 Well hello Dr. Glover, it's been a long time since you've been on our show and we're thrilled to have you back because the subject of passive communication hasn't went anywhere. In fact, we still recommend your books to our clients because they're relevant to the situation that they are facing which is why am I not achieving at work, why am I not achieving in dating, why am I not achieving in my own personal life and the reason being that it is communication problems, specifically passive communication. So Dr. Glover, welcome. It's good to be back with you guys, you know I've got a real history with you guys because you know back in the day your dating podcast I think was like the first podcast I ever listened to when I was trying to learn how to date and I still remember you know you know like running laps in the park next to my house with headphones on listening listening to your podcast and then just you know a couple years later it's like I was on your podcast and then hanging out with you guys in Tennessee a few years ago oh yeah that was fun that was so much fun. Well our clients have thoroughly enjoyed your book and had a ton of great transformational results in the way they communicate and also breaking some of the patterns that have held them back and this idea of nice guy syndrome I'd love to start there and just unpack that for our audience because many feel being nice is the way to get what you want out of life and yet they find themselves again and again being left behind. Yeah of course and as you guys shared with me you have women in your audience as well and so my work has evolved to where I primarily work with men but nice guy syndrome applies to women as well you know a lot of nice girls out there in fact many of us nice guys were trained to be nice guys by our nice girl mothers and so yeah it's been around so you know I was one of those people that for most of my life thought you know I told me I'm a nice guy I'm one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet and I thought why why doesn't everybody be that way why isn't everybody as kind and caring and generous and helpful and peaceful you know as I you know I valued myself to be and primarily I was trying to be different from my father who wasn't a bad man but you know yet his moods and he was demanding and he could be critical and my mom kept saying I'm raising my sons to be different from their father and so I was trying to be different and different and all the bad men I heard you know angry feminists complain about in the 60s and 70s when I was just becoming an adolescent and so I thought yeah I'll be that good guy I'll be the good guy and women will like me because you know mom complains about my dad the women complain about the bad men they'll they'll like me and and so I would I would use what I call nice guy seduction you know when I was a teenager and into college I you know I would never go you talk about direct communication I I wouldn't directly communicate with a woman I I would have got to watch her from afar you know maybe maybe see if I could sit next to her in class and then you know raise my hand and answer as many questions as I could from the teacher or professor to show her how smart I am and maybe I you know I would ask her an indirect question or maybe I'd help her do something or you know just be nice and maybe if I ever got the nerve up I might say I don't I don't guess you'd want to go out with me sometime would you and you know that's as indirect as you can be and so I was in my early 30s in my second marriage and my second wife said to me you know I this is something that made no sense to me she said you need to get help she said you know everybody thinks you're such a nice guy but you're not you can be passive aggressive you can be hurtful you embarrass me you say mean things to me you have these victim pukes that you know where your your resentments build up and and so you know I actually went and joined a 12-staff group and got a therapist trying to figure out why me being a nice guy didn't make my wife love me and appreciate me and want to have sex with me and being a good mood and luckily fortunately I landed in some really good environments to really start taking a good look at myself and and so to kind of then bring that forward to your question a nice guy nice girl is a person who inaccurately internalized at a really young age three weeks three months three years old in accurately internalized information they believed about themselves in the world based on the experiences they had with their parents you know any abandonment experience anytime they're in pain uncomfortable anything that was hurtful to a child which most things are they internalize that's my fault there must be something wrong with me and and almost everybody internalizes these kind of messages but everybody deals with them differently but for the nice guy nice girl is there okay you know there's something wrong with me mom gets mad at me dad is this you know they they react so I'll try to become what I think they want me to be and I'll hide anything that seems to get negative reactions and we're not thinking that out at three months old three years old is an emotional response and because of that it gets wired in the emotional part of our brain the the fight flight freeze fawn amygdala down on the brainstem that records this emotional memory and this this is how we how we survived now what the only real problem with this is that we grow into adolescence and then adulthood and those internalized emotional messages that there's something wrong with me and if I'm going to get my needs met be liked and loved I've got to become what other people want me to be and and for nice guys let's be a nice guy you know don't rock the boat go along to get along be generous be pleasing be helpful and hide anything about me that might get a negative reaction and for nice guys that's usually hiding our wants and needs and our sexuality so we put the all of those things way way way down below the surface to where we're not even aware you know we bury our own sexuality we bury our own wants and needs because we're afraid it if if people saw those things about us they'll hurt us they'll reject us though they'll abuse us they'll leave us so that's the whole dynamic that's underneath the nice guy syndrome is that I'm not good enough just as I am I got to become what I think other people want me to be hide anything from them that might get a negative reaction okay now you you open up a can of worms we got a lot to go through there there's tons of stuff there so so let's let's start with letting people know who are having a an inverse reaction to this idea of being called a nice guy because anytime that we bring this up or I we write a post on it somebody always has to post that they're upset and they're angry because they've been called a nice guy and there's nothing wrong with being nice and and that being nice has got them where they are now and they hate all the mean people out there so let's yeah put this term in a in a bow and present it in a way that people can understand why we're discussing it why it was what it was termed this way and and how it is being a hindrance rather than helpful yeah you know cuz people will ask me you know Robert you know the title of your book no more mr. nice guy has that gotten push back that gotten blowback I said really it hasn't I think my publishers hoped it would but it really didn't happen and but the book is still done very well anyway in spite of not getting initial you know blowback but yeah the title if you think about it you know if you just get real logical with it why would somebody write a book teaching men to be not nice there's enough not nice men out there and we don't need a book to teach more men to be nice and and and of course one thing that I found especially in men but especially in nice guys is real black and white thinking we think well if we're not this were that