A Talk On Romantic Relationships-Orion Taraban

So the last time we got together we did a talk about romantic relationships between men and women mostly and a lot of I think a lot of my viewers really enjoyed those talks but there was a small contingent that was very vociferous about how much they hated your talks you're used to that I take it I'm used to being a little controversial like that's a common Theme throughout my life people seem to love me or hate me sometimes the same person at different times they react so strongly to some of the things you said I

actually was a little surprised though I was surprised by the intensity of some of the I think my audience is more female than maybe what you used to I don't think that's necessarily the issue there are plenty of women who support my work who are very vocal both publicly and privately in their messages to me And they love what I'm saying and they actively support my mission so I don't think it's that because they're women they will be against the things that I'm saying uh plenty of women not only seem to not have a problem

but are really into what I'm saying I I think I don't I don't see you as being Pro male or Pro female I think you're because you say some harsh things about men especially younger men that nobody No no guy who's 23 years old wants to hear sure there's no point in being anti-woman because ultimately women aren't going anywhere women have to be part of the solution and they have to be part of the solution in a way that they feel comfortable and enthusiastic about being there or else it's not going to work like trying

to get women to win or men to win is counterproductive you actually don't want either side to win because what happens when a game is Won it ends we actually don't want the game that is played out between men and women to ever end the game is fun the game is fun it's also connected to the perpetuation of our species and life itself so we actually kind of want the play to continue for as long as possible and it's good to have a diversity of players in the game as well but it does have a

lot to do with status status plays a huge role in This uh in the game of me your value in the what you call the sexual Marketplace has to do with status yes more for men than for women but that's far from the whole story it's very complex the game of mating and dating which is proba it's endlessly fascinating it's the game of games as I call it in my forthcoming book one of my favorite talks that you have on your channel is uh which is Psych haacks on YouTube PSY c h a c k

s right that's it yeah um is when a woman you're dating says I don't play games well it's always hilarious nobody can't play the game so generally there are many different strategies to get what you want from other people one way of getting what you want from other people like a strategy in the game is what I call straightforwardness you sometimes see This at certain used car dealerships it's like hey you know you're tired of those other guys come here the number on the sticker is the number you're going to pay for it no games

no hassles no ulterior motives and it's like that's their strategy their strategy is ostensibly the communication of integrity and transparency and sincerity which is being used instrumentally in the service of a goal So people sometimes bristle at things like sincerity and transparency and integrity being called strategies but once those behaviors are applied towards a goal they become strategic so when people say they don't play games they're basically saying they prefer to play the game that way and often in the game of meting and dating that disclosure is attempting to disarm the other person from playing

games which is that like don't try to You know disarm yourself because I'm I'm unarmed you see I'm I'm not hiding a weapon anywhere so you can just put that down yourself but you know there's something strategic to that as well you've talked about the male equivalent to a woman saying I don't play games what did I say it's the equivalent of a guy on a first date saying look I just want to get together with you for sex I don't want any long-term relationship I don't want anything else Just being upfront I'm just letting

you know I'm only here for the sex yeah that's probably not going to work right right I saw a meme that was like a classical painting and there a man and a woman were sitting in a flower garden and the woman was sort of like wistfully opining I want a man who isn't afraid to share his feelings and the guy responds I don't care what you think which might very well be his sincere Feelings in that moment but that's not what women want to hear so when women say that they want kind of a a

man who's emotionally available and vulnerable and all those things they want usually certain parts of those experiences and not others like the truth is sometimes very brutal the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow and often men and women when they first enter into the game when they're kind of Naive actors and they don't really know how to get what they want yet they can behave in that way and and just almost disingenuously say hey what's the problem I'm an adult you're an adult we're attracted to each other let's just do this and let

that be what it is and and that can work for certain people at certain times and sometimes people actually fall in love after doing starting that way well I Think that's kind of the way to do it in many respects it's like it I mean without a doubt sex is an emotional accelerant like you're you're actually inside each other intimacy it's not just physical it's also emotional and it bonds people together very quickly which is potentially a benefit and potentially a liability because it is often the case especially in today's day and age that people

end up getting emotionally bonded To people before they even know who they're getting emotionally bonded with but absolutely sex will accelerate the emotional bonding process so it is one way to get someone to fall in love with you it's it's funny that we call it the game it g it gives it gives the whole inter interaction between men and women a bad people don't like the word game because one it has that association with with game like pickup Artistry which is not what I'm talking About my definition of a game is anything with rules and

a goal so if you want something from someone you have a goal and there are certain rules about going out to getting it and some those violation of those rules come with certain penalties too like I can go up and just take it from you but that's a violation of a rule and I run the risk of the penalty associated with that transgression do you understand but it's like I can do that if I wanted to And people do choose to do that so the action of getting what you want happens in the context of

