 So today we're gonna talk about love attachment styles, why we choose the people we choose. And I'm really excited to have the author of Wired for Love, Dr. Stan Tachkin in the house to share with us his expertise in this area and to help those find more healthy love versus unhealthy love. So Dr. Stan Tachkin, welcome. Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks for inviting me here. Yeah, so let's just dive right into this. Can you give us the clip note version of love attachment style and how someone acquires their love attachment style? It's so funny when you say that, it reminds me of Love American style, which was a TV show when I was growing up. I remember it well. Love attachment style, the song is coming to my head. So people should understand that love is not the same as attachment. Attachment may make us feel like we love, but it's more of a survival matter of biological glue that holds our species together. So that glue is, I think of it as the I can't quit you glue and that has allowed us to be social animals, interactional animals. We basically are herd animals that pair bond within the herd. So attachment is the felt sense, the experience of safety and security with the people that we depend on starting from the very beginning from infancy. If we don't have a secure environment or a secure caregiver, then we make compensations very, very young. We adapt. Before people remember, babies do this right away. And that's a culture, generally speaking, that is either pro-relationship, which is secure or pro-self. And that's really the difference between insecure attachment. I put myself ahead of relationship and secure attachment. I put relationship ahead of myself. Myself is in there, right? But the relationship is more important than myself needs. And I behave in a way that shows that, right? So if I understand that the differentiating is when I, I was thinking that minute you said I was thinking when I put someone up on a pedestal, when I put them above me, if you will, then, and I'm feeling some dependency on them, that is attachment. Versus when I put my own needs first and I still have a relationship with someone, that's not the same dependency. Well, if we're talking about adult relationships, right? Yes, I'm talking about, oh, good point, because I wanna differentiate for our audience. I'd really like to focus in on this conversation about adult relationships. And more importantly, particularly in the area of dating. You know, I think this is a really, this conversation, you know, a lot of times love attachment conversations are based on couples, but I really wanna focus today on that early stages of building a relationship with someone. And, you know, because there is a lot of conversations out there talking about anxious attachment style and avoidant attachment style and secure attachment style. And, well, I actually have a quick question for you before I go into the one I was really thinking about. I know in the book Attach, they claim that 50% of people are secure attachment style. And I wanna be candid with you. I don't believe that number to be true. And I'd like to know from your perspective, and I think of this from those people who are actually dating, is there any studies to show what someone's attachment style is before they mate with someone? Well, there are only a few measures that are official. In other words, reliable. And unfortunately, the data that they're referring to in the book Attach are self-reports, which are not really attached. So we could say that our culture is more on the avoidant side, just like Europe. Or parts of Eastern Europe are not on the avoidant side. They're more on the ambivalent side. So it depends on the greater culture because this is actually a way of interacting, a way of being with another person and that is learned through actually the family culture, which is part of the greater system, right? So we don't have that because the instruments for doing this are not as good as we would like in terms of cross-cultural, in terms of cross-economic groups. And so they may not be so accurate. Also, we may also say that in some ways our attachment orientation, which is basically a set of fears based on memory of what happens when I depend on someone, very predictable, is just a human problem, right? It's a human issue about dependency and independence, fears. Both sides, by the way, of insecure attachment would be deemed anxious, right? They're anxious about different things and avoidant is anxious about having their freedom taken from them, being smothered, from not being able to be themselves in a relationship. They have to comply and their main strategy for self-protection is to flee. So, right, but that's anxiety. They just look like they're not. Well, you said something very interesting to me. So, I think you implied here in the United States that probably there's a higher percentage of avoidance than there are anxious. Yeah. And that might be true in other countries as well. That's kind of interesting because I thought there would be a balance between those two numbers. Think of what we always seem to be saying. Self-made person, don't tread on me. I need to be, my freedoms are the most important thing. I'm an independent person. We really, I don't need anybody else in statements like we gotta love ourselves before we can love another person. These are not true, but it's true in our culture. We repeat these things all the time. And so, just by our own expression here, our declaration of independence, we don't have a declaration of interdependence. That's a good point. Which is really what we are. We do need each other. We would go nuts if we weren't interacting, if we were all by ourselves, we'd go a little cuckoo. So, a lot of this is a denial of our actual biology. So, all right, so let's talk about love for a moment because I've observed many people attached to another human being oftentimes in an unhealthy way. Maybe it's a dependency way or whatnot. And they believe that this is love. Now, to them, that's what it