 Welcome to The Art of Charm. I'm Jordan Harbinger. The Art of Charm brings together the best coaches in the industry to teach you guys how to crush it in life, love, and at work. Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a concise curriculum. We've created one of the premier men's lifestyle programs available anywhere, and it's free. This is the show we wish we had a decade ago. This show is about you, and we're here to help you become the best man you can be in every area of your life. Make sure to stay up to date with everything going on here and get some killer-free e-books as well as drills and exercises that'll help you become more charismatic and confident by signing up for the newsletter at TheArtOfCharm.com. If you're new to the show but you want to know more about what we teach here at The Art of Charm, listen to the toolbox at TheArtOfCharmPodcast.com. That's where you'll get the fundamentals of dating and attractions such as body language, eye contact, vocal tonality, all that stuff that's more important than you might think. We've got bootcamps running every single month here in California, details at TheArtOfCharm.com, and I'm looking forward to meeting all of you guys here at The Art of Charm. Enjoy. Today we've got a good one. We're talking to Tucker Maxx, best-selling author, who's sold millions of books. We're going to talk about why he actually retired from the party animal way of life. Some emotional pain in Tucker's childhood and growing up Tucker Maxx and what that was like. Emotional promiscuity and how it fills a hole in our psyche. The layers in Tucker's writing and how we see those over time and at different ages. Some parenting advice from Tucker Maxx of all people, and what happens to you is not your fault, but what you do with that afterwards is in your hands. And why emotional health is one of the most important things in any relationship, Tucker Maxx without further ado. I hadn't before a few days ago read your stuff since probably law school, and I actually met you in law school. I met you and Kung Fu Mike, and we got ridiculously inebriated at some shitty bar in Ann Arbor. And so I sort of had you freeze-framed as that person. Doing my homework for the show after talking with Ryan Holiday and Charlie Hone, I see something now much more interesting. So I want to dive into that, and hopefully that's cool. I mean, you've been the best-selling author, you've sold more than a million books, but now you've sort of retired from the party lifestyle. Looking back now, your website's still up, still, my name is Tucker Maxx and I'm an asshole. How do you feel about that old persona even being up there? I mean, do you get like a gut reaction when you read that or are you still that person? I'm obviously not the person I was when I was 27. I mean, I'm 39 now. I wrote, I am Tucker Maxx and I'm an asshole like 12 years ago. I'll put it this way. If anyone is the same 12 years in a row, then that person's pretty sad, you know? Yeah, I would agree. If you don't change and grow and develop, something's wrong. You know, I'm no different. I would definitely agree with that. And of course, the show that we have here is all about growing up, our show grew up as well from going out there and getting chicks and then realizing that was, you know, an empty pursuit as well as that the people were teaching it were largely full of shit, to growing the whole man, which is kind of where we are now. And it seems like you're going along a similar path. I mean, in your last book, Hilarity Insues, you wrote that you're retiring from this type of writing. And for people that don't really know or aren't familiar with your writing, just an example of that is there's a story that I just remember clear as day, probably read it at almost a decade now where you were having anal sex with a girl who ended up accidentally shitting on you and then your friend who was secretly filming in the closet burst out of the closet, vomiting and it kind of just like turned into this giant disgusting depraved situation. And I mean, it's still kind of funny, but to look back on that type of thing, you've actually been doing big changes over the years. What is it that made you make the leap from boy to man other than, of course, the time elapsed in that process? Let's unpack a lot of the assumptions in that question. First off, time elapsing doesn't cause change. Exactly. Well, I know a lot of people actually who haven't changed really at all in their lives. They've gotten older and some things have changed around them, but they haven't really changed, right? So it has nothing to do with time. I don't really like to phrase it as transforming from boy to man, because I don't know to me that that marginalizes or puts down the stuff I've done and what I've accomplished, whether it's good or bad, but like it's not about that, dude. It's about like, okay, so for instance, when I retired from sort of writing fratire, the media, and I mean all media, whether it was Total Frat Move or Jezebel or everyone in between, having to post New York Times, whatever, they kind of didn't know what to make of it because what are the media narratives for something like this? Well, there's the main narrative which is, oh, he's reformed and changed, right? And I was like, no, my answer to that is I haven't reformed because what was deformed about me before? I rejected the reform notion because I didn't accept the implication that I needed to be reformed. I liked what I was doing when I was doing it, right? And were there problems with it and were parts of it maybe foolish, et cetera? Of course, that doesn't devalue what I was doing. The example I always use is kids play with dolls when they're eight, and of course they don't play with dolls when they're 18, but it doesn't mean that dolls are bad. It means dolls are part of a development process that makes sense for a certain age and a certain time. Now, when you're playing with dolls at 18 or 28, maybe that's when you have a problem, right? Uh-huh. Okay, so I think what I did in my 20s is what a lot of guys do, a lot of girls do, a lot of people do, and I think