a network of both explicit and implicit cultural and biological rules and laws as I put it so games are not necessarily casual like some people play games very seriously there are some very serious games that people are subject to playing and games are not necessarily trivial like people can play games with Very high stakes sometimes life or death Stakes so often times the connotation of the word game rubs people the wrong way because they think I'm trivializing relation relationships or making them more casual than they necessarily are and that's not necessarily true you can play

a game seriously for high stakes it also sounds like you don't believe in love like it's all just some kind of game oh no no no I I mean I don't need to I love Exists like I don't need to believe in it like I I hope that it exists or that one day I hope that I experience it or see I I know that love exists because I exper ER love on a daily basis like it is a fa it is part of the fabric of reality in my subjective experience like love is actually

the force of Union that's one way to understand it and it's baked into the fabric of the Universe I think what you what you're doing though is breaking it down so it's almost like A chemical like everything is chemical in our world and you're almost breaking it down to the mechanics of how love which is very kind of you know woo woo in a lot of people's heads well one of the things that it's it's sort of like sometimes I feel like let me just finish because because we people will turn your you know the

equation like a woman being attracted to a successful man who has higher Social Status and a man might be attracted to a female who has a the Right curves curves yes thank you and a beautiful face and it'll feel like love but you're just breaking it down to see how what the mechanics are behind that ah okay yes there's there's a lot behind that so if you ask the man and woman they would say yes I am in love oh sure but if you break it down does she happen to have the right you know

face and and body yeah look at her she's beautiful and look at him and he's like a catch And it all makes sense on paper and what you're doing is just breaking it down on paper yes so sometimes I feel like I'm a physician in the Middle Ages who was trying to get at the truth of how the human body works and to do that like Physicians needed to open up cadavers and this was anathema completely taboo at the time that this was happening because the human body was Like a sacred thing it wasn't supposed

to be subjected to that level of analysis and that [Music] um you know that objectification that's not quite the right word where you distill things down to their component parts the the the science the science behind it the body was it had the spiritual significance that it still attains in some communities or cultures but we've Largely dispensed with in the popular imagination we now think the body is made up of cells and which constitute tissues which constitute organs and that there are certain processes that can be observed and analyzed and measured and studied and that

by manipulating some of those things we can arrive at greater Health like most people have no problem with that understanding of both physical health and the treatment of physical illness when you Approach love and relationships that sort of there's still like this sacredness around those things just like the human body once had maybe 600 years ago you're not to cut it open you're not supposed to look at it that carefully that's a sacr this is a holy thing you are conducting a moral transgression now I don't think that I'm opening anything up wanly not even

because I'm just curious or I have nothing better to do the idea Here is to approach it like a physician like I need to really break this down and look at it with as much Clarity and objectivity as possible so that I can help people who are sick and a lot of people come to me and they have problems in their relationships which create all kinds of suffering both in the individuals involved and how that radiates out within their families and in their communities and if you just tell people Well love each other more that's

like a doctor saying we try to be healthier when you're not feeling well that doesn't help that doesn't help anybody imagine if you had cancer and you went into your doctor and he said could you try not having cancer like try generating healthier cells I mean and then you you charged you for that piece of insight just adding insult to injury it's like people are suffering here and now it's a real Urgent need and we need urgently accurate reality based understanding of how relationships actually function just like Physicians need accurate reality based understanding of how

the body actually functions as a material substrate who was the scientist that you was it Galileo or who who was it you set out front oh sometimes I also feel like Darwin so Charles Darwin was a naturalist right and his observations when he was in his 20s you know sailing around with the HMS Beagle led him to his views on the evolution of species through natural selection and I don't know if you've ever read that book that book is phenomenal it's like 800 pages one of those books you wish were 8,000 like you would it

never I never wanted that book in it's so readable and insightful and trenchant and he wrote that book all 800 Pages of it and then stuck it in his desk drawer for 20 years he didn't publish it right away in fact he only published it because this guy named Lamar was about to publish a study on the evolution of species through natural selection and then darn was like actually I kind of came up with this idea 20 years ago but maybe the moment has changed because it seems like it's spontaneously generating in different Parts of

the world which is actually a sign of like validation like when two people independently arrive at the same conclusion like Newton and Li Nets with Calculus it means that we probably are on to something and so maybe the culture the moment was getting more receptive to that idea and he pulled it out of the drawer but sometimes I do feel like Darwin in a sense because Darwin was also a devout Christian and some of his Observations deeply deeply troubled him like they shook him to the core with respect to his spiritual self sometimes I think