feels like. I know I've been that way. I've been in that position where I've been attached to someone in an unhealthy way. And I don't mean a toxic way. I wanna just differentiate the different. It wasn't toxic. It just wasn't very healthy because I put this person on a pedestal. And I believe that that was love. But now when I've reflected upon it after studying this a bit more, I realized, no, it was just an attachment or even a dependency into another person. Why is this confused so frequently? Why do people believe this is love when it's really an attachment? Because attachment has loving aspects attached to it. So when we test people, let's say, we do what's called an adult attachment interview. Okay. We're basically doing a suite for a person's procedural memory of their childhood and their caregivers. And then an autobiographical memory of the same declarative memory, I misspoke, not procedural, but declared memory. We look for loving memories, strongly loving memories or strongly unloving memories because those are the ones that stick, the ones that are meant just for us. So there are attachment behaviors that are felt to be unloving. There are attachment behaviors that are felt to be loving. So you can understand why they're sort of mixed together. But the reason I call it the I can't quit you biology is because just like you're saying, it will keep us in a relationship that perhaps we shouldn't be in and we come up with all sorts of reasons why we can't quit this person. But the main reason is that it's an existential threat to our survival. On a primitive infant level, we feel that it goes back to if mommy dies, I die. It's a death of a part of me, it's a death of something so big I cannot bear it. And that's why people will, at the bottom of all this will hold a relationship for a long time. Now, as a therapist, I can leverage that, that's great. But if people really shouldn't be together and I don't think of it as healthy, I think of it as is this relationship based on two autonomous adults coming together based on terms and conditions, not love. Terms and conditions. And are they both considering each other having shared power and shared authority? Two generals, right? Two executives, two bosses. And that's how I see a secure functioning relationship being an adult, right? It's the only thing that will work and has to remain fair, just and mutually sensitive. That I think works better than healthy unhealthy. Okay, okay. So, you know, I intimate frequently that particularly in the dating realm, we have a significant population who is emotionally unhealthy, you know, whether it's attachment style or unhealed childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas such as divorce, which can be an incredibly traumatic event. We have a population of humans out there in the dating marketplace and just because my demographic is midlife, which is between say 40 and 70, if you will, a significant percentage are divorced. And by the way, that's very kind of you because I'm just at the tip of that spear. But anyway. Okay. Well, you know, I always say it's after baby making years and before retirement, that's kind of a segment I speak to. But what it occurs to me that we have a lot of humans that have poor relationship skills, you know, probably, you know, they might be introspective in one sense of their life, but not necessarily recognizing that they have an attachment issue. And even when you said earlier, it occurs to me that I've witnessed people take the attachment test and the way they answer it is the way they believe they are versus where they really do land on the spectrum. We're not as a whole. We're not good self-reporters. I would say so. In fact, I almost wanna go to the point that there's a level of delusion about our own, you know, emotional maturity in particular and not our capacity to pay our bills and things like that. But I, and so, okay. So I'm trying to formulate a question with this, with what I just shared. But, you know, what's the first step to recognizing that you have what your attachment style is and how this affects how you choose people, you know? And how can we identify this even in the dating realm in those, even just when we're meeting someone for the first time? Did I give you enough there? Yeah, so let me just give an idea for your audience what it would look like, sound like to be, we call them islands, islands, anchors and waves. Islands, the avoidant distancing, derogating of attachment values, and waves, the anxious, ambivalent, or as I used to think of them as angry, resistant, called them waves and anchors secured. So as a wave, I had inconsistent parenting. A lot of come here go away. Parents that or at least one parent that was preoccupied and overwhelmed a lot and needed me to regulate their emotional state too often. And so that's where the self comes first in that camp. And so I became accustomed to not knowing what to expect, whether I should cling, whether I should distance, whether I should go away, come here, right? All of this makes me angry, makes me angry and ambivalent about you. So I stop grabbing what's mine, I become under entitled, I wait for things to come to me, I test my partner constantly. If they love me, if they love me, do you love me? And I'm constantly testing. I tend to be negativistic, you give me a compliment and I go, yeah, I know, what do you want? I push away because I want so badly to feel secure. I spoil my own, anything that could be good by dashing my hopes purposely so they aren't dashed for me, I'm taking control. And so I am preoccupied constantly perseverating over the relationship, over being rejected. I'm very sensitive to abandonment cues and very sensitive to feeling punished, withdrawal, very sensitive. And I have a lot of, I put a lot of importance emotionally on separations and reunions, right? I'm the person who's more likely at 10 o'clock at night, turn around just before you go to sleep and say, so how's our relationship? That's what an avoidant, like that's what an avoidant? That's what the