there's only there's only the two alternatives and and so we think well if I'm not the nice guy you know if I'm not the the pleasing caring avoid conflict you know try to treat everybody nice guy the only alternatives be the asshole jerk you know be be like you know those those those a-holes that you know what we don't want to be like and that we all we've heard women complained about all our life so that's what we get to thinking well that's the only alternative now the whole first chapter well maybe second chapter but early on in no more mr. nice guy I talk about what is wrong with being a nice guy because yeah like me I thought why wouldn't everybody want to be like me I'm a nice guy and the there's a lot of side effects of being a nice guy with perhaps the most significant one is that nice guys are in authentic which means they're not honest and and which is really a big surprise the most nice guys could we think I don't tell lies but do do you tell people what you really feel what you really think what you really want you let them see the real you are you a what you see is what you get kind of person are you a lick your finger up and hold it see which way the wind's blowing and then go that are you different with this group of people then you're with that group of people are you a chameleon if all those apply you're not honest because honesty just means you are who you are and people get to see who you are and know what you feel and know what you think and know where you're going and know what's important to you know you have wants and know you have needs and you communicate them clearly and and you're not you have no shame about that but nice guys have shame about all of those things so again we're chameleons and going back to you know my my my second wife said you got you know if you don't go get some help I'm gonna leave you and and really just what she was saying is your nice guy stuff yeah everybody thinks you're nice but your nice guy stuff's coming out these really indirect ways that are hurtful you know the passive aggressive behavior and again the victim puke try we just let my resentments build up for so and my second wife gave that name to that where I would just you know they would build up until finally something you know and I would just blow up all those little conversations I've been rehearsing in my head you know staying awake at night oh I'm gonna say this I'm gonna say that all of it would come out right all of it would come out and it wasn't pretty and I remember there you know from time to time my my then wife would say how long has been bothering you six months year maybe and she would say did ever cross your mind to tell me this was bothering you and I think and I go no actually it never crossed my mind I rehearsed plenty of conversations in my head but I never thought to say to you hey this is bothering me can we talk about it can we address it can we work on it because I just assumed if I did that you know she'd go ballistic she she she would want to talk about anything that might be bothering me especially if it was related to her behavior but that's not about her that's that was my stuff so that's just interpersonal stuff where nice guy stuff comes out but I've got an online class I've been teaching for 20 years in fact Barnes and Noble had me develop it when my book was just coming out called nice guys don't finish last they rot in middle management and because because nice guys you know in the workplace I say nice guys are often good at being good but not great at being great you know we're pleasing enough and conscientious enough we we want to do a good enough job to get that external approval and validation but to really be willing to risk to take a chance to rock the boat to focus on what's important to you to live with your passion to follow your purpose most nice guys won't do that so you know we do well enough but often you know not great and I've had to deal with that I mean I've done well enough in life and sometimes you know over the last let's say you know five to ten years I have to pinch myself because I can't believe my life is so damn good and the reason it's gotten so damn good is that I am taking risks I am going for what I want I am recruiting people to help me get the things done and you know it's a whole different paradigm and I'm not getting codependent and wasting a lot of time fixing everybody else's problems or solving their stuff which that's a big thing that happens in the workplace and in relationship for nice guys they get codependent and we'll invest a lot of time and energy on other people's issues or problems when we could be investing that time and energy in what's more significant for us so it manifests in a lot of different ways that and then somewhere that we'll need to talk about sex I'll stop for a minute well certainly black and white thinking is one of those cognitive distortions we see it in our clients as well that it's either you're nice or you're an asshole or you're a jerk and of course people don't want to be seen that way there's another one another cognitive distortion around mind reading that's going on here and you said with your ex-wife you would think if I say this then you're gonna she's gonna think this she's gonna react this way so you avoid it you sweep it under the rug and you think you're reading other people's minds and then managing their feelings for them and in actuality they don't know who you are and the deception that you're you're communicating to them actually makes people like you less and I think that's a really hard realization for a lot of quote unquote nice people to realize that your lack of authenticity your lack of being genuine expressing your wants and needs actually makes people like you a lot less they can't trust you they can't put faith in you they don't know how you're gonna react and you on the outside put on this fake smile pretend like everything's fine and people around you they see you getting taken advantage of they see you not reacting to these situations and subconsciously they're like well I can't trust this person I don't want to put my faith in this person if they're gonna react that way when clearly they should be speaking up clearly they should be telling me that something's wrong I mean you're so right on and in in no more mr. nice guy I talk about nice guys being teflon and and you know nothing sticks to teflon which means how do you have a relationship with teflon and and I make the point that people don't connect with each other around perfection they people people connect with each other around are rough edges you know that I just had a workshop here in my house this weekend and it's a friday through sunday these guys they always leave so connected and so bonded and you guys have seen that when you've done retreats and workshops and the reason why is everybody talks about their problems their issues was not working where they're unhappy where they're stuck and you hear other people talking about the exact same stuff you're struggling with and where you're stuck and and then you go oh I'm not alone I can open up I as one person reveals another person reveals and another and all of a sudden you realize you know what I don't think they're messed up or defective because they got rough edges or they don't have it all together and we start realizing other people don't think that about us either and it is those rough edges it's our imperfections it's our flaws that but our willingness to be able to just be open about that that lets people get close to us I mean I don't want to be next to a perfect person I want to be next to a person that's got some layers to them some some some interesting things some surprises about them and if we're keeping all of that packed away um yeah and that whole mind-reading thing I'll give you a quick story because I'm creating a video series of classes and I just put this in a in a video just last week an example when I first started