 Working out is hard. Why would anybody go to the gym? Three, five times a week, whatever. Why would anybody go to the gym that many times and pick up something heavy and drop it down again? Why would anyone do that? It's stupid. You get nothing out of it. It's short term. It's pointless. It's uncomfortable. Stay at home. Eat fast food. Watch pornography. Isn't that just so much more comfortable? Why would you go to the gym when you can watch porno at home? Why would you get married? Why would you go somewhere where you have to work with somebody else to solve problems? You have to raise kids, feed them, clothe them. You have to work harder. They take all your money. Why would you do that when you could just be at home and watch OnlyFans? Why would you do that? Like just watch OnlyFans for the next 50 years and just jerk off and that's your life. Like why would you put in the effort and the pain? Well just like with fitness, it's because it's what it brings. It brings so much more wholeness of self. It brings better chemicals and bonding and nurturing and fulfillment and the journey and the passion and it brings so much richness to your life. And then it opens new doors. Marriage, a good marriage is the same way. Right. Today's episode is a special one. So a while ago, I found somebody on Instagram called Attachment Adams. His name is Adam Lane Smith. He's an attachment expert. He's a psychotherapist and he had a small page but the stuff he was saying was like super profound. Actually had some great impacts on me and my relationship with my wife and my kids. And anyway, fast forward a few weeks and Adam sends me a link and says, have you heard of this guy? He's got great stuff and it was the same guy, Adam Lane Smith. So we got him on the show. Now he is a licensed psychotherapist. He's like a force in the field of personal development and relationships. He's exploding. He's highly sought after attachment specialist. So that's his specialty. He's also a personal coach and he's worked with all kinds of people. He's been doing this for years and years and years. He's worked with blue collar individuals, high powered executives. He helps people with parenting. He helps people with marriage. He's gotten people out of the brinks of divorce. He helps people build really strong relationships. Also helps people date. So find the kind of people you want to be with and then be the kind of person that you want to be with. His stuff is incredible. You're going to love this episode. The way he communicates and how he communicates is quite profound. Like I said, we found him first and we wanted him badly on the show and he was very nice to fly out here to San Jose to come on the show. So we know you're going to love this episode, especially if you want to become a better person, a better parent and a better partner. Now he has a course. It's called the attachment bootcamp. He actually gave us access to it and I've been going through it and it's pretty amazing. It's profound. So we talked him into giving us like a discount for our listeners. So it's a bootcamp course and in the course he talks about attachment issues. Like there's four attachment types. You can help identify which one is you help kind of unearthed, deep-seated behaviors and patterns that might damage people. It'll help you repel toxic people, find the kind of people that you want to be around, how to attract loving friends and partners and create trusting bonds, how to build relationships based on mutual fulfillment and also help you build confidence. Stop worrying about what other people think about you. So it's a great course and you can actually enroll if you go to mpadamsmith.com and then use our code. You'll get 50% off. So again, we talked him into doing this. So if you go to mpadamsmith.com, use the code MIND and get 50% off. And again, you can find this guy on Instagram, Attachment Adam. So Attachment Adam as we'll find him. And again, his name is Adam Lane Smith. We know you're going to love this episode. Also, we're going to give away the super bundle to one of you viewers, but here's how you can win that. Okay. You have to enter. Here's how you do it. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. Now we're also running a sale on some workout programs. Maps cardio is 50% off. The shredded summer bundle is 50% off and the bikini bundle is 50% off. So all of those are 50% off. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right. Here we are talking to Attachment Adam, Adam Lane Smith. So we have guests on our show sometimes because they were recommended by other people. They have large, you know, networks and maybe it'll help us reach more people. And then we have guests that, and I'm not saying we don't always want to talk to the people we talk to. We always, we always want to talk to people we have on the show. We're pretty picky, but there's those guests where it's like selfishly, like we want to ask this person questions and talk with them. You're one of those people. So I found you a while ago. I don't remember how I found you, but I found you and I started listening to your stuff and I started sending your stuff to my wife. And then I told my wife, let's get, and we might've either signed up or