wave would do. The wave is the anxious ambivalent. Oh, the anxious, okay, I apologize. Okay, okay. In the clinging group, hopefully I didn't confuse them. Yeah, no, no, I got confused. So we were talking about the anxious. So the anxious would say, how's our relationship doing right before bed? Got that, got that. Because I'm lots of bid for connection engagement because I don't like endings that out and like things closing because it triggers abandonment for me. That's the wave. Do you want me to say what that means? I wanna hear the other one. The island had to take care of at least one parent's self-esteem, right? Okay. And their performance and appearance is an issue, is important in the family as a value, not face-to-face eye-to-eye skin to skin over lots of time, but more distancing, more expectation of you being independent son, daughter. And so what happens is the child, the baby is encouraged to be on their own before they're ready and they give out a secure base, their right to cling and to be needy. So as an island, I'm not needy. I don't like needy. I am very secretive. I'm compartmentalizing things all the time. I've spent too much time alone, which means that I have secrets, right? And so I am afraid that anything I say can and will get me into trouble. So I set the least amount necessary. I am very worried about having my stuff taken, having my independence, my autonomy, very sensitive to being smothered and golfed. And my only defense is to distance, right? Is to flee. I can only be myself outside of the orbit of this relationship. I cannot be myself yet in the relationship and have boundaries, expectations and stay engaged. So you have two people who are basically self-absorbed. That's where they're the same. They're entirely one person oriented of me, my, I and you, you, you. And that is what doesn't work in a secure functioning union. It's too unfair, too unjust and too insensitive, too much of the time. So, well, I've got another question. I've got lots of questions for you, but all right. I want to come back to the dating environment again, because that's kind of my area. So most women believe that men are the avoidance. That I would say almost all women think men are avoidant. And now I happen to be an anxious, I mean, I'm very familiar with my attachment style. I'm anxious. I had a mother who would emotionally abandon us as children and I would making bids for love constantly when she was stonewalling and being, my mother would go on basically three to five day the silent treatment to everyone in the house. And I recognize now how that created my anxiety because I wasn't receiving love from mom. I was getting, anytime I tried to get a bid for love I'd be rejected for it. And I would try harder and harder to get her love. But bringing it back to my audience who believes men are avoidant, how can they have a healthy relationship with someone who is, that is always looking for the escape clause? What's the way to have a healthy relationship with a person like that? Well, first in my clinic, in my research, in my experience, there are plenty of women that behave, that are in the distancing group. Right? Okay. In the distancing group. Glad you said that. We tend to overlay gender and sex through a lot of behaviors where they're not actually about the gender, it's more about the attachment. Yes. And it's true that boys are raised differently than girls and girls also have brains that are a little bit more put together in terms of relatedness, because of, you know, in terms of our development, relatedness in terms of holding the family together. The men are protecting the cave, protecting the clan and are out more. So there is that the raising of us, but this is more of an attachment issue. So what to do? If you're dating, you should be Sherlock, which is fun. That is really tuning in to your observation skills, really looking at everything, looking at gestures, looking at facial expressions, looking and listening to tone of voice, the manner in which this person is talking, how they treat help, how they talk about their parents, how they talk about their exes. This is a way to really listen and to tune your people skills, even if the date is boring, even if you'll never go out with this person again, people are interesting. And if you want to learn about yourself and people, paying attention, not, you know, being obnoxious and grilling people, but paying attention to what is actually this person doing? What are they, how are they dressing? What are they trying to tell me? Does this track, do I believe them? Do they seem to be avoiding talking about what is true? So there are all sorts of ways to start to pick things up because generally speaking, people are their best selves when they're trying to get the gig. It's very hard to tell because everyone wants to put their best foot forward, very hard to tell who you're with for about a year actually. Yeah, yeah. So, all right, so I have a, as I shared with the audience, you know, I have an anxious attachment style. When I look at the three most significant relationships in my life, and I'm diagnosing them on my behalf, if you will, I would say that they were avoidant, particularly in the area of avoiding being expressive from a communicative perspective. And I'm a very expressive person. I'm the type of person at the end of the night that would say, how's our relationship going? And I was met with a lot of resistance. Why do I attract those women? Like, why is it, you know, like, why do I choose those women? Why do I attract them? Well, there's a lot there. So we all pair bond by recognition and familiarity. We don't pair bond with a total stranger. We have to find something familiar, even familial in them, otherwise we're too far away from home. If they're too much like home, then it's a little like incest. So there's a balance between strangeness and familiarity, right? But so we tend to pick the right person in terms of nature doesn't make that kind of mistake. What tends to happen is that we still don't know how to handle