 So, if you want to know how a man feels about you, I want you to try this going forward in your dating, mating, or relating experience, okay? Now a lot of you are probably listening to other advice that is more centered on attraction based way of dating, and what I'm going to suggest in a few minutes is more of an intentional way of dating. So most, and there's a saying out there I want to lean into because I think this confuses women in particular, and there's this saying that men find love through sex, and women give love, or women give sex hoping to find love. So men hope to find love through sex, and women hope to give sex to find love. Now why is this so critically important? Because we, for hundreds of thousands of years, physical intimacy is how people kind of entered into relationship that weren't arranged marriages and such like that. So sex happens to be the driving force, sex and attraction, let me reframe that, sex and attraction happen to be the driving force in the early stages of dating. And today's dating is more filled with a, let me, I wrote this down, dating today seems more to do with filling a list and hyper-focuses on attraction, especially since looks play a huge role instead of what I'm about to share right now. Now why am I, I am pointing out sex in particular, because I'm not, well first off, I want to offer this to everyone, don't give sex hoping to find love. That's my first statement, don't give sex hoping to find love. And I want you to think about sex for men is rather, I don't want to say insignificant because I don't want to say that for all men, but for most men, sex is rather insignificant. Similar to the way kissing is actually insignificant for a lot of men. And let me explain why I'm bringing this up. Did you ever, ever see the movie Pretty Woman? In the movie Pretty Woman, Julia Roberts plays a sex worker and she meets Richard Gere at a high end, or on his, on his way to a high end hotel. And they decide to go have physical intimacy with one another. And one of her rules is no kissing, no kissing. She says that's too intimate. Why I'm bringing this up is we've reduced kissing even to its lowest denominator and sex to its lowest denominator. And what I mean to say is while we can operate in a world where sex is free and we can have physical pleasure whenever we want, the challenge is when we're physically intimate with another person, we actually can bond with another person. Or when I say we women tend to bond more so than men, okay? So I wanted to bring this up because what's really more important is what I'm about to share going forward. And I'm going to offer you something different the next time you're actively dating. So what is critically important more than anything else out there? I'm going to say it's a character, character, and I'm going to give you some examples of that in a moment. Character and more importantly, emotional maturity, emotional maturity. And I'm going to read something to you that I think is going to illustrate this. So within character, I know we say the words character, but what does that mean? It means actions matching words consistently and we're, you know, we're humans, we're going to make mistakes, you know, there's going to be times where we say we're going to call and we don't call, but it's consistent. Another facet of character is a generous and kind spirit, a generous and kind spirit. You know, today's dating has more to do with what can I get from another person instead of what can I give? And this is true for you ladies just as much as men. I see women who habitually operate from a what can I get from this experience more so than what can I give? In addition, character means you communicate clearly your, how you feel without having to be right. You know, true emotional maturity, true character is like, look, we all have a point of view, but my point of view isn't the right point of view. It's just a point of view. So you, they don't operate from a righteous controlling perspective. In addition, they don't use people. You know, sadly, today's dating environment is people get used unintentionally because we have a significant percentage of unconscious people in the dating marketplace. In addition, they have their act together. They're not using drugs and alcohol as a way to supplement their life. They're not overly partying. That's I believe a person of character. In addition, they've healed from their past relationships and this is critically important for what I'm about to share next. They do introspective work on themselves to grow beyond their limitations. They have a protective and empathetic nature. In other words, a person of true character knows, they know their red flags in the dating marketplace. And if they know they're not ready for a fully committed relationship, they won't engage with you. In other words, they won't even put themselves out in the dating marketplace. And they believe demonstrating trust is paramount. They believe demonstrating trust is paramount to, to in their life. You know, trust isn't just about fidelity. Trust is, does this person have my best interest at heart? That's the real element of trust. So what I want you to try to do going forward when it comes dating is if you really want to know how a man feels, it starts by asking really good questions before you emotionally get involved with someone. It starts by evaluating and assessing their past. It starts by asking clear questions about what they seek in a romantic relationship. You know, most men are just looky-loos. By the way, you ladies are looky-loos, too. Everybody's just a looky-loo. They're just, let me just go try on this pair of shoes. Let me just try, I'm meeting another person and see if it fits and I'll wear it for a while. And then if I don't like it, I'll return it because we have a Nordstrom's way of dating. Okay. What is the Nordstrom's way of dating? Nordstrom's is a department store where you can buy clothes, try it on, wear it for six months and return it saying you don't like it. We have a Nordstrom, and by the way, I commend the store for offering that level of service, but at the same time, I'm not suggesting most people abuse it, but in today's dating environment, we unintentionally abuse people, meaning we can try something on and return it at our leisure because we don't like it anymore. And that's out of integrity. That's out of character. So if you start to approach the dating process with the following mindset, you're going to lose 90% of people out there. What I mean by lose 90% of the people out there, 90% of people, and I'm being rather generous when I say 90%, aren't that emotionally evolved. So I want to read to you a meme that is from Laura, oh gosh, the meme got cut off. Laura, I don't know who it is, says, when dating, look at how committed someone is to their growth. This will show you how committed they are to be with you in the future. Let me repeat that. When dating, look at how committed someone is to their growth. This will show you how committed they will be to you and the future of your relationship. I mean, I want you to think about that for some. When dating, look at how committed someone is to their growth. A person who has committed to growth is more capable of expressing their feelings towards you than someone who hasn't done some level of growth. And it goes on. This is my portion of the meme. It says, whether humans recognize this or not, emotional maturity and good relationship skills are the foundational pieces of all romantic relationships, not height or financial status or seeking a younger model. If someone wants a healthy relationship, it starts by asking a person if a person is truly committed to personal growth and willing