about to sign up for one of your courses. I'm like, let's, this guy's amazing. Didn't say anything to the guys. It was just a personal thing. Then Adam at one point sends me one of your clips and he goes, Hey, what do you think of this guy? I think we should get him on. I'm like, bro, I've been following that guy for a while. Absolutely. So that's what we have you on, dude. I'm so glad to be here. I've been looking forward to this. Really great stuff. I want to ask you first about, I love everything you have to say about, I mean, most things, but I want to know what got you into your line of work. Like why do you do what you do today? I grew up in a extended family system that was just so broken. We hadn't had successful marriages, loving marriages and families in generations. I grew up in that and I knew something wasn't right, right? When kids grow up in that, we know something doesn't feel right, but we don't know what it is because we think it's also normal at the same time. We don't know alternatives. I knew something wasn't right and all my friends and family around me, I grew up not far from here in California. Everybody else, same problem, same mistake, same loneliness, terrible loneliness. And I said, I want to do something about this. I fixed it in me. I somehow fumbled around, messed up a million times, fixed it in me, and I built better relationships. And I said, what the heck did I just do? Well, I had no idea. What were some of the first places you went to try to get information? Oh, everywhere, fitness, trying to learn fitness, martial arts, trying to learn how to be more popular with girls. Back when I was in my early 21 years old, alcohol, then drugs, and everything else that normal young people get into. Just the worst, stupidest things that we think will make us feel better, numb the pain, or make us look smarter. Everything. Wow, awesome. All right, so I want to start out by talking about attachment theory and how that applies to, I mean, most if not all of us. Because this is, I just started diving into this about maybe a year and a half ago. And it helped me figure myself out, understand my wife, and then my kids, and how this may influence how they are in their lives. Let's start out with that, because that's fascinating. It is fascinating. Most people have no idea. So when I got my master's degree in psychology, when I went in there, I said, I'm going to be a therapist. I'm going to help people, right? I'm going to rescue people in the world and save them. And I looked through six years to get a master's degree. And they told us about attachment theory one time. Here's what they told us. There's attachment theory in this book. You don't need to learn about it, because there's no diagnosis for that for adults. You only need to learn attachment theory if you're going to study with little, tiny children. Apart from that, it's going to be personality disorders, which are almost impossible to fix. So don't worry about attachment. It doesn't matter. Just learn the diagnosis in the book. Oh, wow. And as I have gone around the United States, Canada, Europe, as I've talked to other professionals, I've trained, I've led seminars to train other healthcare professionals, because I was a therapist for years. That was the same message that most clinicians end up hearing. So when you go to your therapist, they've never heard about attachment theory, or it's shoved off in a corner, and then they come to you, and you go to them and you get a diagnosis. Why? Because, number one, you can't medicate attachment. Number two, insurance won't cover attachment. And number three, people think it's childhood stuff. The average guy on the street if I say, hey, your childhood is affecting your relationships right now. Let's talk about that. You're going to say, get out of here. My relationships are good. We're solid. The average guy on the street doesn't want to talk about how his childhood is probably still messing with him. So no one talks about attachment. It's barely making a comeback. But we have to talk about it. What is it? Can you explain exactly? Absolutely. Yeah, and with the origin? 100%. So back in the 1950s, I believe, Bowlby created this theory that said, look, when you are a little kid, you have needs, right? You don't have kids. You don't have kids, right? When you're a little child, you have needs, you cannot meet. You need to feel safe and you can't make yourself feel safe. And you need to feel loved and you cannot make yourself feel loved. Your parents' job is to give you those things and put a tiny price tag on them that is just to be loving in return. That's it. It's supposed to be a reciprocal relationship of, I love you. You love me. The Barney song is coming to mind. And we're going to build this relationship together and we will take care of each other as you grow. I will teach you. I will be there with you. That would be what's called secure attachment if your parents teach you that. Most of us in modern world, our parents didn't know how to teach us that. So instead, they screw it up and they put a price tag on it, a bigger price tag, or they push us off in the corner where our needs aren't met or they make it so that we are afraid to come to them. Some