this person, right? When we meet somebody and they start to become primary, and a primary attachment figure, they become a proxy for everybody who came before. And that's why these relationships are among the hardest. It has a long, forgive me, a long memory. And so, because we're back into a dependent kind of relationship. And now I remember, and now I have these needs and expectations and entitlements and so on. So you could be, forgive me, you could be finding somebody who's not an island, not an avoidant, but because of the dynamics of the two-person system, you're affecting each other and you're creating the sense that this other person is an avoidant. It could very well be, right? And the problem, I'm so sorry, my allergies. The problem here is that attachment as a study is based on looking at individuals or pairs, mother-infant pairs. Not so well with adults, which is much more phenomenological and hard to track. So you become a system, and the system is now a thing of itself, right? And we're reacting to each other constantly. I pursue you and you start to distance. You start to pursue me, I start to distance, and that's normal. What we are concerned about are one-trick ponies, people who are locked in to clinging and ambivalence or people who are locked in to distancing and they don't care that they do this, right? That's not a good- Oh, wait, wait, wait, I wanna, that made a big difference for me. They don't care. That room triggered me. Can you elaborate on that piece, please? Cause that's big, I think. So I'm an avoidant, let's say I'm an avoidant. I know I'm an avoidant. It has caused me trouble. I've been down this road many times and no one's been good enough. I think now it's me and I notice what I do. And now I'm ready for a real relationship. I am going to harness my avoidance. And if I do something that is unfair or insensitive to you, I'm going to apologize right away. Okay. The behaviors I'm gonna do reflexively, right? Yeah. But I am letting you know that I want what you want and I understand myself and I'm willing to do this correctly, right? As opposed to, I have no idea that I do this. I think there's something wrong with you. That person's not gonna change. You should not take that person. They are not ready for prime time. Or I know what I am and I like it. Take it easy. Well, I'm guilty of, I'm gonna say the following. And I should know better. I do this for a living and yet I'm still a human being that- Is, you know, that is wishful thinking to some degree where that early stage of the dating process where as Chris Rock would say, we each show up as the ambassador of our best selves. Right. And we're on drugs, endogenous drugs. Yeah, exactly that dopamine, that oxytocin and such. And yet I recognize that I have taken those red flags of the avoidant and I just turned them into green flags. In other words, I look past it even though I cognitively saw this. It's like I saw the iceberg coming to me instead of me going to that or vice versa, if you will. But I still, because there's this place of hope that you're hoping this could change. And I recognize that it took making requests and bids for connection and even though they weren't met, I had to come to that conclusion that this person wasn't going to meet me where I wanted to be met. And it was a tough pill to swallow, you know? And it took me a long time to get to that position. You talk in your book and you've spoken quite a bit about the importance of healthy communication and making requests for what you want in relationship to make requests for your needs in a nonviolent way, of course. Can you talk about that a little bit more when you're with an avoidant or an anxious attacher? Will you allow me just to address the last thing you said, though, first? Sure, sure, sure. So there's a remedy for what you're talking about in terms of people really should, and I wrote about this in Wired for Dating, recommend that you make a list not of the perfect partner, right? Okay. Think of a person, think of, you know, person X. What is your idea of a perfect relationship? What, you know, in terms of what we do and what we don't do, we put our relationship first. You might say, yes, that's what I'm looking for. We both agree to put our relationship first. Do we tell each other everything? We're fully transparent with each other. I'm looking for that, that's what I want. We have each other's backs at all times, no exceptions. We repair injuries immediately or soon because we can and because that's a good idea, right? You make a list of what the perfect relationship is, focus on the relationship, not the person. That will help you screen out people who are inappropriate and then you trot them around to your peeps and you have them vetted, which is what we have to do because we are on drugs. And we have to trust our social network to tell us if we ask them, I don't like how you look with this person. You don't seem to be yourself. I don't trust this person, right? Male, female, young, old. That's the way it's done. And that I think is a better way to think about what you want and what you're looking for. That person has to be attracted to the same things you are. And it'll show you that they're capable of doing that. You just shared something that I espouse incessantly when I record videos and even in my own practice. I actually talk about the importance of vetting. And a lot of people don't even know what that word means, but it's really finding out as much about this person as you possibly can before you give your heart to another person is to ask those tougher questions. Now, many of my contemporaries in the dating realm with you will would rather people to keep it casual, to keep it light, to not get too deep with someone because that will spoil attraction. I kind of have a different philosophy. And I'm gonna say this a little tongue in cheek. I believe we should interrogate people. Now I say that tongue in cheek, but my point is- You could give them sodium ametal. Yeah, exactly. Oh, if you could, I would. But the