I remember him saying that he trembled as he wrote his work and I think that takes a lot of Courage because I don't know for sure but just putting myself in to his shoes I think Darwin saw some things that he could not Unsee and his observations LED his intellect to certain rational deductions that as much as they might make him uncomfortable or as much as they might conflict with other cherished beliefs or ideologies like he couldn't turn away from like once you see certain things you can't unsee them and what remained to him was

to follow that path as long as he had the courage to walk it and to kind of make Sense of what's left a in the aftermath on some level but I think that we're all better for the uh introduction of that idea into our scientific Consciousness and I think the same thing will happen with relationships as well one more thing on this point yeah some of the comments on the talk that one talk that we did they would suggest that I sound like a sociopath or a red pill psychologist well red pill can mean you

Know 10 different things to 10 different people but you're not a red pill I it depends on how you look at it to me red pill is understanding how relationships actually work it's like knowing the laws of aerodynamics it's what keeps the plane in the air so often those red pill ideas are presented in such an abrasive way sure it's problematic I I can't even stomach them I don't watch a lot of Those whereas the way you present your ideas which are probably in line with a lot of what they say are presented in a

way that I can I can easily well my my goal and I don't always succeed I'm sure is I want to say the truth without enraging men or alienating women that's my goal if I've if I'm say the truth but people are upset or they don't want to participate anymore like what what's the good in that it's like ultimately I think we People want other people like men aren't going to dispense with women for well and good and women aren't going to do the same to men let's find ways that we can work together but

the old uh the just just love you know just or abide or you know surrender to Christ or whatever it is that people have used in the past it's it's not working as much as it used to potentially so I think that we need to Understand why the plane is crashing and it could be because of that plane is just it would it was never going to fly because of its air foils because of its propulsion because it was just not going to achieve sufficient lift given the laws of aerodynamics has nothing to do with

what you think should fly or shouldn't fly like if it flies it should fly if it crashes it Should Crash like that's my understanding of the word should because It's alignment with reality as opposed to preemptively coming up with a moral framework for how reality should look and then being outraged or Jud judgmental when reality somehow fails to Accord with my expectations for how it's supposed to be like that's absurd it's better to approach reality with an open mind almost like a scientist like teach me teach me what I should believe and you only get

there through really careful Observation and study and Clarity if we get there at all so some people thought that I sounded sociopathic and I can appreciate that and it goes to what we were you were talking about a little bit ago because the ask anybody why they do things and they don't really know why people don't really know like I saw on a recent interview that you did with a young woman I think you asked her why do you Love him and I think she responded something like well I don't I don't know I just

do which which is not very satisfying but is probably the truth like people don't know why they love the people they do and if you start to create reasons you very quickly realize that those aren't the reasons why they love them oh I love them because they're beautiful and smart yeah but there's lots of beautiful and smart People in the world why do you love that particular person and then you just list out more and more characteristics or qualities and but the love or the decision to love that person is always greater than the sum

of those Aggregates right so the truest confession is sort of like I love them because I decide to love them that was my choice most people don't experience love as a choice but it is on a very deep level so why do people love the people that they love and not Other people because if you were to like pop the hood on their Consciousness there is this really complex covert calculus that's going on hundreds of times every second in people's minds this is really complex I get into it into greater detail in the book but

basically there's like this weighted coefficient of value that our mind is constantly producing and reproducing on a momentto moment basis with respect to the things in our Environment and value pertains to our personally relevant goals and where those goals are located in our nested hierarchy of goals because because like I said in another interview The Human Experience is actually one of playing many nested games simultaneously so something is of value when it is perceived to be more instrumental to achieving a personally relevant goal that is higher in the nested hierarchy of simultaneous goals Okay and

all of this perception of value is changing moment to moment and it's mediated by memory and Imagination and perception it's a very very complex cognitive act and eventually it creates this sort of what I call a value coefficient which is the Su of this uncountable and instantaneous parallel calculation with respect to valuation the issue is that nobody is aware of that process occurring that process occurs so deep beneath the Threshold of awareness that most people are only dimly aware of one or two components of their decision-making process at most and that's probably for the best

because if a person were more aware of this it would be completely overwhelming we just have a very limited bandwidth especially with respect to our working memory what we can kind of attend to at any one time and a lot of that information is is just NE not necessary for the individual on that Level to be aware of so it's stuffed down real deep that said it's important for most people to not be aware of that process because it would be overwhelming but it's actually really important for the individual to be aware of the outcome