parents are just gone all the time and the child doesn't know that they can ask them. Some kids have trauma. There's so many issues that can lead to you saying, I don't deserve to get my needs met or nobody is going to take care of me. Nobody has time or there's something wrong with other people that they're going to yell at me or they're going to hurt me. I have to take care of my own needs from the age of two and on up for the rest of my life. I have to take care of my own needs and that's attachment theory in a nutshell is you can't, you can't do that. You know, what's, okay. So here's what I find interesting about how modern, maybe what they teach is like, this isn't that important just for kids. You're and correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty confident in this. Your brain is very, it is extremely plastic when you're an infant, a toddler, a child, teenager, and then at some point you lose quite a bit of the plasticity and a really easy example is your ability to learn languages. If you learn five different languages as a five year old, you speak them all fluently. You learn five languages when you're 30, you got an accent in all of them except for your primary language because you lose some of that plasticity. So the attachment theory, part of the reason why this affects you as an adult is there are kind of permanent connections that are created as a child that you can't necessarily get rid of but you can understand and work around when you're an adult. But if you don't acknowledge them then you're just going to live in this automatic cycle. Am I hitting it? Very much so, very much so. It is interestingly through my work what I have found working with hundreds and hundreds of people it is fixable. Not that you will never ever have insecurities again but the part of the brain that says this is an absolute fact that either I don't deserve love or other people will hurt me if they get a chance. Two different types of attachment that can break. If you challenge that most people never even think about it because water is wet, gravity pulls things down and I'm an unlovable piece of crap. People don't challenge the laws of the universe. So when you challenge them first of all you start realizing there's a different way to live. It's amazing, it's mind blowing. When you start testing it with other human beings and if they respond well to you it starts rewriting parts of your brain and the system always remembers that it's terrifying to get your needs met or ask for your needs. You will have anxiety spikes, you will have nervous system spikes, those will decrease over time but yes, you can become more secure over time. It takes a lot of work and you have to have loving people around you. There's different attachment types, right? There absolutely is. And attachment too, yes. So in your book Slaying Fear you do a really good job with their pretty much real scenarios and the thing that blows me away is that I think a lot of parents overlook is how simple some of the things that we do can really make these huge impacts. So give the audience that's listening some examples of like behaviors that we do in response and then how the child interprets that reaction to the parent. Absolutely, so I have four kids myself my oldest is six at the end of the day he does not want to go to bed and at the end of the day I'm tired he gets to a point where he might build up and have a tantrum, kids do this, right? I could yell at him and say get in your damn bed I'm tired of talking to you, I'm sick of it we're not doing this anymore, we're done get in there or it's whatever punishment might be. Probably happens all the time. 100% and so many parents do this because you're exhausted you don't mean to and you feel like crap afterward but you're just exhausted by the end of it you say go to bed please I can do that I can do this I take a breath and I sit down and say alright buddy, we're a family I want to work with you, right? I need you to go to bed because I'm really tired too can you hear in my voice how frustrated I am? Okay, I'm sure you're probably frustrated too but let's take care of each other what do you need to be able to go to bed tonight? Do you need to make sure that we're going to get time tomorrow in the morning? Are you worried that we're not going to have time tomorrow? Are you worried that something bad is going to happen? Where are you at right now? I just don't want to sleep, okay I'm going to get more frustrated and that's going to hurt our relationship and I don't want to hurt our relationship so let's take care of each other in the morning I will spend time with you so let's look forward to that and we're going to take care of each other okay dad kiss him on the forehead he will go to sleep at that point it is cooperating cooperating during a conflict every human relationship has conflict conflict is an opportunity to trust other human beings or it's an opportunity to grow apart from other human beings every time you have conflict with your kids it's a chance to show them you love them and how to get their needs met from you in return or to show them that nobody cares about their needs so they have to figure it out on their own alright so let's back up