point is not everyone is gonna be truthful and certainly people lie to themselves, but the idea is to ask those tougher questions. And what that does build is when you're actually having deeper conversation, you actually have a more intimate connection, potentially intimate connection with someone that I don't mean physically. I just mean emotionally. When you ask deeper questions early on and I'd love to know how you feel about that in the dating process. I think it's fine as long as the person doing this isn't seen as interrogating. Because nobody likes that. Nobody likes that. Thank you very much. Good night. Nobody likes that. And so there's a way of being interested in a person. Okay. Right? You're showing your interest in that person and you want to know things about them. Not your, you're not, you know, how much money do you make? Yeah. You tend to do, are you moving upward in the world? You know, where do you stand on children? These are clumsy interrogative type of questions that are a turn off. So- Okay. So, you know, this is people's skills. This is why I say, dating is great practice for learning how to read faces, read voices, read the room, watch them, pay attention, right? Not necessarily judge, but notice what you are judging, notice what you are seeing. That's a smooth way of doing things and hopefully the other person's doing the same thing with you. Keep in mind though, it's, you know, the heart staying away from that is not exactly easy to do because nature, when we find each other, wants us to make. So- Well, I encourage, I actually encourage, you know, before you actually meet someone is to have a deeper conversation on the telephone, you know, and it could be as simple as saying, oh, how was, you know, where did you grow up? How was your childhood? What were your parents like? And, you know, a lot of actually people speak volume, just those three things, where did you grow up? What was your childhood like? What were your parents like? Can speak volumes as to a person's level of emotional maturity, particularly if they had a traumatic childhood and there was no healing done after the fact. So, bringing it back to- If somebody says they had a perfect childhood, perfect parents, that's usually an avoidant, by the way. Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, because- Oh, because they're avoiding the pain that they experience in childhood. So- Yeah, they strip out any kind of negative emotion. Okay. Well, really quickly, I wanna let everyone know who's watching. If you have a question for Stan or I, Dr. Tackin, please write the word question in the chat box and then post your question there after or you can purchase a Super Sticker Super Chat so it'll be highlighted. So again, if you have a question, write the word question then post the question there after. So, let me see. Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. How does attachment style differentiate from Amago? I know Harbell Hendricks did the forward for your book. I'm sure you're very familiar with the Amago. How is that different than love attachment style? My love, love, love, this man, by the way. Okay. You're a friend. Amago comes a little bit bored. Hopefully he won't disagree with me, maybe he will. But I've always seen this a little more Jungian in the language and the idea because we're talking about the same thing I'm talking about how we pair bond that we do it by familiarity and he has exercises that we'll kind of demonstrate. You know, that we line up in some way. And so an attachment could be overlaid there. You could see elements of attachment theory. Okay. But attachment isn't a personality. Attachment is fluid and plastic. It can change and does change, you know, as long as the relationship you're in is with somebody who perhaps is more secure than you or if you are doing what we call secure functioning which is a set of behaviors. You might think of them as social contracts that are based on equality, fairness, justice, sensitivity, mutuality, cooperation, collaboration. That is secure functioning. And if you do that more likely than not over time, you start to become more secure because all the threats are being eliminated taken off the table. But so attachment is an adaptation to environment. It's an adaptation and- It's not way to adapt to our environment. Okay, got it, got it, got it. Okay. These two babies adapt immediately to the primary caregiver's behaviors and they get it right away whether they should do proximity seeking or draw, right? Whether they should use contact maintenance and hold on and cling or whether they shouldn't do that. Whether they should look up when the caregiver comes in the room or whether they should continue playing. So this is simply an adaptation to the gut. Our parents, yeah. Yeah, by the way, we have a couple of questions already popping in. So I don't know if you can see it on the screen there. Yes, it's kind of like, can cats and dogs get along? Yeah, so what's your response to this one? Can cats and dogs live happily ever after? Absolutely, absolutely. Secure functioning is about growing up, growing up and doing what is right and what is best as a greet upon by the two of you even though it's going to be the hardest thing to do. That's how we do it, right? Okay. You don't govern by emotion, you govern by purpose, by what needs to be done, so say us both, not because we will want to do it, but because it's the best thing we could do or the right thing we could do. Okay, so follow up to that question comes from Jess. How do we let go of the outcome and just let things progress naturally? I'm not sure exactly what Jess, you mean about that. You seem to have something in mind. The outcome is your mutual vision that the two of you have. You have to be, whoever you're with, and this is two of all unions in a free society, right? We get each other on board because we want to go the same place. We have a vision. We both are pointing in the same direction. We both see our purposes being the same. We're together, we're a survival unit. We have