going to therapy really early on I started working with the woman therapist she's a little bit older than me then I worked with her for years and did groups with her and she really liked men I mean she advocated for men and um I remember maybe just a second or third session with her I was telling her I was complaining I was being a victim because I was a nice guy and nice guys tend to do that and I was complaining about my then second wife and and say you know she she could just talk forever and ever and it's just the same old thing and she'll go on and on and I'm just tired of listening to her just because yeah but and and the therapist said to me you don't have to listen I mean that just I was like a big stick up side the head and I said say say say that again and she said just because a woman wants to talk doesn't mean you have to listen and I go no you're wrong it's carved in stone if a woman wants to talk you have to listen and you have to listen until she's done talking I mean my mother trained me that I mean not a good teacher and she said no it's actually more authentic is more loving to let her know you're not interested or you're not available then it is to pretend to be interested to pretend to listen or to try to fix and solve the problem so she'll quit talking about it or to get distracted by every little thing going on around you and I said you don't know you don't know my wife that's not going to go over well but you know I was tired of just I mean hours maybe starting at 11 o'clock at night she wants to have a conversation that could go till you know till the break of dawn and and so I finally got the nerve like I said this is really early in my nice guy recovery work and and she started in on something and I mean I wasn't as clear and direct as I could have been but hey you know first time you know I I said hey I said and I just need to tell you I'm really tired I really don't have the bandwidth to listen I what I what would be more honest is I have no fucking interest in this thing you're talking about you know and and because I've heard it so many times and but I I don't have enough bandwidth to listen and you know in my nice guy mind she's gonna go ballistic roof's coming off I mean this isn't gonna go over well and she just said okay and walked away I'm thinking wow well that's not even the end of the story a little bit later she comes back and thanks me she said thank you for telling me you weren't available to listen I went and called a girlfriend and you know I got it all worked out it's all good I'm going why didn't I realize this 30 years ago that you know you don't just have to sit in it so whether whether it's you know listening to someone talk when you're not really interested in you're pretending to be which is inauthentic but just not assuming and not doing that mind reading that you're talking about and being clearer and being transparent and being completely honest not in an asshole way but just honest I I didn't have the bandwidth to listen to her talk that was honest listening to her talk when I didn't want to would have been dishonest and people in a relationship with us want to know our wants and needs and our emotions so I've come to find that to be true yes exactly hiding that pretending they don't exist elevating someone else's over your own is doing a disservice to the relationship and it's breeding distrust and ultimately resentment because the other person doesn't actually feel like you care like you're being genuine and authentic and I think that's really tough so one of the other areas that we see a lot of nice people people please are struggling with is generosity and hey I bought her for dinners I took her out around the town I mean we had a client who was like I the women in New York are must be foodies because I'm taking them to Michelin star restaurants on the first date second date I've gone on six dates and she says on the seventh date I'm actually not that interested in you I'm seeing other people yeah and he was sure I'm eating well yeah you know I'm enjoying all the spots let's dive let's dive into that because this tees up well something in the book that I call covert contracts and most people that read the book come away and say that was like the most informative piece because it really puts a spotlight on the kind of behavior that you're talking about and this is a core a core staple of nice guy's syndrome and covert contract just means covert means is hidden it's not in the open it's indirect it's even unconscious oftentimes nice guys are not aware of their own covert contract and I promise you the other people on the other end of the contract have no fucking clue that it exists so basically nice guys have three primary covert contracts and for every nice guy one might be more prominent than the other but most have these three and the first one is if I'm a good guy I will be liked and loved and and and add to that for us men and and the women I want to have sex with will want to have sex with me if I'm that good guy now you know what does that even mean if I'm a good guy but and you were the scorekeeper of that well if I'm generous if I don't argue if I'm not you know if I don't say hurtful things if I never ask for what I want that'll make me a good guy if I'm different from my father if I'm different than those bad I don't make me a good guy and then everybody will like me and love me now all of these all of these covert contracts have deep flaws to them number one nobody's all good right and number two nobody likes everybody I mean I don't like everybody no matter how good of people I don't like everybody so there's no way that you're going to be universally liked and there is no way in spite of what men tend to read on the internet there is no way that every woman you want to have sex with is going to want to have sex with you there is no magic bullet and a nice guy's seduction is actually the worst possible way to try to get that to happen so but yes what happens is this giving to get the strings attached kind of stuff the if then if I'm a good guy then I'll be liked and loved um is what one of the things that makes nice guys so so dishonest and so untrustworthy is because there's strings attached this is actually manipulation if you think about it okay then the second covert contract talk about manipulation is if I meet other people's needs without them having to ask so in other words I read their mind I give to them what I think they might want to receive if I meet other people's needs without them having to ask then they will read my mind and give me what I need without me having to ask now again deep flaws in this because number one giving to other people so they'll like us and give back is codependency right it is it is manipulative and the other people don't know that the contract exist and that they're supposed to be reading our mind too and giving back now some other real deep flaws in terms of this covert contract for nice guys is often they pick people who not only do they not know the covert contract exist they're often not very equipped to give much back you know if you go out and pick a fixer upper of a woman oh you know she's depressed or you know she just got fired from her job because you don't get along with anybody or she has money problems or you know she's you know whatever her issues are oh I can fix that I'll do this you know I can I can help make her car payment I'll listen to her talk about her problems I'll be there for her I'll do this and usually what we're picking is people that are not highly functional in themselves and we think if we get them fixed up we'll have this diamond in the rough and then they'll they'll get back to me but the truth is they don't have much to give back because they're not even good at functioning at at least a medium or a high level themselves now it gets even worse remember I said that nice guys hide things well as I said what we hide is our needs and our wants because