for a second so the first example you gave by the way most of us were raised that way a lot of us think not only we don't mean to but this is the right way to do it what that could potentially show your kid because what children do and this I learned from attachment theory is everything is internalized everything is their fault and so the only way dad likes me let's say is I'm obedient so in order for me to get love I have to earn it through being obedient and that can become a big problem as an adult where maybe you're a people pleaser or maybe you can't say no or because this is kind of ingrained in you now what you did is you actually let your kid kind of understand you and then you listen to him and that was kind of working together so let's back up for a second and talk about the attachment there's like four of them or they're four four styles of attachment let's talk about those and what causes those and let's understand those first so we can keep going 100% so I'm going to streamline this there's a few different style discussions out there so here's the one that I use secure is where you know people are going to work with you most of the time in conflict you can cooperate when a conflict hits you're calm you handle it you talk with the other person you solve it together right that's secure attachment you get a marriage you can talk to your wife and say hey I need this you know can we do this for me and what do you need in return how can we take care of you it's the guys that can just ask their wife point blank hey do you want to go to the bedroom for a while those guys right most guys are terrified to do that they have to play games right chore play they call it do the chores and she'll love you so much she'll drag you into the bedroom right that's most guys are like they're frantically vacuum looking to see if she's I put that tool belt on with no shoot on fixing the gun this guy's fixing gun like nine times last month guys when they're in a relationship they don't know that they can just go to the woman in their life and say hey here's what I would like from you can we do this together and share this experience they think they have to play games try to negotiate it out of her right that's not secure attachments insecure attachment three styles as it breaks you can either break in a direction that says I am the problem right when you're a little child like perfect like you said everything turns inward I cause this somehow so I have to figure out what is wrong with me that causes problems that people finally get enough of me and will abandon me fear of abandonment and I'm the problem anxious attachment style everybody else is the problem and everybody else is crazy and I gotta manage them still a people pleaser but not abandonment it's like these crazy monkeys out here everybody's a monkey they're all screaming and they're all gonna bite me so I gotta keep arms length avoidance style or you can sometimes if you trauma is bad enough you can combine the two I'm something's wrong with me but also something's wrong with other people I will keep them out but if they get into close I reverse and I become terrified of abandonment it's it can break in a number of ways but that's that's really the biggest piece or more more common than others or is it kind of split women tend to be more anxious than men but we excuse it women oh she's just insecure guys who have anxious attachment style we call them nice guys nice guy syndrome that's nice guy syndrome more likely to have a woman with that but guys get it to avoidant men are more likely to get but we excuse men oh he's a workaholic he's just always gone he's just so focused on his mission he's just he he has to have that attitude that's avoidant keep everybody else out and and hold yourself up women who have this are usually the ones who are just you see all over the bad stories all over the internet of a woman just like humping and dumping all kinds of different guys she's bragging about how she's never had an orgasm with anybody and she doesn't need to like those are usually the very avoidant women or the ones that you can't stand when she's your boss that's more of an avoidant woman too so interestingly yeah they they both stand out more when the opposite sex which one which one is the one where it's like I don't ask for help I'll handle it myself I don't want to be a burden I'm gonna just do my is that the avoidant one that can be both interestingly so avoidance sometimes can be manipulative but a lot of them are just quiet nice guys who are just nervous they're not they're not nervous about abandonment they're nervous about getting hurt so they don't think anyone will ever care about their needs they just keep everybody else out and say you know what I'll take care about myself don't worry about it you stay right there I'll take care of me you take care of you or I'll take care of you a little bit so that you always have good intentions toward me but I'm gonna stay right here that's most guys in business wow yeah so I I learned about myself I was parentified at a young age because I'm the oldest of four and so I was like another parent to all these siblings I also grew up I mean loving household but very kind of old school