each other's backs. We're, it's us against the world. We're the most important people in the room, in any room. And that's how we roll. That's our sense of purpose in terms of the greater union, right? But where are we going? And that's a constant. If you are pointing in two different directions, that will not work. It doesn't mean you're wrong. It just means it doesn't work. I want polyamory. You want monogamy. Neither of us are wrong, but we can't work together. We can't live together. We won't work. Well, I think of it along the lines of, there's a you, there's a me, and then the relationship is a separate entity. It's something we co-create that's greater than ourselves. Exactly, and I sadly don't see, I think in the dating realm today, sadly, most of it is either hooking up or casual micro-relationships. They're not really solidifying something where the relationship, as I say, is a separate entity. Do you call it a couple bubble or is that what that's called in the book? Yeah, in Wired for Love. Yeah, Wired for Love. Couple bubble basically means that, like I said, we're the most important people in any room. We protect each other in public and private. Everyone's coming to our party. We're in charge of everyone and everything. We are the leaders. Therefore, we're in charge, right? This is a separate country with its own sovereignty. Therefore, don't mess with us. Don't mess with us. We are rabidly devoted to each other's well-being, safety, security, and happiness. Why? Because we can, and because the alternative would be not great, right? This is, that's an example of a social contract. Let's do this and let's never do that. Agreed? Well, I'm on board with that 100%. I, well, it's interesting. I don't know if you know Rabbi Manis Freedman. Yeah, yes. Well, I had him on my channel a few weeks back and why I'm bringing this up. You still have a ponytail? Pardon me? You still have a ponytail? Well, I didn't see the ponytail, but he had the long beard and the yarmulke for sure. But why I'm bringing him up is I really, I started to watch some of his videos and to the extent that he was stressing the importance of marriage. And to me, why that was so important to me, yeah, I've been, look it, I got married in my late 20s, had a marriage, got divorced, I've had a couple relationships since then. And during that period of time for a good 15 plus years of being single, I was just casually dating. I really didn't have an intent to get married. I think because I felt so hurt after my marriage ended and some of the things that happened to me since then. I now have a clear understanding that I wanna be married, like I wanna actually be a husband at some point. And because I have that intent, I operate completely different in the dating realm versus when I was casual and had no direction. Yeah. And no real, and so to me, and when I think of the couple bubble, is that, you know, like the power couple, if you will, I like that idea that I'm mated with someone and we are something substantial. I think a lot of people, particularly in midlife who have gone through a divorce don't have a real clear understanding of what they want in relationship. They might want something that fills time and it's companionship and connection and physical sex and whatnot, but not something greater than that. And I'm curious what you might think why this isn't happening significantly. You know, in terms of learning about how to do relationships, we're a mess. Yeah. We don't have instructions. Religion is not a good instructor. No matter what religion. In fact, there are problems with some of the ideas that religion espouses. Oh, okay. So we don't have a model and therefore that's one of the problems. We're all coming to the table with what we imagined should be. Okay. With expectations. Some of them are conscious, a lot of them aren't until we get into the relationship. That's why I'm saying very strongly, this is a team sport, not a solo sport. You get together, you get together, you are the co-creators of this thing called a relationship. If you are not the co-creators, good luck. Somebody else then is and it's likely your family of origin, not you. So if you're coming together as adults, you have to create this thing called a relationship which does not exist in real life. It's an abstraction, it's made up. So make up something that is the same. That's what you have to do. Well, I'm sorry. Well, it occurs to me is, we've been indoctrinated in a philosophy that men are the leaders of the relationship. Particularly men do the asking out, men plan the dates, they do all that. They're the leaders and to some degree, men are the ones who do the asking of commitment. They're the ones who do asking for a relationship. I'm in agreement, by the way, it should be a co-creative experience. I am a full agree, I believe relationships should be a two lane street where you're both mutually investing in it. But we are so indoctrinated in a society, a culture that sets it up as supposed to be the man's role. Which is war, yeah. So remember, there's a difference between getting in the door and staying in, in that room. Nature gets us in, right? Through hormones and other groovy neurochemicals that make us blind to judgment, right? Okay. And so do your thing, if it appeals to you to play the male stereotype, the female stereotype, if that's what gets you into the gig, fine. But make no mistake, once you are a primary attachment system, in other words, you believe that you're both permanent, there's a dependency matter here. That is when the rubber hits the road. And that is when fairness and justice will be an issue. Equality will be an issue. Okay. And the only way to mitigate big fights that are going to happen is to co-construct what are we? Why are we? What are we? Why do we exist? It cannot be about love because love is a feeling, like all feelings that comes and goes. You cannot bank on it. Purpose is the only thing that we can bank on, right? And therein lies earned love through what we do and what we don't do because we agreed