most guys nice guys believe we are bad for having needs and wants the people are going to respond negatively to our needs and wants that or that everybody else's needs and wants are more important than my own which that actually makes us really terrible receivers and this is maybe this is maybe one of the biggest pieces I've had to work on in my nice guy work I think I think being honest was probably number one but learning to give to myself to let other people give to me to practice receiving to surround myself with people who want to give to me and who are capable and me being clear and asking for what I want not being subtly manipulative so that they'll guess what I want or need to give it to me I've learned to ask for what I want hey can you do this you know and just if they can't great if they can't find other resources for whatever that is so covert contract number two really really spins up that resentment and nice guys and and guys will say well how do you know if I is this just being nice and generous and kind or is it a covert contract which is a really good question because it does take some time and some consciousness to kind of you know part that apart but one of the best way to tell that if it's a covert contract is that you start feeling resentful, unappreciated, giving more than you get you know done to those those are signs that probably you have covert contracts okay then the third one is if I do everything right then I will have a smooth problem free life now again nobody does everything right I mean you know every great religious book basically says we're all sinners we're all flawed we're all imperfect you know none of us none of us you know are good enough and so we're not going to do everything right and again we're the scorekeeper of that I did that right I did that right I got a big scoreboard in my living room I did that right I did that right and so I should have a smooth problem free life and this is a covert contract we tend to make with God right with the universe look God I'm a good guy you know how come I don't have a girlfriend how how come I have a crappy job how come I drive a crappy car how come you know this stuff keeps happening to me and you know I keep getting with people that treat me badly life should be good I'm doing everything right well life is not smooth and problem free I mean just look at COVID-19 right life is not smooth and problem free and so if we have this almost Peter Panish infantile belief oh I'll do everything right and then everything will be smooth it's a very immature way of living life because the truth is the challenges and difficulties in life are our best learning tool and if we can say great this I'm so great I'm glad this is happening I get to grow I get to evolve I I get to be matured I get to be refined by this struggle rather than saying I don't want struggle I want everything smooth and you know I don't know if you guys but I've never found a relationship with a woman to be smooth it just never has worked that way for me as much as I've wanted them to be that way and I've never found life in general to be smooth now life can be damn good but smooth is a completely different thing I'm so glad you brought up this example with COVID because I think it sets it gives us a different area to look at that we can all understand because it's so near to us it's still at the moment where I had seen on social media so many people upset that they had got COVID and they're like I wear the masks everywhere I had my vaccine I didn't go out I wash everything I and they like I followed the rules and they were so upset and like nature doesn't nature follows its own rules right you're not going to be impervious and you're not going to defeat nature and and I like that example because we can all relate to that there's always something in our lives or like I follow all the rules how's this happening to me and and and of course with the spectrum that that that is life and our personalities and everything that comes with that nothing is set in stone we sway back and forth but if you look at the COVID example there's probably areas in everyone's lives where we've said that to ourselves where we've had a covert contract and and didn't even realize it until it was articulated for us I think and that's why so many men had a jarring aha moments in reading your book because they never heard the covert contract articulated out loud and when they read that they went oh no that's me and the way your book is written and this is why I love giving it to people because everyone's like oh I'll check this out no miss no mr nice guy that's a nice title and so they're reading it and there there's there's the way it is written and I had this experience where you're just nodding along oh yeah I understand that oh yeah I understand that oh yeah I understand that and then when the covert contracts that you're like oh no I've done that right and now you have to accept that you have done that and these are areas in your life where you are guilty of carrying that contract you have nice guy tendencies like everybody does and if now you can now that you've identified it in your honest with yourself you can now begin fixing this but if you continue to lie to yourself and those around you you will be perpetually stuck in as you mentioned rotting and middle management well there's there's one other point that I want to showcase and that's what you just walked through those three contracts if you think about the amount of effort and energy that you have to expend outwardly oh on someone I don't have to think about it yeah you end up naturally with the very small social circle with very few opportunities whether it's in your dating life you're pining over one girl who you have multiple covert contracts with or your friend group you have a very small friend group who you're keeping score with who you're constantly being generous with it's just really hard to maintain a lot of relationships if you have this web of covert contracts and one of the first things we point out to our clients is that just get some more options meet some more people instead of getting so hung up on a covert contract with this one woman who you sat next to in class for two semesters or your neighbor never thought about right who you thought about for hours on end and brought chicken noodle soup when she was sick get some more options open the app go to the meet-up group try to find some new people in your life who would like you for you instead of trying to change this one person and get this one person to like you more get this one person to fulfill your needs get this one person to actually want to sleep with you all that effort and energy around carrying these covert contracts it's exhausting and i think a lot of people when they read the book and they actually break free of it there's a load lifted off their shoulders of like wow these expectations i've put on myself others don't put on me in fact others find them to be a burden and that's why they're running away from me that's why they don't want to spend time with me that's why i'm not invited to the party because they know that oh i'm going to show up with the gift expecting to be celebrated expecting to be treated a certain way as if i want a great bottle of wine thing yeah you know you've hit the nail on the head with this and and can i give your listeners a good tool to help them yeah with what you were just talking about because i said i just got done with the workshop here this weekend eight guys here from around the world really and something that i do at a lot of my workshops and and i you know i've done a lot of personal work on myself for the last 30 years and i attribute that work to you know why why my life seems to be firing on all cylinders in so many ways i'm not saying my life's perfect i almost died four years ago i i had a tumor blocking my small intestine that nobody could figure out what was wrong with me so for about four