it's totally normal and I think in fact it's actually a good thing in certain ways. Now, did I take some things to extremes a little bit? Did I, you know, whatever do a lot of stupid things, et cetera? Yeah, probably, but whatever. That's how you learn. That's experience comes from bad decisions. Sure. You know? I mean that's how you make good decisions, right? You get experience and how you get experience. You make bad decisions. So in no way, shape or form, do I regret or do I think that I was a little boy? Of course I was immature at times. Fuck dude, I'm kind of immature now sometimes. So I don't know how much of that has changed. The transformation came for no other reason than I was no longer fulfilled by the things I was doing at that time in my life. There's nothing else. It wasn't about like, oh, I'm bad or I'm wrong or I'm deformed or I have to grow up or I have to do this. No, I would never do anything because I thought I had to. I do things because I want to because they make sense because of the right thing to do, because they're what I think I should be doing, you know, right or wrong. There was no moment dude. It was just sort of like at some point getting drunk five nights a week and picking up girls and being like a crazy 25 year old just wasn't fun anymore. And so it was like, okay, that was fun for a long time and now it's not fun. So let me go find something else that's fun, you know, or that's fulfilling. And so now that I'm 38, I found a whole new sort of spevy of things that are fulfilling that have little to do with what I used to do. But I think they're fantastic. And you know what, at 48, I'm probably going to have different things, you know, right? No more dolls, right? Well, I stopped playing with G.I. Joe's when I was about, I don't know, 11 or 12, you know, and then I moved on to like sports and then girls. And now I'm playing with startups, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll get into that for sure. I definitely want to talk about that. Now, looking back at sort of the past writing that you've done, I mean, a lot of people, especially when I talk with Ryan Holiday, he's even turned this around to your benefit, especially when the movie came out, that a lot of people are offended by it and it's labeled as misogynistic. And there's a lot of people that can't stand it. And there's a hell of a lot more people that love it. When you look at your writing as a whole, do you look at it as something that you needed to get out of me? I know that you wrote because it was hilarious and you wrote because people told you to and then you wrote because it was a business. It seems like whenever you're going out and doing something that eventually turns out to be to an extreme, there's obviously some sort of need that needs to be filled. Looking back on it now, do you feel like you were fulfilling a need that wasn't there? I mean, do you have like some childhood paradigm that wasn't working or that resulted in that behavior? What do you think about that? I mean, does that strike a chord? Because most people, even extreme party people that I know that I grew up with, they never took it to your level, which is one of the reasons why your writing is so epic. The last part of your question, I'm actually not quite sure. I agree. I'm sure, like, you know, what you said is factually true from your life. I'm just talking about, like, I actually don't think what made my writing epic was that the stories were so unusual because, dude, it honestly didn't even occur to me when I was writing these that the stories themselves were epic because this was what all my friends and I were doing. And I know a ton of people who do stuff exactly like I do. There's about five to 10 to 12, maybe 15 that are like, that's pretty fucking amazing. Right. Actually under 10, 10 or under that are like, that's amazing. But I wrote three books, you know, so there's probably, I don't know, I'm going to make up a number, 80 stories in those three books. Most of them are like, oh, he got drunk and fell down. Yeah, I would agree with you. He hooked up with a fat girl, you know, like there's nothing epic about that. A lot of them are pretty pedestrian. The reason that they became popular to be totally starkly honest and a little bit arrogant is because they're fucking really well written. Yes, that is really funny. That's why they became popular. There's sort of a new generation of party heroes that are emerging now on Twitter and Instagram. And they're becoming famous not because of anything they've ever written because they're fucking morons, but because they go out and get crazy drunk and do crazy things and then they take pictures of it and then they put them on Instagram or Twitter or wherever. They're mostly dudes. I guess there are some girls, but a lot of them they do shit. That's way more epic in certain ways than I ever did. Right. But I don't want to say they're just taking pictures of it. I'm not trying to marginalize that, but they're just about the event. There's no sort of context or story. They're not creating anything out of the event. They're just recording an event. And so the only thing that they have is, oh, my event was this. And that was amazing because of these hot girls and whatever and ice sculpture or whatever the fuck they're taking pictures of. Right. That I think is a lot of how a lot of people look at me. You know, he just did crazy things and that's why he's awesome. But that's just not the case at all. There are a lot of people who hung out with me and they're like, yeah, like it was a good time. We had an amazing night, but like it's not something I would ever think about writing about. Like it's way less epic than I thought your life would be. And then I would go write the story about it and they'd be like, okay, this story is fucking hilarious. And it's all true, but it's like so much cooler to read about than I remember. And I was there, you know, that sort of happens a lot. Right. I think the first part of your question is totally separate. The first part is about like emotional changes in me. And like, have I recognized pain in myself that