to do that. It takes discipline. It takes the ability to come up together and be legislators together. Both have to be leaders or you get what you pay for. So... Well, I was gonna ask you. So in the dating realm, when should we have these conversations? Like when is the time? Not early. Well, yeah, but the minute, these days sex happens on the third date. I mean, like, so two people become physically intimate with one another. And in the minute you become, especially for women, when they do become physically intimate, the oxytocin starts to get released, they can bond with this person. You say not early, but at the same time, you know, do you wanna get attached to a person that is completely incompatible with you? It takes the ability to put principle ahead of loss. That's the point. All right, one more time, I want you to repeat that. It takes maturity, it takes discipline to put principles ahead of loss. Okay. I have principles that I want to see whether you are attracted to them and whether you adopt them as well. Therefore, I can't know, you know, we could wait forever for me to find out for sure whether you do or not, no, I'm a year, but that is why I'm telling people to create image in your mind what the relationship you want should be, must be. Okay. That will give you a way to just get a sense of whether this person matches this or not. Even in the early times, you know, when you're together, you start to get a sense of whether this person is the kind of person who would want to put our relationship above and beyond everyone and everything else, which I'm a fan of. Whether this person would work as a team or is this a solo person? Is this a solo sport person who likes to do things on their own? You get a sense because you're comparing and contrasting what you envision as the perfect relationship for you, which is attainable. And does this person look like they're fit for the job before a job interview? Now, you can't ask all these questions because a lot of this is based on performance, not words. Yes, I agree with that. And so the discipline here is, yes, is it hard to break up with someone once I've attached to them? Yes, yes, yes. This is the, I can't quit you biology, but we're greater than that. We're not just primitives. Primitives will do anything to avoid loss, but life is lost. And like I said, you get what you pay for. If you place your principles at a higher level in a way that's good for me and you, it's not just for me, it's for me and you. And you are not fitting that bill. That's a deal breaker. And I have to tolerate the loss otherwise. So at what point in the getting to know you process, should it start moving towards that couple bubble? In other words, you know, there is like, is it you wait till a year? Do you wait six months? Do you wait three months? When should two people, and I know this is subjective. So- It really is. And it's not a time thing. Okay, okay. It's because there are too many moving parts, too many factors on how experienced are these two people? How much experience have they had? If they're older, they're likely to be more authentic. Maybe, maybe not. And how ready are they for a serious relationship as defined by them, right? And are they living together? If you're living together, yeah, it's fair to start to think about how are we gonna do this? Living together is, again, teamwork, right? Yeah. How are we gonna do this? Travel together. That's a good way of pointing out whether you can get along, whether you can work together, whether you can, right? And so there are all sorts of ways to do this in measures without turning somebody off in the beginning and say, hey, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm just getting to know you, right? Yeah. All sorts of ways to do this. And the more strategic you are, the better. The more you know and study people, the better. Yeah. We got another question that came in. Why do I tend to attract men who have some type of mental health disorder? Well, it could be that you're dealing with the human primate, which is prone to have mental disorders as a species. It could be that. It could be, I don't know what mental disorders you're attracting. Well, we hear a lot. We hear a lot. Put that in, please. Put that with specifically mental disorder. Oh, put that with specifically. Well, I think the primary one I hear about all the time is narcissism. Narcissist, narcissist, narcissist. We hear that as the primary disorder. Yes, sometimes bipolar, sometimes borderline, but we hear narcissism like 24-7. I know. I'm not assuming that's what she said, but I'm gonna take a stab in the dark. It's a thing. It's bandied about like codependent. It's bandied about like aspergers or on the spectrum. These diagnostics were never intended for late people, by the way. Unfortunately, we're using them today as a cudgel, a way of batting people away and categorizing them because they're difficult, right? But fact is our culture is far in a way the most narcissistic to date than ever, ever, ever. So look at yourself in the mirror, folks. Geez. Sometimes it's the kettle called the, she called calling the kettle black. This is the age of narcissism. And it's absolutely, absolutely supported and encouraged by our culture, by our society. So deal with that. No, I'm glad you said that. I mean, and by the way, that was a tough thing to say. I should, and I'm not, I mean, only to suggest is, you know, I think we all, like I look at the list of what narcissism is. I'm like, well, I took off a few of those boxes, you know, yet I'd like to think I have empathy and I apologize incessantly because I'm human and I make mistakes. But, you know, it saddens me because in the lexicon today, there's just that conversation has so dominated the dating realm that it's a way to, I think avoid for some people to look at how they participated in the relationship by putting the blame all on the other person and not really looking how they contributed to whether they accepted bad behavior or whether they contributed to the relationship. I