months i lost over 30 pounds i was in constant pain i couldn't sleep i had no clue what was going on so my life hadn't perfect but thankfully found the right person that found it fixed it took it out and and and for the last four years it's like i've been on fire because you know when you almost die when you when you surrender into death life gets a lot more meaningful so it's kind of like all right you know i i only got so much time left let's live it so here's but here's a tool there's a simple tool that i credit with you know a lot of the success personal success i have in life not just business success but life success i call it cooperative reciprocal relationships but basically is this i i have everybody take a big piece of paper and in the middle of this like a big poster board piece of paper draw a stick figure that's you and and draw a bucket you know just a you know a container on the stick figure that's your bucket that's what needs to get filled for for you to be happy to be energized optimistic to be attractive to other people that's got to get filled regularly now what happens if we have covert contracts we're given to get and and and we're not given to ourselves in a healthy way and nobody nobody's giving back because they don't know they were expected to and we've surrounded ourselves with people that probably aren't very capable of giving and if they do try to give we don't let them because we have shame about receiving so the the cooperative reciprocal relationship c r r's as i'll call them are just that they're cooperative meaning that everybody involved wants to be there and the reciprocal in that everybody involves getting something of value out of the relationship now so i have the people you know draw their stick figure which is them on this piece of paper and draw a bunch of circles on the paper and draw a two-ended arrow two pointed arrow between them and each circle so the the arrow points to the other person or the other thing and points back as well so that that means there's every you know the whatever's in that circle and them are both getting value of of that relationship existing and then i have them uh there's three parts to the exercise it's really simple but first part first page is that they list all of the cooperative reciprocal relationships they currently have now this that lists all their friends so list all the people in your life could be some family members friends and give everybody their own circle don't just put the word friends in one circle because it's good to know all right here's all my friends because maybe we realize you know that person i love that person and i love being with them and i haven't even called them in six months okay well they're not much of a resource for us if we never call them if we never have contact with them and just talking to them is a resource it fills us and when and it fills them otherwise they probably wouldn't be our friend and you know we they wouldn't be their friend so people fill it up with the people in your life associates friends family partners and then and in circles put professionals your coach your personal trainer your chiropractor your dentist your accountant your attorney you know whatever whoever you pay to help you have a better life like for example i have an accountant that i pay 550 bucks a month and he's like my favorite person on the planet because he i don't have to do anything when it comes to accounting he does it all and i love that because i hate accounting so he's one of my crs now even if we pay them he gets benefit because he's getting money i get benefit because i don't have stressed about doing my accounting and taxes and i don't get behind and owe the money to the irs and all that kind of stuff so we both get benefit out of it you guys with each other that's a cooperative reciprocal relationship both as friends and as business associates you both get value out of the relationship you and i have a cooperative reciprocal relationship i like doing interviews um i know it'll probably benefit sales of my book you guys like and i like helping people you guys like helping people as well so you have people like me come on your show and do interviews we're all getting value out of it or we wouldn't be doing it okay so we can add professionals to to this page so it's getting bigger add practices to this page going to the gym meditation chi gong walking in the park taking your dog for a walk any practice that also fills your bucket and you might say well that's not really another person that's getting something back but i think if we do these practices and they fill our bucket that's giving back to the world i think the world's a better place if we go to the gym regularly if we practice some meditation if we read some you know self-help or spiritual books and we keep i think that gives back now i say i'll throw some play on this page as well some things you can do to play and just relax and enjoy and have a good life now so what you start doing as you see this page these are the resources that i have and i remember i was doing this in one workshop and i said well robert how how many how many circles should we have i can be kind of flippant i said let's shoot for a hundred you know i mean he had like shock i mean maybe he had seven i don't know and and i said you know actually yeah shoot for a hundred why not why not have a hundred people professionals practices that are there in your life filling your bucket because as you guys were saying most of us have what what it's called in in my profession fused relationships meaning we get involved with one person like okay you know i i like i want that girl like me because i like her and let's say we even get her to like us and so now you know we focus all our energy and just you know being with her and giving to her and maybe she focuses her in and it's like we give up everything else is important to us we give up all our crrs and in a fused relationship the mentality is um you belong to me therefore you should you're my girlfriend therefore you should want to have sex with me whenever i want to have sex you're my girlfriend therefore you know you shouldn't talk to other guys or you know she's saying well you're you're my boyfriend therefore you should listen to me talk for hours and hours even if you're not interested you know you're my you belong to me and this all begins in family is is part of religion is part of culture we're like okay you know it's being part of the the matrix that you know the board where you can just assimilate you know you you belong to them there's no you but in in what we're talking about now if the crrs these are called differentiated relationships this is mature adult saying do i want to be here or not do i want to be a part of this or not and everybody's doing that in our crrs so page one is just to make us aware what are all of our resources we have and how can we use them more effectively to keep filling our bucket up and and you know most of your listeners probably have heard of mark manson um you know he's pretty famous with his book subtle art and that gave me a fuck but his first book models you know it was kind of you know got him on the map and people used to always write me emails robert do you know mark manson you know mark manson he mentions you in his book and um and but the main theme of that book was in terms of being authentic was women is don't be needy because needy is repulsive um being full and overflowing is attractive and actually when i was sick and dying i thought well i think i'll read mark mansons book now find out what he says about me it's in it's in the epilogue it's at the very end of the book and he said some very nice things about me which and when his when subtle art of not giving a fuck came out that probably sold a lot of books for me when people went bought his other book and read that so i'm grateful to mark so page one what what circles do we have now this page also helps inform