caused me to act a certain way in my 20s now? Maybe that I wasn't recognizing then. You're absolutely on point. I definitely have a linear path to that, but you essentially, yeah, exactly. You kind of nailed my next question or one of my next questions, which was, was there emotional pain in your childhood or wherever that caused you to go to such extremes, especially with women? I mean, what was growing up Tucker Max like? All right. So the short answer is yes, of course. Right? Because there's no sort of either extreme behavior or what I like to call behavioral promiscuity, not necessarily meaning sleeping around a lot. Right. If you do anything to an extreme alcohol, women or men, if you're either gay or woman, whatever, drugs, gambling, shopping, it doesn't matter any addiction or any addictive type behavior or even any behavior that sort of like keeps you occupied and busy. The point of that behavior is very rarely the actual object itself, but the behavior is used as a salve to either run from, avoid or minimize emotional pain. The best example, did you ever watch the show Intervention? I did. Yeah. Of course, everyone's seen like the world's worst cry or whatever video and then you got to watch the show. Dude, it's fucking amazing. It's one of the best shows I think in the history of TV along with like the first 48 and if we're talking about like non-scripted shows, it is amazing. But I don't know if you noticed watching the show that every single show almost had the exact same pattern. Like you could have replaced the addiction of the person. Sometimes it was kind of cool. Like this person's addicted to like, you know, paint dinner or whatever, something crazy shit you would never fucking think about. You'd never put in your body. Right, right. So the details were always different. Like, holy shit, this person did this. This person like, I can't believe how bad their family is or I can't believe they're addicted to this or whatever. The details were different. But the underlying patterns were always the same. This was the pattern. The person had some trauma, usually in the childhood, but not always, that was so awful and so difficult for them to deal with. And they had no either support system around them or willingness or ability to deal with the trauma head on or in a functional way. So they use some sort of addiction to avoid or run from or hide the pain. Yes. That's what addiction is. And like, we kind of had this idea that addiction is like a physical, biological, like a medical issue. Right. That's not false, but it's not really in any way the whole story, which is why if it was just a medical issue, you could just go into, you know, if you're a heroin addict, just go into medical sort of detox and then come out and you're fine. Right. You wouldn't have any desire. Right. There's a reason that incessant, immersive talk therapy over an extended period of time, because all addiction is about emotional pain always in every way. And the physical component is usually the least important and easiest to deal with. Right. And so like, I'm sure you know, workaholics, you know, people who are like just constantly busy, even if they're not busy, they make something. Oh yeah. Charlie Hoenn for one. Right. Charlie used to be that one. Yeah. Charlie actually like, I don't want to call him my roommate because he doesn't pay any rent. The mooch that lives on my floor. Yeah. Well, no, I have a huge place. So I have like plenty of extra bedrooms. He like lives in my place. He was always supposed to be there for like a few weeks. I don't even know what's funny is he's such a good dude and he's so pleasant to be around. I honestly couldn't tell you how long he's been in my place. And Charlie, that changed a lot. But if you think of addiction as a way to hide from or run from or bury emotional trauma and emotional pain, then that's what it is. So circling back to the original question. There's no way I can understand that. And they're like, Oh no, I'm different. Here's the three reasons why because that would be the most bullshit of all bullshit rationalizations. So in my specific case, you know, we could spend a lifetime almost talking about the details of my issues. For the most part, probably not hard to figure out. Like I had a father who was never really there. My parents were divorced when I was a year and a half. And my father's very narcissistic, a very archetypical baby boomer. Mother is very much the same way. Except she's crazy in a lot of ways. And I don't mean that in a funny, oh, is it my family crazy way? I mean it like kind of an unfun. It sucks that my mom is such a crazy person. It's unfun. And so I grew up in a household where my parents weren't bad people. Like they never hit me. I always had plenty of food. You know, no one put anything on my butt or whatever when I was a kid. Because like there's a narrative that that's what abuses, right? Sure. And of course that is abuse. But there's a whole sea of abuse that is not physical, sexual, or fundamental human need based, you know. Like it's not the bottom of Maslow's pyramid. You can abuse on multiple layers above. And my parents, they weren't around a whole lot when I was a kid. They weren't critical, but they weren't super supportive. And they also weren't, they weren't very emotionally connected to me. But the reality is is because they weren't emotionally connected to themselves. So it's not like they were just great people and said, you know what, let's fuck this kid up. Yeah, right. Of course, yeah. They were just fucked up. Hey guys, I want to take a quick break for a second here. You've heard me talk a lot about taking you to the next level in life, at work, and in your relationships. And you've also thought to yourself, yeah, I do want to up my game. I want to become a better man, a better boyfriend or husband, a better person in general. And my guess is that you've been thinking about this for a long time. Am I right? Well, I'm here to tell you this. Stop thinking. Your chance is now. Do you really need more time, more information, more plans for the future, or do you want to become that guy today? Because