think in the dating realm, particularly, many people don't look inward and say, how was I the cause of what happened in this dynamic, you know, good or bad, and learn from those experiences, you know, and say, how can I grow? Because I think those people have a better chance of having a relationship that has some sort of cohesiveness than those that are avoiding, you know, taking ownership in their own part. Let me say something very important to level the field here. If you're a human primate, you're a pain in the ass, you are a burden, you are a difficult animal to live with. You are not low, you know, low needy, not low maintenance, nobody is low maintenance up close over time, nobody. That's a fallacy. Human primates are by nature and always has been, have been warlike, aggressive, moody, fickle, opportunistic, easily influenced by groups, and we otherize, we're xenophobic, racist, right? We otherize, and by pointing out narcissists, that is exactly in our nature, we otherize people. They're too different for us to get along with, right? And so we use whatever we can to externalize our pain. So here's how we operate. I'm unhappy, I don't know why I'm just so unhappy. Oh yeah, I just figured it out. It's you, that human nature, folks. By the way, there's a show on show time called couples therapy. I don't know if you've ever seen it. And I remember in the second season, the therapist said, you know, most couples come into a couples therapy session and they do this. It's the other person's fault, you know? And that's all people, by the way. Yeah, and so what I am a big proponent, what I talk about so much is the importance of doing your inner work, doing personal development, self-help, spiritual work, therapy, do introspective work, take ownership of where you participated in an ending of a relationship and ask yourself, do the tests of love attachment style, speak to a therapist, find out how you can be a better partner going forward, particularly in the area of communication because when you are an anxious person and you're with an avoidant, the most important thing is to communicate your needs, right? And are you with somebody who wants to support your needs and vice versa versus those that are going to avoid it? Before we wrap up, do you have any words for our audience? And then if you do, please share that and also how they can get in touch with you as well. If I were allowed in some world without getting arrested or sued to take you out there and bind your inner legs to your partner and you would have to do that for a week or a month, you would understand how this works. This is not what you think. This is an interdependent relationship having the same things to gain and the same things to lose or you shouldn't be doing it. You wouldn't be able to go to the bathroom together without working together. You wouldn't be able to get water. You wouldn't be able to do anything. If one of you moved too fast because you were bored, you'd both fall. So, or think of a potato sack race. Where would you be in the race? You're probably arguing at the start line. You don't go anywhere. That's on the two of you, not one of you. That's on both of you. It is a different ball game. It's a two-person psychological system where the formula must be, and this is hard, I have to take care of myself and you at the same time. Or you will see me as adversarial, full stop. That is the only way to do this. And it's hard because it takes tolerating pain, it takes discipline, and it takes co-creating rules of governance that we hold each other to, so that we protect each other from each other. In other words, we plan for our devils, not our angels. You know, first off, I will never cancel you for saying that. I just want you to know, I think that actually needs to be yelled at the top of, many of us are longs to express the importance of, look, what are we doing this for? Are we just having a good time? Are we actually exploring something deeper? And if we are, then let's make a commitment to that and do our best. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay too. But sadly, because of all of our neuroses and our behaviors and such, we have to learn this the hard way. Dr. Stan Tachkin, how can people get in touch with you? Easy, you can go to thepactinstitute.com, that's the P-A-C-T, institute.com. If you're in the mental health field, we do trainings all over the world. And if you are a couple, we do couple workshops, my wife and I, and we're gonna do a fabulous retreat. It's a five-star retreat in Portugal next year. So you'll find all of that at that website. Oh, I wanna get, well, first I need a partner and then I wanna go. And I wanna find out about your, Jonathan Craigslist. Okay, okay, I use match.com. I just wanna remind everyone of Dr. Stan Tachkin's book, Wired for Love, and there's a link below to get a copy. Also, he has a new book called In Each Other's Care. Can you show that really quickly? Oh, probably. Yeah, I want everyone to see this. I'll put a link below. Also, I'll make sure, there's his new book, In Each Other's Care. And I'll also put a link to connect with Dr. Stan Tachkin. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so much. We had a couple people say the following, where did some, we had some really nice comments. Jane wants to say thank you, Mr. Tachkin. Thank you, Jonathan. We're getting a lot of great feedback. You were really a blessing, the work you're doing out there. And I just wanna thank you for being on. I really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. I'm a true believer, by the way. Okay. Everyone, I'm gonna wrap up this video, as I always do. First off, give myself a big gigantic Jonathan Bear hug. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love. I'm asking you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow, and give either of them a hug of love, because hugs are a great source of love. And Stan, I'm reaching out to give you a hug as well. Thank you so much. I'll give you a kiss, Jonathan. All right, thank you. Bye, everyone.