besides just making it work with You otherwise the pressure and expectation that she's going to put on this relationship to be everything for her because Brazilians I don't know about this girlfriend but they they're they they talk a lot they have a lot of friends they they often live with their parents until they get married it's like they like a lot of people they like to be really close all the time I'm not like that so there's also cultural differences that need to be navigated And if she's leaving behind her friends and her
colleagues and her family for you it's going to be very hard for you regardless of your preferences to be 100 people for her so you need to get 99 other people into her life as quickly as possible and then to date for a while as if you lived in the same town and she was just like any other woman that's really good advice thanks yeah learned it the hard way yeah wow I that's kind of crazy how you've Literally I wasn't expecting you to have a very very similar experience yeah I mean yeah I never
thought I'd get involved in a long dist relationship neither than I neither than I I think everyone can make that mistake once yeah okay hopefully it works out huh okay I'm roting for you thank you well guys any last last questions for Orion this was absolutely fascinating um we'll take one more question uh let's see okay last question by Matt is it possible to build Sexual confidence without sleeping around I'm picky with the women I sleep with and want to attract the top quality no I mean just is it possible to get confidence in anything
without doing it like I I don't think that that's reasonable so whether we like it or not to get confident and competent in anything we need practice and the same is true if you're giving a PowerPoint presentation or in your you're a Baseball player at an at bat or if you're in the bedroom like you you need reps and this is especially important for men because okay this guy talked about how he's really picky and he wants only to go for the most attractive women it's like that's like being a baseball player and saying I
only want to go to bat when the bases are loaded to the bottom of the ninth it's like if you haven't gone at bats under other circumstances how are You actually going to take good advantage of your pitch when you really need and want to it's like waiting for the a really attractive woman or the one let's say she does actually show up let's say that she sits down right next to you on the bar stool and just she's alone she she's dressed to the N she just turns to you and she gives you these
like how are you going to feel confident that you can pick that woman up if you've never picked a woman up Before and having picked her up that you can seduce her and having seduced her that you could keep her because beautiful women are harder to keep than they are to seduce I'll tell you that so um unfortunately I I don't think it's possible there are tradeoffs but if you want real confidence in anything I think you have to put in enough reps that you can trust that all things being equal you can do it
well yeah cuz confidence and Competency comes from eating [ __ ] like you even said yourself you made 97 videos before you had one viral V uh video right yeah and now you're at 700,000 subscribers yeah I just hit it yesterday Congratulations by the way big deal there's no way he would have been able to reach that there's no way I've been able to reach a half a million subscribers if you don't go through the initial stages of like getting [ __ ] 10 views on each video it's impossible And it hurts the first time
Hurts the Most the second time hurts the second most the third time hurts the third most and then after about I don't know 20 to 40 rejections or failures you kind of understand that oh this doesn't have to be heartbreaking it doesn't have to be ego shattering maybe it's just information it's feedback from the universe that I haven't hit upon the right recipe the right combination of behaviors to unlock the success that I Want and to keep chasing that by listening to the feedback that you're getting from either women or business partners or your or
the universe it's like learn to listen better I think that's a really good message to uh end it in um Ryan if you want to do kind of like a final plug for the couple viewers that we have in here oh sure so I'm oryan taban my YouTube channel is psyx so go ahead and check that out I post long form content a Couple times a week um my book is right here it's called the value of others um I'm really proud of it and I think it actually turned out to be pretty good uh
my I it's a little bit more advanced than the content on YouTube that's by Design because what's good for YouTube isn't good for a book and vice versa and my hope is that the content of this book will still be relevant 100 years from now so I wanted to really like put out a definitive vision of relationships that Might stand the test of time um I think that's probably good yeah that was a nice little smooth integration I loved it I loved it um thank you so much for having me on no thank you so
much I that was that was great this is like the first time I'm doing these sorts of inperson kind of interviews but I like it it's it's so Dynamic than like just like a kind of set like a podcast I don't know you've got you've done a lot of podcasts I'm curious on like any Feedback you have we're always trying to uh improve here sure I think this was a lot of fun I think it was a great conversation that we had uh one piece of feedback that I I might give you in the future
is maybe have two cameras set up ah because there's just the one yeah I want to talk to you but that means that I'm I'm in profile I'm not really engaging with your audience and if I if I answer your question looking out like this I look like a maniac right so right Right having two different uh cameras focused on the two different people that obviously need to be edited afterwards but like that could be more Dynamic and interesting to your audience I love it I love it guys we're always trying to improve here so
thank you guys uh joining in um we'll definitely be doing a lot more of this this was a lot of fun great feedback enjoy my stay um yeah I mean it's it's been an early day so it's not like crazy Numbers but one thing that's been great is a consistent 100 or 80 or so of people stayed throughout the whole what three hours W yeah three hours that was three hours Great amazing good talk thank you so much you're welcome see see everyone good seeing y'all