the truth is this, you can be the guy who sits around and thinks about becoming better, or you can be the guy who decides that today is the day that you come awesome and take action in that direction. And I want that for you. Why? Because you already got what it takes. The potential is there even if you don't know it yet. Join me and thousands of guys who've taken action in their lives at theartofcharm.com. All right, let's get back to the show. Fucked up people can't have good relationships. You have good relationships because you basically have your shit together for the most part, right? Yeah. At least one side of the relationship has their shit together. Usually both sides of the relationship, right? Of course. But it's very difficult for a child to be the stable side of a relationship because it's a fucking child. Yeah. You don't have the background. You don't have the emotional strength to deal with that because the infrastructure is not in place. Because you're a fucking child. Exactly. That's the point of parents, actually. The only thing that parents really have to do to be great parents is you can fuck almost everything up and do this right and your kid's still going to come out okay and love you and you're going to be a good parent. You have to unconditionally love and support your kid. People say they do that. I bet my parent, well, my dad's, I don't think it's stupid enough. I bet my mom would argue that she did that. Not only did she not do that, she did like the opposite of all of that. Parenting's not about you. It's about how much you love and connect with that kid, which doesn't mean you give them everything. Of course, you know, just like not being there enough and not giving enough to your kid is a form of abuse. Giving too much, indulging and spoiling is also another form of abuse. The point is you need to love and accept and care for them unconditionally because they'll never get that anywhere else, ever. Even if they meet an amazing person, get married, whatever, it's not going to be unconditional. The only other place they're going to get that is a very parent and they're not getting it, they're giving it. It's a very unique relationship. And if you don't have that as a kid from your parents, at least one of them, but preferably both, depending on what the rest of your childhood was like and what your parents were like in other ways, it can create a lot of problems for you later on. And yeah, I think, you know, without going too far in the details, you can't take normal behavior to extreme without it being, in some form or another, a defense or a compensation for unresolved traumas and emotional issues, usually from your childhood, right? If I'm doing shit in my 20s, it's from my childhood. It felt like my friend killed himself at 18. Everything was perfect before then, and now I'm going to go fuck a bunch of girls, you know? Now, how aware were you of all this in the midst of the 20s thing? Were you like, yeah, you know, I had this childhood issue. I mean, is there some sort of point at which you started getting awareness? Are you in therapy now for this? Or when you were in your 20s, did you have no clue? I mean, where were you kind of on that spectrum? You know, it's one of those things where it's like, as a kid, like I'm talking about myself in my 20s. Sure. But I'm just saying, if you went back and read, I hope this would be in hell right now, and it would be shocked at how different it was to you. Because at 24, if you read my books, you're going to only take the top layer, maybe a little bit of the second layer. At 34, you're at least going to get the top two layers and probably most of the third layer. The top layer is just the obvious, the fart jokes, the shit jokes. Oh, he fucking got drunk. Oh, he fucked a fat girl, right? The second layer is the sort of self-mocking sarcasm, tongue-in-cheek, a nod-in-a-wing type. The second layer requires cultural context that kids in their teens and 20s don't get, but everyone 28 and above usually gets some of my stuff. The third layer, it's much more subtle, and I think you have to be someone who went through this to get it, although I could be wrong. It's very much like, oh wow, this dude is in pain and knows he's in pain, and this is how he's resolving the pain, the extreme behavior, but either isn't ready or isn't willing to address that head-on. And this is so fun. So he's going to go keep doing that. There's maybe 10 places in Beer & Hell where you can see that come through crystal clear, but they're very short and they're very quick and they're very subtle, and you have to be in a place where you can see them, and I bet if you went back and looked at it now, you'd see them all clear as day. Yeah, there were a couple things that shine through that I remember even now that are not exactly on that vein, but very similar. There was one story, and I can't even believe I remember this, but I guess you were sleeping with this high-end escort like 2,000 bucks a night. I didn't know she was an escort. Oh, you didn't know? Okay. I know exactly what you're talking about. She was fucking me, like I was like Disneyland for her or whatever. Yeah, like I was like, I was the guy that like she was sort of dating, and I didn't know she was an escort, but yeah, go ahead. And I remember thinking to myself, you went, wait a minute, this girl brought over booze and then like had to go and bang these dudes for money, and when you realized that you were like, holy shit, this is kind of how everything works in a microcosm inside a lot of these relationships. And I remember getting sort of this flicker of like, well, if he recognizes that and he's self-aware enough to know that, then that must actually kind of perm a paradigm that you already had in your head about relationships that wouldn't necessarily normally be considered healthy. And that's where I started to get a glimpse of like, oh, he's not just like party rock. I'm such a great guy. Look at all this cool shit I'm doing. You started to get awareness of this and it started to shine through. But my question, looking back on that story 10 years ago, eight