of that process which is like the actual value coefficient and so how does the human being solve this problem how can they be become meaningfully aware of the outcome Of a process that they're functionally unconscious of well the mystery is that the mind takes that like result from all of those calculations and transforms it into an emotion an emotion is a transmuted value coefficient people aren't aware of the coefficient or the process but they're aware of the emotion and this is actually a really elegant solution because contained in that emotion are behavioral impulses to act

in line with The significance of that value coefficient okay so people don't rationally think to themselves the reason why I like this person or I like this thing is because I have considered it to be instrumentally related to achieving an important self-relevant goal and I also believe that the benefits of obtaining this good significantly exceed the costs associated with the same and I also believe that those resources may not be Meaningfully applied to secure a comparable good that could achieve the same goal to the same extent with the same ratio of cost benefit no one

thinks that way that would be crazy right that sounds robotic or sociopathic what they think is I just really like him I like that mhm she might be the one or yeah I don't know I think I think this is it they don't need to know all of that Other [ __ ] but I guarantee that if you were to pop the hood and Shine the Light of insight deeply enough into people's Consciousness that's where it's coming from because otherwise where do emotions come from that's all you're sharing I'm you're sharing the mechanics of say

they make decisions for emotional reasons on the surface that seems like a paradox like there's nothing rational about emotion but on a deeper level there are emotional reasons and emotion is the Rational consequence of all of these evaluations and perceptions of value that occur deep beneath the threshold of awareness that's where emotions come from otherwise they just sort of spontaneously generate inside of you that doesn't mean that there's no reason behind your emotion it just means you're not aware and you might not ever be aware of the reasons behind your emotion in fact in the

absence of a Better understanding human beings have created a hypothetical organ to explain the origin of emotions they call it the heart when people talk about the heart they don't mean the electromechanical pump that circulates blood throughout their body they talk about something that can respond to sensitively to cues in their environment about what might be of value to Them so people have hearts I'm not saying that they don't they're they're just located in a different place than they think so that hypothetical organ is actually a component of your mind it's an aspect of your

consciousness and you couldn't not do it if you wanted to like your mind for better for worse is constantly evolve involved in this process of evaluation and re-evaluation on a momentto moment Basis just like you can't not have your bile duct secrete you can't not ask your senses to produce a representation of reality like this is a very deep and essential function of the mind is the valuation process it's not a simple thing it's very very important because it's connected to survival ultimately you can't tell me you're not the Charles Darwin of the 21st century

well I don't know that's kind of extreme I don't know any anyone else sharing this kind of information so many people are struggling with their relationships you it seems like any you talk to is either frustrated or angry or upset or just unhappy with their romantic relationships sure and depression there's something behind depression can you talk a little bit about that yeah depression can come from Many different sources uh if you look at the prevalence data we definitely have an epidemic of depression I mean millions of Americans alone are depressed I think that more Americans

are on disability for depression than for let's say physical disabilities it's a serious problem it obviously affects the quality of lives of millions of people and it costs us as a society billions of dollars now depression can arise for Lots of different reasons but sometimes depression arises because people's lives are not very good like depression could be a healthy or at least an expected emotional response to certain conditions of living which is for many people being near the bottom of personally relevant status hierarchies and this is particularly relevant for men because men when they're kind

of booted out of Their parents' house at 18 and enter Society are at the lowest rung of every status ladder they could ever hope to ascend period And so a very common experience among young men is depression it's very hard to not be depressed when you're the per seemingly perpetually the low guy on the totem pole like life is hard but it ain't that hard if you're not at the bottom like it's definitely harder to live at the bottom and you see that I'm Sure with a lot of the people that you interview it's like

are you depressed or are you lonely are you depressed or are you inactive are you depressed or are you unsuccessful in the sense of like you're not actually working towards and attaining personally relevant goals that doesn't necessarily mean you have to have a bunch of money it can mean that Like success can mean many different things to many different people it's possible for people with money and relationship optionality and a loving family and all kinds of material Comforts and an exciting interesting life to be depressed it's harder however to be depressed under those conditions and