to improve communication skills. Most humans are blind to their true emotional intelligence, believing they have superior emotional maturity, and most everyone else is the problem. Looking in the mirror is the first step. And when one could admit that they have work to do, that's a good start. Folks, I'm here to say. You can weed out 90% of the wrong people by merely asking about do they do personal development work, pass them about their past relationships, and listen if they have a negative charge about their past relationships. Ask them, what positive things did you learn about yourself in each experience? How have you healed from your past relationships? What was good about your past relationships and most importantly, what are you most grateful for? Why is this a critically important series of questions to ask? Because a man or woman's capacity to lean into a healthy, happy relationship is all predicated on how they operated in their past relationships. And we like it or not, most humans today have had at least one significant relationship, if not three. Most humans have had three significant relationships and they probably had some skirmish relationships too. I call them skirmishes. I think of their like little trial and error relationships. In other words, that Nordstrom kind of relationship where they're together for three to six months, they tried it on and they sent it back to the department store. See if you really want to dive into emotional connection with another human being, emotional intelligence, it requires determining how healed they are from their past relationships and their capacity to communicate that to someone new. See how they communicate about their past will give you insight into future relationships. Let me give you an example of this. I once went out with a woman some years ago and you'd think I'd know what I'm about to share. This was a gigantic red flag, but I painted it green, okay? So she'd been married before or she'd been married for a decade or so, had some children with him. Then I said, oh, by the way, I noticed I smacked my lips. I guess it's true. I do smack my lips. People have commented on that. I don't realize I'm doing it, but when you're communicating like this, at least it's natural for me to do that. Okay, with that said, gave this woman, in her marriage, I said, what happened in your marriage? She goes, oh, he was a narcissist. I'm like, oh, really? Okay. I said, what happened to the last man you dated? Oh, he was a narcissist. I'm like, okay, okay. What about the one before that? Because she had told me she had a few relationships. I think she rattled off five guys that were a narcissist. I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm not a narcissist. I'll be her hero. Okay. We dated for about six weeks. What I realized was we were misaligned in so many areas. We were misaligned in communication. We were misaligned in lifestyle. I just wasn't feeling it after six weeks. I said, I'm moving on and I was a forthright about it. It was a very uncomfortable conversation. I'm moving on. Do you know what happened the next day on social media? She posted, I dated another narcissist and it just hit me. Oh my God. Right at that moment, I was so focused on the fact that I wasn't like her past relationships. I'll be her hero, for lack of a better word, instead of really listening to one narcissist after another after another. I mean, statistically speaking, that's an impossible number. Now that's not to suggest that there isn't a significant percentage of self-centric people, selfish people and whatnot. What I didn't pay attention to was any healing from those past relationships. She had a negative charge about those past relationships. And so that should have been my clue. That was the red flag I didn't pay attention to. I didn't ask deeper questions before I engaged in this relationship. Now here's the thing. For most men out there who genuinely want a significant relationship, they typically don't invest more than 90 days with somebody who's not a fit. I would say our arc, for those that are men that are truly committed to a significant relationship, they don't spend much more than 90 days if they don't feel like there's real potential. They usually exit those relationships quickly. Now what happens for those same men is if they fully engage in a relationship, then they're seeking a partner who's capable of also going all in emotionally as well as physically in the world. See, the reality is today is most people might logistically enter into a relationship from a physical perspective. But the question is, can they really dive in at an emotional perspective? And at first it starts with assessing their past and then going forward, the most important factor to ask is how committed they are to desiring a significant relationship with someone and more importantly, how significant are they, how committed are they to their own individual growth and more importantly, the emotional growth of the relationship. These are some of the early questions that I invite you all to ask before you get intimately involved with someone because intimacy is not, as I said in the beginning of this conversation, physical intimacy is not a great indicator for relationship success. If you don't know who Lewis House is, Lewis House has a podcast called The School of Greatness. He recently got engaged and he publicly talks about the first 90 days of his relationship. They dove into the deep end. I mean, they might have walked in the pool together and they started swimming to the deep end. They had deep conversations before they ever physically got intimate with one another. Why am I shouting? I'm just passionate about this. I can't help myself. I have great respect for Lewis House and the way he operated in this relationship. And I'm inviting everyone else to try this going forward. Do the work, if you watch my channel, you know, I recommend book after book that's right behind me. There's a list of all the books I recommend. I invite you to operate differently because that's how you're truly going to know how he feels about you by doing this before you enter into a relationship, particularly before you enter into the physical aspects of the relationship because it all is predicated on emotional intimacy. And if you're not familiar with the book, Emotional Intimacy, I highly recommend you read this to learn about it for yourself because when you get aligned to who you are and what you really want from an emotional perspective, you will be able to ferret out those capable and those that are incapable of leaning in to a deeper, healthy, happy relationship. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating? Please let me know. If it is, please post a comment below. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Since this video was shot for my group called Midlife Love Mastery, if you'd like to have direct access to me on a regular basis, check out the link below to my VIP group called Midlife Love Mastery. This is a group where you, like I said, you can have direct access to me. I interact with the members on a regular basis and we host a monthly call where you can speak to me live on the phone. If you'd like that access, check out the link below. All right, I'm gonna wrap up this. Oh, by the way, if one of my members are watching, please tell your friends about the group, send them to my website, jonathanasley.com. Have them click the group coaching button so they can join our fantastic group. And we're gonna sign off this video as I always do. I've given myself a big gigantic jonathan bear hug of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow, and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.