years ago, is how conscious was that? But the fact that you wrote it down in there kind of answers that question for me now, being a creator of material myself, you never accidentally throw something into it. That's meaningful. It's too hard. First off, I don't want to take credit like, oh, when I was 28, I wrote this in knowing I'd be mature later. Like here's the reality, is that when you create a piece of art, any creator, whether it's a painting or writing or whatever, a lot of stuff can end up in there that you don't consciously realize is going in as you're making it. I honestly think that's why my stuff is so appealing to a lot of people and why it's kind of defied description for a long time in a lot of ways is because first of all, of course, it's funny and it's like crazy, right? So that's the obvious explanation. And there's also this sort of brash sort of arrogance and also like tongue in cheek and sort of naughty and that's kind of fun. But I think the real emotional appeal for a lot of people is exactly what you just described. It's like there is a raw honesty there and it doesn't come through a lot but it comes through enough that you realize, wow, he's not just some idiot talking about how awesome he is all the time. Like he recognizes fully, at least on a deep level, a lot of the absurdities and pain and the other issues but like he is too young and too inexperienced to address him and so it's like you have this sort of like it looks like a comedy but in a way it behaves emotionally like a tragedy. Yeah. And you can only have that if the writing is very emotionally honest. I can go back and read my stuff now and I can be like, wow, like I can see what I'm saying and then be like, oh wow, I know what I was feeling then and I know it much clear but like I didn't put that in on purpose. Oh, I'm going to put it in this really subtle thing. Let's see if anyone picks it up or whatever. Like I'm not Melville or something. Right, now of course. It was just a function of me knowing that the only thing I had in my writing I had two things that made it work. Humor and honesty. And whenever I came to a point where it's like I had trouble with something or I didn't know what, I would always stop and ask myself well what's the fucking truth? Yes. Especially the emotional truth. Like the truth of the events. Of course that's important but like when you're writing a story it's like, my God dude if I wrote the exact truth of everything that happened it would be 2,000 pages. It'd be like a forensic report. It'd be fucking awful. No, I'm talking about the emotional truth and so I would always focus clear as day even before I understood what the full emotional truth was. What did I feel? No matter how hard it was to write it down I would put that in and so like that resonates with people even if they don't understand precisely why it resonates. It gives voice to things that people feel. I think there's a lot of people that have the same sort of issues as I do. My parents were selfish shits. They weren't bad people but they sucked as parents and everyone's specific stories are different and maybe I drink and hook up with girls or do this or do that as a way of dealing with that pain and it's not the best way but I don't know what else to do and it's also kind of fun and fucked up but here it is and so I kind of like presented that experience which a lot of people share in a way that resonated with those people. Yeah that makes sense and that's why people who read this who don't have those similar experiences aren't necessarily even just living vicariously through you sure some guys are but some guys are identifying with something they can't quite put their finger on. Yes with the emotional undercurrent you know like dude Ryan Holiday is a perfect example like he and I couldn't be more different like that dude like I'm literally not sure if possibly the only girl who's ever been within his life is his current fiance and if it's not her it's like maybe one or two other girls right and I don't say that as a put down I'm just saying like I don't know if he's had 10 drinks in his whole life like he hates going to parties whatever but he connected with my books on a deep level because he has parents who are shitty in the same way that mine are in a very similar way and he experiences a lot of the same emotions my stuff is very emotional if you actually dig into it and look at it that way it's actually very emotional and he's perfect example the fact that that kid who is 10 years younger than me and totally opposite of me in every way he resonated with my writing very highly Yeah exactly otherwise it would be impossible and you've sold over a million books they're just probably aren't enough guys doing similar things or wanting to do similar things that you were doing back then to sell that many books unless people could relate in a way that wasn't exactly just on the surface level there had to be deeper stuff there and people get that I know when I was reading it I wasn't thinking man I wish I did that and I certainly wasn't actually doing that stuff I liked it for a totally different set of reasons mostly now 2020 hindsight I didn't know what it was back then but you're super self aware which I think people really dig because everybody wants more of that Yeah in their own life no doubt there's a side note because I am still a little bit arrogant I've actually sold 3 million books Oh sorry about that so much for fucking Wikipedia Yeah but another good sort of proof of what you just said about half my fans are women Exactly it's going to bring that up that's a good point Right and you can chalk some of that up to you know girls connecting with bad boys whatever but the reality is the vast majority of my female fans don't want to sleep with me it's much more about they connect with the emotional truths underlying the book so it's not just a male thing it's a deep emotional truce it's a deep human truce that I sort of tap into and fit into a cultural context that connects with a lot of people men and women and no big surprise women are generally about a billion times more self aware than