us what what was missing what do i need so that's where page two comes in same thing stick figure of a guy bucket circles and in page two these circles are what are some crrs we need to add to our life now i did i did the i do this in workshops all the time and i was doing it maybe about five years ago in a small workshop and i said i need a men's program i i just need to be in a men's group of some sort because i'm in mexico i feel isolated i'm in my first year of marriage the marriage is kind of struggling in some ways i want you know i really want to show up but i need support and i need a new accountant and i need a financial advisor because i'm starting to do well enough that my taxes are going up and i need to save for retirement so i identified those well as soon as we got done with the exercise a guy in the workshop walks up and says robert i'm in this men's program with this guy named john wineland who studied with david david for like 10 12 years and we have these retreats and i go i'm in sign me up so all i had to do is identify it and like within seconds it came to me i you know i found a men's program i've been in it over four years now i found a new accountant i don't remember i don't remember how that happened i got a new accountant who's just like i said i love him a financial advisor i'm at another workshop a few months later a guy walks up to me said robert i was a workshop with you 10 years ago your book changed my life i'm here again at this workshop you know you've blessed my life i want to bless your life i'm a financial advisor i want to help you i thought how cool is that well i did my due diligence checked his references flew my wife and i who doesn't even speak english up to san francisco i just wanted to sit with him i just wanted to feel his vibration and energy to see could we trust him with our money and and and she loves in fact i'm talking to him at two o'clock this afternoon my time so that's that came along so page two is what do you need do you need a personal trader do you need a dentist i always ask guys how long it's been since you've been to the dentist and if it's if it's over a year that probably means you don't have a dentist so find a dentist right add that i need a dentist and again whether it's an accountant whether there's more friends you know as a men's group put that on page two page three is also important page three are the relationships we currently have that are not particularly cooperative or reciprocal maybe it's a buddy from college that you know we've kind of outgrown them they're still drinking and you know partying and we've kind of moved on to a more sober lifestyle maybe it's a family member there's a boundary invader and you know all they do is consume and suck the life out of us maybe it's our partner maybe we're in a relationship maybe it's a business partner that you know it's just it hasn't been working for a while so page three says these are the relationships i either need to go have a conversation with them and let them know this isn't working is there a way we can do it different renegotiate whatever that is or cut it off and move on prune it back to create room for more more beneficial stuff to come in to be part of your page one so this this is a simple exercise and if people will take the 20 minutes to do it all of a sudden it starts saying i'm responsible for my needs and i'm responsible for giving to me and i'm responsible for surrounding myself with people who want to give to me and i'm responsible for being clear with them what i'd like from them and then all of a sudden that bucket is full and is overflowing and you're thinking damn life is good that doesn't mean it's perfect but damn it's good i think the struggle for many who are dealing with this nice guy nice gal syndrome is that the first page tends to be a little bit blank and the third page tends to be not so full but they don't often realize just how much effort and energy they are expending on these fused relationships on these relationships that just aren't working why because of their people pleasing nature they're also conflict averse right yeah so what you talked about saying to someone hey this isn't working can we try something new or saying to someone you know what this is a new boundary that i have to establish i've done dr glover's work i've read this great book i realized that i got to start putting some of my wants and needs out into the universe and i'm not getting them in this relationship alarm bells are ringing this is going to be an argument this is going to be a conflict and oftentimes the reason you ended up in this nice guy nice gal situation is you've avoided conflict you've tried your best to sweep it under the rug to work around it to to be like water just avoid it at all costs and in doing so the inevitable conflict that then arises when you establish a boundary when you tell someone hey i want to communicate differently or hey this just flat out isn't working for me um we often don't have the tools to handle those conversations so i'd love to unpack that if you find that page three is full and your bucket is empty you know i didn't talk to my mother and father for 15 years at an earlier stage in life mainly because i did start learning about boundaries and um and there was some just dysfunctional things going on in my family as a whole i was starting to you know i was in therapy starting to pay attention to things and and um the example is my mother every time i talked to her wanted to complain to me about my father you know intimate details of their marriage that that she now i've been listening to her since i was you know old enough to sit and listen to her and um and so in my 30s i started saying to my mom i love you i like talking to you uh you we can talk about anything but you know i'm gonna put a limit on talking about dad and that that upset her you know you know we had a 30-something year contract where you know she could talk about my dad complained about dad and i would listen and and then i would try to not be like my dad um and so you know i kept every time every time i talked to her we were on the phone she'd bring up my father mom no i'm gonna stop you you know i'll talk to you uh when but we're not talking about dad and she was you're telling me what we can talk about no we can't talk about anything just not dad and then later my therapist says you're being controlling because you won't let me talk about whatever i want i go i have no fucking clue what you told your therapist or what your therapist actually said to you but i'm not trying to control you i just don't want to talk about that he's my dad you know i you're still married to him um you know talk to your therapist about dad and then she would get mad and she would cry and she'd push through it and get passive aggressive and i invited my dad and her to come to therapy and my dad begins the therapy session i'm a therapist right begins therapy session telling the therapist this stuff is like jim jones getting people to drink the kool-aid and i'm going dad this is what i do for a living um in case you didn't know you know i went got a phd in this stuff and then you know and i was trying to bring up the boundary stuff and i said dad do you realize that your wife since since i was a child has regularly sat and complained about you to us children and is still doing it to this very day and it's why i'm setting a boundary that i keep telling her you're my dad i don't want to listen to her complain and he goes what is this pick on mom day you know i'm going uh and then my mom just sits there and cries i'm like i'm thinking so family is that a great so anyway 15 years i didn't talk to him i just had set a boundary and um later on before before my father passed away in 2009 i reached out to him and just express some gratitudes i had for some things he'd taught me and things he'd done with the music boy and he and i kind of reconnected and to the degree that he's able