I would say that that's probably closer to a to a a purely depressive condition because you've kind of ruled out all These other things that could let's say organically lead someone to have a prolonged depressed mood another thing is that so much it's there's a huge relationship between your mind and your body that we're starting to appreciate more and more and is coming more into the public discourse which is great like it's hard to feel good emotionally if you're not exercising if you're putting junk into your body if you are not getting Sunshine if your

sleep is terrible or disruptive if you're using a bunch of drugs and alcohol like how can you feel good when all of those stressors or toxins and disruptions are messing with your body and your brain like it's very very difficult which is why I say that if you're going to a doctor or a psychiatrist and you tell them that you're depressed and they don't ask you about your exercise and they don't ask you about your nutrition and they don't Ask ask you about your relationships and they don't ask you about your work they're not really

a therapist they're a drug dealer and that's the solution that they're going to provide they're going to give you a drug they're going to give you a pill and on some level they're going to say in that tacit prescription that there these other things don't matter that there's something abnormal about you you shouldn't feel this way this will fix The abnormality which is outside of your domain of control because what's the mechanism of action for pharmaceutical medication it's like messing with neurotransmitters in your brain that's not I can't create more serotonin I can't create more

dopamine I can do things that can create more serotonin or more dopamine but I can't influence those levels directly so we're also saying that this problem requires a Specializ Suite of professionals who have the tools to access the actual issue that I can't touch with my own human fingers with my own human hands so it's outside of my control there's nothing I can do about it if it's neurotransmitters that are the problem right but maybe people should feel depressed if their bodies are full of toxins and their relation relationships Are empty and lonely like just

like maybe your hand should burn if you put it on a stove like I'm not suggesting I'm not you know blaming people who are depressed anymore than I'm blaming burn victims but like on some level if you put your hand on a stove it should hurt so maybe part of the pain that people are experiencing that gets interpreted sub effectively as depression is coming into a kind of Contact with a stove people might be touching a a hypothe like a like a stove but instead of being burnt they're they're becoming depressed and the stove that

they're touching is their own isolation is their own laziness is their own lack of Courage potentially lack of Courage that's a big one for guys courage you do need some hope to be courageous though if you believe that there's literally no way that you can succeed how on what Rational basis would you ever be courageous that doesn't make any sense and so if you're talking about a failure of Courage at root of that I think is generally a failure of Hope why are so many people hopeless these days I'm not sure I I don't think

that social media is is helping that I don't know if it's the whole story but it it's probably a big part of the story but if you took a a guy who was depressed about his options out there in The world with females and he just saw no hope and not no way to no way to fix the problem and you magically somehow touched him with a wand and all of a sudden his status just Rose where a lot of women found him suddenly attractive that depression would lift in a second that's an interesting Theory

I think that it would lift in a second for a number of those people but it might also not and the Reason why is because you presented this as like a magic wand and if the circumstances dramatically change but the person hasn't changed himself right I'm kind of saying everything that goes with that status well there you go requires courage rather than the magic wand if a if instead of that the guy started to take personal accountability there you go started to devote more attention to his appearance uh worked to overcome his approach anxiety had

a Decent life started developing friends and a sense of meaning that's what I was trying to say like then when he has optionality it's not going to he's going to know what to do with it on some level like if you just magically had a bunch of women appear in some women's in some men's lives they wouldn't know what to do with it they wouldn't know what to do with that opportunity it would be wasted on them because they hadn't changed or Evolved in tandem with the reality based process that usually goes along with getting

that optionality so it wouldn't work this is why older men do well they've learned there there are very few easy fixes in life very few most people including myself have to learn the hard way a lot of people I hope are smarter than me like I've had to bang my head against the wall over and over again sometimes as you said Most men are wallpaper most men are wallpaper and that's kind of a function of Courage as well like one of the greatest risks for men is not taking a risk for better for worse women

can kind of like be clustered around the mean and they generally get taken care of they outcomes on the whole are better for women in a lot of respects that's why I think in so many distributions um women are more Centralized like this whereas men are more like this like I mean one of the more contentious ones has to do with intelligence like intelligence with women is here intelligence with men is here there doesn't seem to be much of a significant difference between men and women's intelligence in terms of the medians but like it's the

tale and the distribution the shape of the distributions that's different which means that generally The dumbest people are dudes but also the smartest people are dudes um because of that flattened curve as it were so and often the you have to be one of the Dumber dudes in order to get to be one of the smarter dudes like it's the path of a man is it's it can be very unpredictable like uh some person's fortunes might be high today and in a year everything that he's built has been Taken from him other people especially in

today's day and age they might blow up very quickly uh using technology and suddenly they have money and influence and attention that they've never dreamt that they would ever be able to have in their lives and so like men's fortunes swing significantly and they often swing more than women's in that regard the point that I'm trying to make is that um sometimes in in order to to get what you want in life as a man you have to be Willing to take a risk and you have to be willing to stand up and stand out

and of course as soon as you do that you become potentially an easier Target um you have to put your money on the felt you have to bet something you have to risk and be leveraged in order to win anything of value and a lot of guys don't and that's part of the let's say the casino that we've created as a society well I think pornography has made Men created men with with less cage courage there's zero courage is required with watching pornography yeah there's a lot there so um in general you have to be