any guy and usually more emotionally intelligent too yeah Yeah exactly Now we talked a little bit before about kids and parents I mean do you plan on having kids is that something that's on your horizon Yeah of course that's awesome and so obviously the plan is differently than your parents did goes without saying what sort of steps are you taking you know there's all that psychologically I don't really know a lot about it but I'm sure that abused parents you know raised abused kids in the cycle perpetuates and that's that whole narrative I'm assuming that you're doing a lot to make sure that that doesn't happen You know what's funny is not really it's not like I'm reading all these fucking parenting books and all this shit No I'm actually not because of what I said earlier in the podcast is what you have to do to be a great parent is unconditionally love and accept your kid and that doesn't require a lot of skill or practice that's an emotional connection which a retarded human being can do Yeah No I mean seriously Yeah yeah If I need to read a book about how to love and connect then I'm not going to be able to love and connect I've got a lot of fucking work to do dude Sure You know that being said indirectly I have done a ton of work to make that happen and so but not in the context of being a parent Speaking like yourself generally Actually not very generally specifically I'll explain what I mean I don't know if you read the Forbes piece when Hilarion Seuss came out which is sort of like my final book Forbes is a huge profile of me the piece where I like kind of officially retired and I talked about why I was getting out of frat tire and stuff and in that piece I talked about how I had started a psychoanalysis which is like just a form of talk therapy and it's funny it's like all these people were like had all these issues and that was maybe I was six months in at that point I'm now three years in it's helped me immensely deal with the exact issues that we just got done talking about so here's the thing whatever your emotional issues are even if you had traditionally abusive appearance or you had some horrible thing happening in high school or whatever what happened to you isn't your fault but what happens afterwards what you do with that is up to you I was dealt with with certain hands some cards were good some cards were not good and it's like what I do with that hand is up to me and I decided that I wasn't going to be miserable I wasn't going to leave these traumas and these emotional issues unresolved in my life and so there's a lot of different ways you can deal with your trauma and you can deal with your pain you can deal with your problem so I'm not trying to say psychoanalysis is the only way it works really well for a certain type of person dealing with certain types of issues and it's been great for me it's helped my relationships it's helped me understand myself it's helped me understand why I do certain things it's helped me understand my unconscious and it's like okay I get it and so now I'm much better equipped to have sort of connected meaningful relationships with anybody but a cif cif a kid so to answer your question yes I actually have done a lot of work but none of it was worked about parenting all of it I do deal with my problems so that my problems don't go any further than me my problems are not going to go into my kid yes that's obviously what I was getting at with that as well because that's the greatest gift that you can give to your future children is to make sure that they're insulated from that sort of I would phrase it that the best gift I can give to my kids is unconditional acceptance and love I didn't really get and I wouldn't have been able to give them if I hadn't sort of changed that pattern but yeah like alright let's take a quick time out for a sec some people think the art of charm bootcamps and programs are just about picking up girls and honestly there's some of that one week with us and you'll be rocking out in that department I promise but as a guy I know how important it is to be awesome and well rounded and not just awesome with girls awesome at work awesome at home awesome with your friends and family guys really need to step it up everywhere and that's why we call our company the art of charm that special and trust me the results are real every day I get new emails and calls from the guys who decided to take our bootcamp and what I hear is simply amazing just weeks after graduating they line a promotion they form a new wolf pack start a new business or even find a partner they have a new life and it's not an accident find out why at theartofcharm.com alright let's get back to the good stuff I think I'm going to be in terms of functional parenting stuff I actually think I'm going to be a great parent I'm sort of a natural teacher I love doing it but I'm sure of course there'll be a little fuck little fuck up and you know I won't know how to change a diaper or whatever I mean that shit doesn't matter that's logistical shit man right right exactly anyone can do that like there are a lot of really stupid people who do that and so I figure I should be able to figure that out yeah look at the other types of people that raise kids and they turn out sometimes just fine I think you'll be okay right this is just not a function of intelligence they're just not the same thing and they're not even closely related in a lot of ways it sounds weird to say but they're just not so what I've done is just really focus on my emotional stuff they may have their own problem in fact I know everyone has problems they'll have their own problems and I'll make emotional mistakes but I'm going to make them on top of the bedrock of unconditional love and acceptance and so all those mistakes it'll be much easier if you're not there sure I mean that goes without saying it's absolutely spot on so speaking of kids I'm guessing that you want a partner to raise them with I was just hoping to grow them in a test tube in a bread machine or something laboratory yeah of course dude of course absolutely what are you looking for in a partner because it's it's