to have a connection and then so when he had a stroke in 2009 um he and i were on good terms and i'm grateful for that and then so uh his hospital was two blocks from my office and so for the next two weeks plus through the hospital and in hospice i'm with my mother every day and we hashed out we had those conversations about what went on what happened what we need from each other i mean we're both sitting there with the dying her husband my dad and and we we went deep and we talked about stuff and we we got through it and so that's you know this 2022 i'm not good at math but you know it was 12 13 years ago and uh she was just down at my house here in Puerto Vallarta for a week she just flew home a couple days ago i tried to get up and see her you know up in seattle a couple times every other month or so and i we have a boundary loving supportive relationship and and i'm grateful for the time i have with her because i may not be a lot longer but it took having those hard conversations and having boundaries and even removing ourselves from people as necessary now it doesn't always require 15 years i'm not talking to somebody now i'll give you another example personal example i just had with my wife yesterday um my wife's mexican um doesn't speak a lot of english understand some but we speak all in spanish so i my spanish has had to get you know at least conversational um but she's the typical jealous latina and she's been abandoned and or cheated on by every man every man she's ever known from starting with daddy have been a serial philanderer serial cheater i've asked her have you ever known a man who was faithful no that doesn't exist you know you know women are always trying to get you know other women's men away from them and what man would turn down the offer you know the woman spreading her legs so of course if a woman does that so throughout our marriage she's frequently accused me of things or if she notices women noticing me she'll get mad at me about that and so she's gotten much better and i've gotten much better at not reacting we've really done a lot of work our relationship is very very um enjoyable exciting and and we've worked through that but it's not gone it's a deep core wound for my wife but she and i are in a place where right now we went and did a ayahuasca retreat in november down in costa rica and both did the plant medicine and it just transformed us we've been so open and honest and sharing and revealing and our and our mantra is let's work together to help each other clear out every fear and shame that we have so she has a fear that i notice some other woman i'm gonna sleep with her want to be with her and abandon my wife right that's her deep fear from childhood and it comes out in these dysfunctional ways and accusing me of stuff so she's been you know the there's a house right next to ours or a rental house and it has few people living in it and a young woman occasionally comes out on her balcony which is i'm i'm sitting out in my backyard because i live in mexico i'm gonna sit next to the pool and enjoy being outside and she comes out talks on the phone on her balcony so of course my wife thinks she's doing that to get my attention and of course i'm going to go sleep with her i mean that's just how her mind goes and i've learned it took me a while you know defending myself vindicating myself arguing facts trying to prove something doesn't change that deep emotional fear so just yesterday because it came up again and we were sitting here in my office on my couch and i said i would like to help you i would like for the two of us to work on this deep fear because i know it's painful for you to think you know every woman that walks in front of me i'm going to sleep with them and leave you that's got to be amazingly painful and i said i want you and i to keep seeing what kind of plan we can come up with that to help release that fear so that you're not burdened with it and it doesn't you know trigger me and and so that was a negotiation instead of saying stop doing that you know or go to therapy which i've said both and but to say can we work together on this to help you find ways to deal with that deep-seated fear because i don't want you to be afraid all the time because i'm not going anywhere and i'm where i want to be i'm with you and so how can we work on this together and and she was she was so grateful for that and felt loved by that that i'm wanting to work with her on that instead of just saying you need to you know quit being jealous you know i haven't done anything you know which i saying that over and over again hasn't changed her fear i haven't done anything yeah you never do anything well i don't actually so that that goes nowhere so we've we've had conversations but i don't think i could have had that kind of conversation many years ago let's say hey there's a problem here how can we work together on it how can we be a team on this how can we do this openheartedly with love and and and help each other these fears and shame that you're talking about you know being alone that's a very strong driver in our behavior yeah and for nice guys and nice gals you do that three-sheet exercise and we see this with our x-factor accelerator members all the time you start to realize that okay sheet three is full of people that are not in relationships that are serving me sheet one is pretty empty i don't have something filling my bucket i don't have hobbies and passions i'm pursuing i don't have these cooperative reciprocal relationships that really fill me up that make me feel good and what they end up doing is ruminating on page three and what we work on with all of our clients is let's focus on page one let's get you moving your body let's get you enjoying some hobbies maybe it does require a little bit of therapy to unwind some patterns to get you moving and feeling good but the more emphasis you put on page one getting that professional support building some new social connections some hobbies that fill your bucket the easier those difficult conversations with page three become because you're coming at it with a stronger frame you now are someone who has more options and if we know anything from negotiations those who are able to walk away from the table well they end up winning the negotiation so these unhealthy relationships these boundaries with your family members these boundaries with your best friend who's still drinking and partying comes a lot easier when you're feeling good when you have a few other options on the apps in terms of dates you have a new social circle that's burgeoning because you started that bowling league and you joined the kickball team so getting social getting new community seeking new relationships it's counterintuitive but it actually helps your existing relationships it unwinds this web and this entanglement of neediness and a victimhood and passive aggressive behavior that's created these unhealthy relationships in the first place yes yes to all of that yes and i want to add to that for most folks what we end up having to tell them is that they're going to have to get make some space for the new people that they're going to be bringing in their lives and if you do not make that space that you can't bring in new folks as AJ was saying they're holding on to something in these patterns and having these unserving relationships still in their lives holding on to that is what's keeping them from moving forward and as AJ was saying for them to hear this that are going to let go in order to get this uh is is quite difficult because it's always but those are the only friends that i have but we just put it on a list here that these friends aren't serving you very well so are you are you ready to are they really friends right is that how friends treat each other and of course uh we also have a sales strategy for our clients to go out there and bring new people into their lives doing things that they've always wanted to do that have