 Heather writes, question. My boyfriend says I love you too, instead of I love you when he says it, wait. My boyfriend says I love you too, instead of I love you when he says it first. Does it mean the same thing as I love you? If so, why does he have to add the two? Oh, now if I'm understanding this correctly, you're saying I love you and then he repeats it, I love you too. Listen, folks, we've been literally indoctrinated with this, think about your children or think about when you were a child, when your mom and dad or you say this to your children, I love you, and they go, I love you too, mom, I love you too, dad. It's very natural to follow up with that. Most likely though, when some, but your children rarely out of the blue say I love you. I gotta tell you, when I get a text from Colin that says I love you, breaks my brain, that's just my heart melts. And so, and my point is, is children oftentimes don't initiate even 10 full or even remotely close to the 10 times we initiate with our children. Here's the thing, I think in romantic relationship, if you're not building, if you're not co-creating a relationship together, you're just merely companionship, connection and sex, then oftentimes people feel nervous saying the words I love you because to a man, I love you can mean a commitment to the future that they may not necessarily be ready for yet. So this is one of many possible reasons a man might not initiate the words I love you because that implies that I might, to women's ears, I love you means, oh, you're gonna marry me and you're gonna spend the rest of our lives together. This is why I sometimes prefer the word like better than love. So I'm here to say that when he says I love you too, sometimes it's just conditioning. We've been so indoctrinated this as children and it could also be a resistance to telling you because he doesn't wanna create the impression that he's gonna go the distance with you. That's a possibility. I would have conversation with him about that. I would also invite you to start exploring, co-creating a relationship together by reading the book, eight dates by doctors. Folks, I gotta stop here for a second. I'm gonna hold this book up. Most of you are effing clueless when it comes to the mechanics to a healthy happy relationship. Let me repeat that. Most of you women, most of my audience's women are clueless. If you haven't read this book to understand the mechanics to a relationship, you're basically winging it, winging it, winging it and you're basically expecting men to be the leaders of the relationship and let me tell you something. You're giving the job to the wrong person. Men are terrible leaders at the relationship because they're even more clueless. Now part of the difference is with midlife versus men in their 20s and 30s. When a man is in their 20s and 30s and they've decided they want a wife, they're actively focused on finding the mother of their children. After age 45, when guys stop having children unless by accident, they don't know what they want. And folks, you don't know what you want either. In fact, I just got a letter in the mail saying, Jonathan, let me illustrate this point. I was working with a woman a couple of years ago who called me up or wanted a coaching session and she's telling me about the relationship and she says, Jonathan, I want more commitment from my guy. I'm like, great, what does that look like for you? But Jonathan, I just want more commitment from the guy. I'm like, great, what does that look like for you? But Jonathan, I just want more commitment from the guy. I'm like, great, what does that look like for you? But Jonathan, and she thought screaming was describing. Her screaming was coming out of anger that she thinks I didn't understand her. What she didn't understand is I was asking her to describe what it looks like. And this is why I continually share what it looks like for me to give you some context to creating your own. For me, it's like my committed relationship looks like ideally would look like this. We spend three or four days a night a week together doing shared activities, hobbies, mutual interests, spending time with family and friends, traveling together, teamwork, building schools, both in our personal and our professional life, intimacy, both physical and emotional intimacy that leads to either moving in together or getting married. That's what it looks like. But Jonathan, I just want more commitment. Well, then you better fucking figure out what it looks like for you, ladies, because if you, and what I said to her was, if you can't describe it to me, how can he know what it is for you? Ladies, I say this with love, but some of you are batshit crazy, okay? And you wonder why it's so problematic. Now, part of the reason why you're batshit crazy is because you're naive. And I'm grateful you're listening to me. And if I turned you off, then you're not ready for this message. And if I turned you on, and I don't mean by my looks, by my words, what I mean, then I invite you to do the work. That gets interesting. I had a contemporary critique one of my videos and in that, I talk about a lot of books and the comment section on his channel was all this guy is doing is telling us to read books. Who has time to read books? I'm like, you gotta be fucking kidding me. You want a healthy, happy relationship and you're not willing to invest maybe one year of your life reading 15 minutes a day. In 15 minutes a day, you could literally finish all of the books I recommend in 15 minutes a day or 20 minutes a day. You're not willing to invest 15 or 20 minutes a day, but you'll brush your teeth every day, you'll get manicures, you'll buy expensive outfits, you'll get Botox, you'll get plastic surgery, you'll do all this shit to make yourself look good. I'm being judgmental here a little bit, but you're not willing to do inner work so you can actually be a good partner. Folks, if you're not willing to do the work unlike this woman who went to the Hoffman process I shared with about before, those are the people that are gonna end up in the juicy, delicious relationships and everyone else is gonna have most likely mediocre relationships or worse dysfunctional relationships and let me tell you something. Esther Perrell said, the quality of our life is predicated on the quality of our relationships and let me tell you something, life is all about relationships. First, the relationship with yourself and the relationship with others and I gotta tell you, most human beings are stunted emotionally. Most human beings are stunted emotionally. When you become emotionally mature, you get tired of people really quickly. It kind of sucks. You have a lot less friends and at the same time you have much richer friendships when you're with people who can actually be intimate with one another and intimacy stands for into me you see, into me you see, into me you see and that's my invitation for everyone. So I went off on a tangent here. I forgot the original question. My boyfriend doesn't say I love you so that's my response to that one. All right, thank you so much for that question, Heather, I appreciate it.