almost funny to read the book in one day and then the next day talk about what Tucker Max what do you look for in a partner in a life partner what do I look for in a life partner I mean you have all these external accomplishments right a lot of that's not going to mean shit unless you are in a meaningful relationship do you agree with that yes and no I wouldn't phrase it like that I don't see the two things as interacting with each other in a lot of ways you know what I'm saying so like I get a lot of questions for advice from kids and whatever and the questions they ask the real questions that they want answered because they're not wise enough to know what the real questions are of course you have to sort of learn how to dig into their assumptions this is always one of those assumptions where people like what should I do with my life and should I focus more on this what about this girl whatever and then you have to kind of dig in the assumptions this is another one of those questions so the way I always phrase is I tell kids and the things you do that matter to other people right that's it nothing else matters and I don't think I figure that out until my early 30 you know and I don't think it really sunk in until 34 35 so very recent in my life did that really really imbue itself into not just my intellect but my emotional intelligence and stuff as a result if you understand those two things then I think kind of how you make decisions fundamentally changes right and I know it has for me I know in my early mid to late 20s and early 30s the decisions of my life were about accomplishments about exactly what you just said all these things I've done right and then as I realized as I did a bunch of things and I got all this money and I had all this status and whatever and I still wasn't happy I realized wow that shit's not going to make me happy like it's not like that stuff is irrelevant but it's just not it hasn't changed my emotional baseline hasn't solved them so obviously that shit doesn't really matter well what matters relationships and the things you do that matter to other people so it's like so from that point that's when I really focus on relationships and then I started thinking about exactly what the question you just asked what do I look for you know what am I looking for in women what am I looking for in whatever and you know what's funny dude is of course I do the same thing everyone does is like I've put together a list of what I want whatever and then I realized I was making the same mistake that every ridiculous teenage girl makes do you know what I'm talking about yeah I know exactly what you're talking about where it's like the girl's like oh I want a boyfriend who likes this music and blah blah blah and then wait she has a list of like 70 fucking things that she wants in a guy and you look at her and you're like fuck are you talking about there's no guy on earth who likes all these things A and B none of this shit matters but of course she's a 17 year old girl so you don't expect her to know anything at all all 17 year old girls are idiots right just like 17 year old guys sure sure and then I realized though I was doing the same thing I mean I didn't have a list about like oh you know what music she asked to like but it was the same fucking thing so I kind of changed around I'm like alright what is she like is a person what is she like what's her emotional maturity level et cetera et cetera and then I realized at about 33 34 I kind of got a really good picture in my head what a person is and the things that matter and then I realized fuck man this girl is an awesome awesome girl and I want to date her and maybe marry her and I would bet that she doesn't want me because first of all I had met a lot of girls like that in my life like the girl I had a picture I had a couple models in my head of girls models of what these girls were like because I met them and a couple of them I can remember like I'd probably dated a couple in my early 20s but I was nowhere near and then a couple of them were either my friends' wives or just amazing girls I met and all of them were like the look that they all gave me was like this guy is awesome and funny and smart and this and that but fuck he's a mess to deal with you know right and they were kind of right at least at that point in my life and so I realized you know what if I want the awesome woman that I'm envisioning in my head then I need to be the awesome guy that she wants to be with here's the thing Jordan I had all the external awesome things right like if you were looking at me three years ago externally I was one of the most eligible bachelors in a fucking America but the external shit kind of doesn't matter if it's not matched up with the emotional intelligence that allows you to have a really connected healthy relationship and I didn't quite have that at that point in my life so that's another thing that Alice has helped me with understand what was I missing how could I sort of fix myself so I would have that and put myself in the position to win I met one of these amazing girls because there aren't a lot of them but they exist and when I met them would I be at the point I was already in their league but was I at the emotional point in my life where I could have a good relationship with them there's no girl I'm meeting that's out of my league right the question is not is she in my league am I emotionally mature enough to have a relationship with a woman because the one I had in vision in my mind is very emotionally mature so I had to like put myself in that position and then I did it was the irony I'm actually sitting I'm in a hotel room in Philadelphia right now going to a conference but my girlfriend's with me I'm actually sitting on the bed next to her right now like I have kind of made these changes and then they were almost all internal almost all emotional things almost all having to do with how I connected with people and how I had relationships because it's not like it was terrible just wasn't fully functional I had issues with having healthy relationships I don't want to say I fixed them but I at least