hungry in order to hunt and pornography generally keeps men in a state of Perpetual sexual satiety so why go through the pain and the risk and the expense of the hunt when you have food already available yes maybe the food isn't very nutritious yes Maybe the food isn't as good as the food you would hunt out in the wild but the convenience and the certainty of this nutrition offsets for a lot of men the risk and expense and the struggle of attaining better food as it were so on that level pornography can make men less

courageous because like we said in we discussed in the previous episode is like sometimes people are as courageous As they need to be like sometimes humans have to come into contact with necessity in order to create the conditions to rise up to evolve to grow and to become better versions of themselves most of us won't do that if we don't need to I've read or heard a statistic it might have been on your on your Channel uh that more than 50% of married women have a backup plan I don't think that's on my channel But

I've heard that on other channels as well I and I think that was a statistic or that was called from a survey study so I I do think it was based in some sort of Empirical research uh yeah I mean most women have passive optionality let's put it that way in the sense that they either actually have men in their lives that they feel reasonably confident they could warm up into a sexual or intimate relationship if need be or if they don't They might be more confident in their ability to make that happen if they

needed to most guys do not enjoy passive optionality most men do not have many women in their lives who would be interested in sleeping with them or having a relationship with them if he just gave them the signal and most men if they lost their relationship would need to spend time and effort and expense drumming up some optionality Whereas for better for worse a lot of women can go out and and if they wanted to they could go home with a man tonight may not be the man that they want and often they object well

Ryan that's just sex and who cares about sex well yeah from a woman's perspective who who cares because that's the abundantly available resource I get it um but I would also say that that's an opportunity to potentially segue into a long-term committed relationship if that's what You're looking for like that's a chance that's an bat that is much more difficult for um men to achieve I I couldn't just go up to a woman and make those signals and say all right I pick you let's get out of here depends what you're driving you think no

I don't think I have a sports car and I had a I had a yellow Ferrari once and I never got any action well I thought I was going to be a chick magnet Myself and it turned out to be a dude magnet it turned out that guys care so much more about cars than women not a single female asked me about my car but guys want to talk about it and take pictures of it sure yeah it's been fun I met a lot of interesting guys that way it was interesting I learned on your

channel that success is a bigger problem for relationships and it causes more splits than some like when one when one partner Does well versus when one partner starts falling apart loses a job loses their self self-confidence it can it can work both ways like I'm sure I've never been left by a woman when I was doing well let's put it that way so probably from a man's perspective the best advice for relationship preservation is just to be indefinitely successful which I'm saying tongue and cheek because of course it's impossible to do that like life is

never going to Be this constant upward slope to the right when one when one partner starts getting a you know job promotion moves up in the company doing well sure how does how does that create distance between the well to kind of approach that idea in a relationship it's useful to consider this concept called animey which comes from the French sociologist Emil durkheim which I think I talk about in that particular episode um Durkheim wrote a really important sociological text called suicide and it was important because up until that time and still very much today

people considered and consider suicide to be purely an individual choice and what durkheim was able to do was evaluate certain social metrics and to be able to predict on a population level with very high accuracy what the suicide rates would be in different countries and in different Societies like he might not be able to predict at that resolution which particular people or individuals would choose to do that but they could say that in in this culture there will be 4.7 suicides per million and in this culture it'll be 7.2 with a high degree of accuracy

and how could he do that with sociological data if suicide was exclusively an INT psychic individual phenomenon and so it's really interesting and his explanation which Was very complicated it was a whole book but he said the factor that most contributed to suicide rates on a social level was this thing called anomy which basically translates to kind of limitlessness like for example he found that more that societies that were enjoying economic booms had higher suicide rates than economies that were suffering economic depressions which is somewhat counterintuitive abolutely he also gave The example that the suicide

rates are higher among divorced men than among married men his explanation for that was that marriage For Better or For Worse kind of put these limits on what man's sexual optionality and then when he was liberated from that yoke and he could move in any direction and he could he could Feast on every delicious dish that he could potentially get his hands on it's like this horizonless that leads to a kind of venous decline it's that Basically people need limits sometimes limits with economic down terms cause people to kind of come together and suffer mutually

towards a superordinate goal like we'll get through this together some people if they're not that committed are just going to use it as a pretext to leave but other people I mean politicians have used this for good or bad throughout history it's like nothing brings people together than a common enemy you know what I'm saying And sometimes they even create an enemy in order to have that kind of cohesion within their faction um the point is is that sometimes when one partner in a relationship starts to do very well it opens up all kinds of