interested hobbies attached to them so that they're going to be meeting new people who are interested into things that they're interested in so we can actually begin some new relationships that are serving and reciprocal one of the subjects that we've danced around from the start of this episode that a lot of nice guys and gals struggle with is hiding their sexual desire and in large part that's due to shame so how does shame show up for nice guys and gals and how does it keep them from what they want this is true for most nice guys it's been true for me uh i grew up well you can't grow up in this world without absorbing a lot of toxic sexual messages uh in america and america and it was america was founded by uh puritans by by religious nutcases that couldn't get along with their neighbors in europe so they came to america um and then wanted to do it their way and so in america were bombarded with sexual stimuli you know media movies television ads but but still told you're bad for sex is bad now i grew up in a fundamental christian church that says you know sex is dirty sinful and ugly save it for the person you love and you know just you think okay now that i've now that i'm married right you cross that line now sex is going to be great and it's going to work good um and you know i i grew up thinking if i've been you know if i looked at a woman's breast and had a sexual thought i was going to hell for all eternity that was over the message that so you know that had to have an impact on on my sexuality now here's here's the deal i asked people a lot of times in my workshops think of your first sexual experience what is your first sexual memory now that that might be discovering you have an erection at three years old uh maybe is that you know five or six playing with the the neighbor and showing you yours and they show you theirs maybe it was your first kiss maybe it was your first wet dream maybe it was being violated or molested by a family member or a neighbor um maybe you know the whatever it comes to mind as your first sexual memory first sexual thing that happened it to you and then i asked people what was the context what was the situation was it in the open what was it you know in broad daylight where people could see it was it uh celebrated uh was was it applauded you know could could you go to your parents and say mom dad i had my first wet dream and they're going dad is fantastic let's go get pizza you know what was it handled that way or was it or was it in the dark did it lack information was it hidden was it secretive was it shameful was it oh no i'm bad oh no i can't be found out oh no i can't tell anybody about it and everybody i've ever talked to yes that was everybody's first sexual experience it was not hey let's celebrate this this is such a positive development in our young life that didn't happen it doesn't happen and so that means for every human being let's just say 99.9 of all human beings their earliest sexual experience and experiences were wrapped in shame wrapped in secrecy wrapped in guilt wrapped in darkness wrapped in oh no i'm bad okay and then we then grow up go through adolescence come into adulthood and that stuff doesn't just drop so sex gets cross-wired it becomes associated with shame you know i'm bad now so that might lead to sexual addiction it could lead to sexual acting out it could lead to sexual repression it can lead to you know sexually abusing others it could lead to being attracted to people that have abuse issues i mean it manifests in so many ways but rarely does it manifest in truly conscious intimate consensual isn't this great we're having sex sex it usually it gets tainted in somewhere another and that's true for everybody so what do we do with that i you know for me what my journey i my very first you know uh resource for for working on me as a nice guy was a 12 step group for sex addicts because my wife kept saying you're a sex addict you know why because i want to have sex with you that makes me a sex addict and just because you don't want to have sex you know why does that make me but anyway i went and i quickly found out i was not a sex addict but there was a group of all guys who really had some you know some hardcore stuff going on so i'd go and i would just share anything that you know i'd never shared with anybody just you know this dark thought or this impulse or this thing i dented never never told i just started revealing me in a safe place and it felt liberating it felt damn good and then i got a therapist and soon after that joined a men's group that was kind of built around sexual shame and for four or five years everything about my sexuality i just i put it out there and let it be in the spotlight let it be seen by others and so in no more mr nice guy i said don't try to do this alone go get safe people to reveal yourself to find people that you can reveal your darkest self the part of you that you don't want to reveal and find out you're not alone kind of like i was saying guys get in a group or workshop find out they're not alone but also get more accurate information and feedback so you think oh i have these sexual thoughts or these sexual impulses that must make me bad but what if you're with a therapist or a coach or in a men's group and they're all going no actually that sounds really pretty normal that doesn't sound like you're a bad person in any kind of way you start me you mean this thing i've been thinking is bad about me is normal or this thing that happened to me that i never told anybody about before that wasn't my fault or i'm not bad because that no that wasn't your fault they're not bad because that happened to and and it's not always quite that simple but that's a good start at it and if we can just start opening up and being transparent about it like like i said my wife and are in a place right now since doing the plant medicine ceremonies our intention is if we have a fear or shame and and most for most of us that's around sex if she and i have a fear or shame we're going to tell each other about it and see if we can help each other lean into it to go towards it to to to clean it out of our psyche and consciousness so we do need safe people so in this case my wife is that kind of safe person but i was a coach i'm a men's program i have guys that know everything about me so i keep creating these safe places to keep revealing me when especially the stuff i don't want to reveal you know putting the stuff out there that i'd rather keep in and that's how you release the shame and that's how you free yourself up and that's how your sexual energy then begin begins to be able to just flow and just be a part of you and it makes you amazingly attractive if you're either if you're not repressing your sexual energy and if you're not channeling it through through some kind of addiction or anything like that but you're just you you're just you as a sexual being that's amazingly attractive and it takes work it's taken a lot of work for me i love that and everyone needs to work on expressing themselves and finding a place where they can do that and feel safe to do that it's incredibly important so upon wrapping this up i would be remiss if i didn't ask you what we ask all of our guests here on the art of charm dr glover what is your x factor what is my x factor living in my sweet spots i i just keep making conscious choices of when something feels right feels good i spend as much time in that as possible and if something that doesn't i spend as little time there as possible one reason i live in part of here to mexico is one of my sweet spots i love it and where can our audience find out more about your work that you're doing drglover.com drglover.com it has all my classes workshops books everything's there right on well thank you very much for your time today we have been looking for this interview for quite some time and i'm glad we were able to make it happen thank you for coming back dr glover johnny aj thank you