recognized them and I began to work on them and then I met a girl who was amazing dude even maybe six months before I met her I could almost hear the conversation on my head she'd be like this guy's great and he's amazing but like I don't know if he's dateable you know yeah right exactly like and don't get me wrong we've had moments that were like very difficult for us in terms of like emotionally or whatever but it's like we have an emotionally mature foundation where we can work through our differences and work through our issues and I've I've had to learn how to be a boyfriend I've had to learn how to have relationships I mean I've God knows 80% of this relationship I didn't know how to have before we had it but I was at least in the position where I could recognize what she was doing wrong and then recognize maybe sort of a path to fix them obviously she's pretty patient and she's pretty mature too we work through them together and you know she had issues of her own too but she's a woman so she's going to be more emotionally mature than me sure unless I find a girl's 22 or something I don't recommend that yeah no no no we were almost on the exact same level emotional maturity wise and so we kind of like grew into this together and it was a very good situation and for her I made myself into the man that I needed to be to get an amazing woman and to date an amazing woman and I did you know I appreciate this because it's basically the entire premise of the art of charm is to help create that whole man because you need to become the type of man to get the type of woman that you want not change into some false bozo who can trick a mediocre quality girl into bed but even if you do look dude no one fucked more girls than me I don't mean that literally I'm sure you could find 10 or 20 or even 100 or 1000 guys who did but the point is like whatever your number is I'm in your fucking league you know I may be at the end of the bench but I'm on the team right and so like with absolute authority I can sit here and tell you that that shit I'm glad I did it and it's fucking awesome and I'm not going to sit here and say don't ever hook up with a bunch of girls if you want to bullshit it's fucking fun but at the same time I don't know any guys who do that for a long amount of time or for their whole life and are happy of course not and it's something you obviously need to go through to get to the point at which you realize that you didn't need to do it anymore well it's not need there was a need component I don't want to lie to myself about that at least what I was doing it was more want I think we're saying the same thing which is if you want to do that especially for a while that's totally fine and it can be fun and it can be rewarding and in fact it can even be the path to happiness but it's usually not the end goal it's not the finish line for at least for anyone that I've ever met who's emotionally healthy and happy the finish line is not five girls a week sure it makes a lot of sense it's such a I brought the fresh air because of course people kept telling me over a long period of time to get you on the show I just didn't want to tell dirty stories you know over and over as funny as they might be I love this I love what we created I think it's awesome and I appreciate the vulnerability and the openness the authenticity I should say yeah there's no other way for me to be dude I might be wrong but I'm always going to be honest and I'm always going to be who I am at least at that moment you know I appreciate it man this is a great show I wanted to originally get into like investing in startups and all that stuff but I think we can maybe save it for another show I know you've got a book coming out that's going to be about dating or something like that the book is not coming until 2015 but we're doing sort of very much like a whole content information ecosystem not just a book so the book is going to be called Mate it's by me and Jeffrey Miller who wrote The Mating Mind and spent and then we're doing a website associated with it it's called The Mating Grounds TheMatingGround.com it's actually going to cover very much a lot of the same things we talked about I don't know how deep because it's really geared toward like 15 to 25 year olds and it's going to be kind of like the basics like a basic guide to sex and dating for guys I don't think it's going to be the same sort of stuff that we talked about here this feels to me more like this is what you would you say to men you know not younger guys but it's going to cover a lot of the same basic general ideas hey you want to do well with women you want to understand yourself you want to get your shit together here's the way to do it so the approach we're going to take is going to be very systematic and very sort of scientific and very sort of evidence based and very spelled out sure yeah you got to spoon feed most men myself included let alone a 15 year old version of me 15 definitely Jordan imagine if you could take everything that you know now about sex and dating women and put it into like a pamphlet because it's got to be a pamphlet for a 15 year old of course imagine you could put it into like a pamphlet for a 15 year old version of you what would that book be worth yeah of course I mean that's that's priceless knowledge that I'd want to give to any kid exactly a book that older guys would give to younger guys that could actual wisdom and experience and knowledge that can actually help them stripped away of all the ideological agenda sort of manipulative bullshit that's out there you know yeah free from other writers emotional bullshit and like crappy stereotypes and bad experiences taking it let me know when you want to start to promo that and you know throw me on the list dude I'll definitely I'll definitely do that and definitely appreciate the time dude of course man thank you anytime brother take care Tucker alright alright show feedback and guest suggestions we rely on you guys to help keep our finger on the pulse so if you know someone who's a good fit for the show let us know at 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