new Social and sexual opportunities that just would not have been possible under the previous standard of living and this changes the value calculus associated with that particular relationship like some people Might become increasingly expensive in the sense that in the context of new perceived optionality you're paying more for less and so that changes the unconscious value coefficient in those people's minds now in the vast majority of cases this ises not of course get consciously experienced in that way no one's thinking oh my value coefficient has changed what it often gets remember it gets transmuted into

a feeling and in The context of sexual relationships that value coefficient gets transmuted into desire desire and value are the same thing experienced differently okay so what that might what might actually occur if that value calculus changes and starts to go down no one's going to be aware of that on a conscious level but they might be aware of the fact that they don't feel as attracted to that Person anymore and they might be confused by that they might feel guilty they might feel ashamed they might feel irritated those are all emotional responses to the

transmutation of that value coefficient changing but they can't not feel less attracted as a consequence of the change in their perception relative to their newly available options does that make sense and that's the tragedy is that you Know okay be on a deeply unconscious level they're perceiving that this value this relationship has become increasingly expensive and that has impacted their attraction they might they might legitimately feel bad about that and so now they're left with a tough choice like it's going to be hard either way and I don't know what the right answer is and

I can't Prescribe for all people just do this or just do that but the hard choice is is like accept the changing reality which is that given the evolving nature of my optionality suddenly new and potentially more valuable relationships given my own personal irrelevant goals are now available to me and I'm gonna I'm G to end this relationship I'm going to divorce or terminate this relationship That's hard to do but it's also hard to say I guess I'll just live the rest of my life not feeling attracted to my partner anymore and knowing that I

could do better that's [ __ ] hard to do too that one you know has the kind of moral patina of loyalty and Duty and commitment sometimes that's all people have anymore like I've talked to some guys who are just in my opinion broken unhappy men But they'll tell me well at least I didn't cheat at least I stayed faithful it's like yeah well what else do you have dude like without that had let's say we can even say legitimate satisfaction at honoring his commitment or his duty he wouldn't have anything so of course that

is going to be an enormous virtue for that man and I think there is a time and a place to put your duties and your Commitments ahead of your feelings but ultimately like that's not the highest that we should be shooting for it's just like the miserable discharging of our obligation like that's not a relationship that I would be enthusiastic about signing up for ideally we have the enthusiastic discharg of our duty that's the ideal that's of course difficult to have and it's even harder to Maintain but part of the reason why it's destabilizing for

relationships is one person does better opens up more optionality change the valuation of that particular relationship it can also potentially trigger the other partner's Envy it's um it's a measure of your friend of a true friend who can really be happy for your victories it's easier for a friend to console you when you're down for a number of Reasons it's harder when people that we love and care about do better sometimes much better than us like that can prick people's ego those in ways that their suffering or downfall would not and that's an a a

darker truth about the human psyche like let's not pretend that that's not true some people are secretly very happy or satisfied to watch some people fail even people that they care about on some level keeps them from Leaving what advice would you give to somebody who is struggling to let go of someone who just broke their heart ah I see okay heartbreak is a very serious thing I've been heartbroken many times in my life and it hurts I mean it hurts almost more than anything else grief I mean maybe grief hurts more maybe it's just

a form of grief heartache is tough and I do believe that people are subject Myself included to holding on to that heartbroken experience longer than they need to this is partly due to the fact in my opinion that sometimes people can arrive at a point where the pain of that heartbreak is the last remaining thing that tethers them to the memory of that person the other person is gone the other person has moved on with somebody else they haven't heard from that person in months or years it's like the Heartbroken individual is we call it

like burning a candle in the memory of this person the issue is the memory creates pain but on some level it's a pain that we're loath to forgo because it without that pain we would have nothing it's the last thing that binds us is the memory of that person and you know having worked for many years with grief personally and professionally like people have to make The decision to extinguish that flame themselves you can't force people to do that and there's no standard timeline for that like after two months you should be over this it's

like yeah no I don't believe that people have to make that decision themselves but when they finally decide to surrender that heartbreak it can be hard to do like a lot of times people aren't ready to do it but sometimes when they're ready they Find that they can't do it it's hard for them to get rid of that feeling this is especially true when breakups are complicated it's easier to let go of somebody when there're there's been no wrongdoing there's been no transgression it's both kind of the decision to terminate is more or less Mutual

it's probably never exactly Mutual but it's probably more or less Mutual you kind of maturely decide to go your separate ways it's so much easier to let go of somebody like that but if somebody cheated on you if somebody lied to you in a very important way if somebody crossed a line that makes it very difficult for you to ever trust that person again and if you feel like you have unfinished business with that Person it's very difficult to to let go of those feelings because they're actually really complex it's not just the pain of

heartbreak it's also the the anger at betrayal it's also the the mistrust of Suspicion it's like it's a really complicated thing anyway and sometimes people will fall down this trap of just trying to figure out why things happened like why did this relationship fail why did things go South unfortunately as far as I can tell no question that begins with the word why has an answer if you look very carefully at anything there is no answer to a question that begins with why can I go on a little tangent with this then I want to

come back to the Heartbreak sure so I've been thinking about this so let me ask you mark why are leaves green because of the chlorophyll and exactly everybody knows that everybody Knows that leaves are green because of chlorophyll okay why is chlorophyll green I'm not a scientist I don't know okay well I'm not really a scientist either but you could potentially say oh well because there are certain molecules that when they come into contact with visible light absorb certain frequencies of that spectrum and reflect others and so we perceive that as green yeah but why

is any of that true why is it that those molecules are positioned in such a Way that and why is it that molecules absorb certain frequencies and reflect others and you can keep going down that rabbit hole until eventually someone like says that's just the way it is I don't know or we don't know it's just that's just how it is stop asking me questions and it might actually be more intellectually honest to say that earlier in the process you know sometimes we can Pat ourselves on the back for knowing that chlorophyll is What makes

leaves green I set you up there for that one mark But like it sometimes that gives us a false sense of confidence of our own understanding of the universe let's put it that way because at the root of it we don't [ __ ] know so if someone believes that they have an answer they haven't asked the next question okay so people can fall down this hole about relationships where they become obsessed with figuring out why things went badly and I would Say that that's useful to a point like if you're an athlete and you

suffer a a tough loss like you should watch the tape you should watch the tape and figure out oh I should have zigged there when I zagged or we should have rushed when we passed you should try to learn some lessons as objectively and non-judgmentally as you can from that experience and then you should move on like if you're still watching that same tape weeks or months Later you're probably not learning anything new at that point and besides there's another game on Sunday so it's like run the tape learn a few lessons iterate I wish

I'd figured that out long time ago I spent too much time in in the film room okay anyway so when someone finally reaches the point where they're ready to let go especially when it's complicated it's important to remember that it's only possible to let go of someone in Love this was not something that I came up with this was something that a mentor of mine taught me when I was struggling with heartbreak myself and it's not what I wanted to hear because that relationship had a complicated ending to it and I felt that I was

treated unfair or there was some injustice that was perpetuated you know within my own subjective experience but the issue with that is it kept me clinging it's very you can't let Go of something that you're clinging to and the anger and the misunder understanding and the confusion and the obsession all those things they they tend to bind a person ever more tightly to the memory of the lost loved one and so if you actually want to let go of that person you have to begin to relax it's like letting go is actually doing less doing

less is hard for people to do Sometimes it's like just just doing less like relaxing and surrendering your grasp on what happened and why and in my experience one of the easiest it's not easy but one of the easiest ways of doing this is to as best as you can wish that person well it's hard to do even if it's not it wasn't conflictual like it's hard to see someone that you loved if the relationship ended against your will Like happy with another person that can that can cut real deep but of course who do

we want to be do we want to be the type of people who want others to suffer just because we are suffering in that present moment like I don't want to be that person and I had to kind of pull myself out of that situation effortfully because I was that person I think everyone has experienced that at moments in their lives of like be wishing other People were hurt the way that you were hurt you know but yeah I mean where does that go that doesn't lead anywhere anywhere positive for anybody right so to wish

people well that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to pretend that the things that happened didn't happen it doesn't mean that you have to feel good about what occurred but it does mean that you want to treat the other person with as much loving kindness as you can Potentially muster because that is what's going to relax your grasp on their object and they say it in Psychology and allow you to surrender the emotional grasping which is keeping you attached to that lost relationship and you'll be happier and healthier yeah like it's hard to be happy

when you're seething or you're self victimizing or you're blaming or or you're feeling spiteful like I I I know what all those things Feel like and I know that I don't want to feel those things anymore you know and that's why I've also become like a surgeon with respect to emotions it's like I wanted to get out of pain I wanted to get out of suffering my own pain and suffering first and foremost I didn't want to I didn't want to [ __ ] suffer as much as I was and so I had to cut

open some of those feelings and say Where are these feelings coming from what are producing them and maintaining them and I traced those back as clearly and courageously as I could and began to kind of fiddle with those deeper components and lo and behold I could make the emotions go away and I can also prevent many emotions that I prefer not to experience from fluorescing in the first place you just have to be real careful with your thoughts real Careful all right Orion that was a great talk again oh are we already done it just

flew by I don't want to drag you out too long it's fine I'm probably testing people's patients anyway yeah we'll do many more of these I love I love our talks thanks Mark thank you very much