you know immigrant household where you know stuff would happen I couldn't really figure out what's going on why is everybody yelling and so I I never brought problems to my parents ever ever into this day asking for help is almost impossible I'm the like bear it handle it I'll take care of myself type of deal and it's all because of that because of how I grew up if you opened up to someone are you afraid that they would abandon you because you're not worthy of it or are you afraid that they would look down on you and maybe use it against you somehow in the future probably the second one I mean I say probably sound necessarily think that and this is what's interesting about what you're saying someone may be listening be like wow this is all unconscious most of it is yeah so this is like I'm having to like peel back deep and a lot of it just I don't want to feel or appear weak that's it yeah men who are terrified of appearing weak and that vulnerability that's usually the nervous avoidant attachment style they would have called dismissive avoidant back in the long day dismissive avoidant attachment of I don't want to look weak because that will get used against me or they'll look down on me or I'll make less money something bad is going to happen I can't go to my parents and if I can't go to them I can never go to any human being on earth so it's just me for the rest of my life and we do we guys we cover it over and I'm just I'm tough I can do everything right I have millionaires come in for coaching with me and they say Adam you know I don't need any help but I could really use your help I'm hiring you but I don't actually need any help but I really need it and then they come in and they say my wife here's the thing their wife usually has anxious attachment the other way he says you know we haven't had sex in six months and I haven't had the guts to ask her about it I've done everything I should to make it happen and she just won't do it and I'm not sure why and I don't have a very close relationship with my kids and she's always on me about that and I do everything I possibly can what more is a man supposed to be doing and those are the guys that come in and they don't usually hit a point where they say there's a problem here until the wife is really upset or the kids are really upset or she's threatening divorce and it has to head in that direction for most guys to say okay maybe maybe there's a chance that I could get some help from somebody and maybe change who I am yeah why is it because this leads me to this this question here I've read statistics and I've seen them confirm that a majority of divorces are initiated by the wife 70% 70% now why is that is it because you know the stereotype you can't make them happy or is it because the other stereotype guys just don't like to ask for help or in order for them to even think there's something wrong shit has to be on fire like what is going on here I love this question I wrote a book exactly about this called exhausted wives be builder husbands which is all about this dynamic because I treat couples and I work with couples as a licensed manager family therapist for years now as a coach they come in and they've been together for 20 years and the wife is now saying I'm done I'm tired I'm way beyond anything I don't want to reconcile I just want to divorce the kids are grown they're in college now and the husband says I'm willing to try now tell me anything and I will fix it I will fix it I will cut off my left arm if you want me to and the guys come to me as a last ditch effort and say Adam I don't know what the problem is she's all of a sudden upset and says that we have to get a divorce for no reason and I say let's talk about your relationship over the last 20 years what has that been like I'll bring the wife in sometimes and she'll say I have been trying to change the relationship for 20 years I've been telling him things I've been dropping hints I've been asking I've been begging and it wasn't a problem until we had kids but then I watched the kids grow up with anxiety and he doesn't connect with them and he won't listen to me women tend to micro change themselves continuously for the relationship to augment it and they expect men to do the same the male brain however sees and looks observes in the back and then goes forward act upon it if we see a problem and believe it's fixable and have the solution or are capable of asking a man for help for the solution then we will follow through and do that solution most guys who have that problem either don't see a problem their wife is just emotional who cares we're surviving this is the best they'll ever be they don't think a solution is possible if I open up she'll lose all respect for me destroy the marriage I will just be the laughing stock or they're a terrified they know there's a problem but they're terrified to open up and ask anybody for the solution because they don't think anybody else will ever give it to them that's those are the three pieces that keep men locked in bad marriages for 20 years and then they get blindsided by a divorce someday so how do we better sell this to men the biggest thing is when I'm on podcast like this is I just tell men look there's hope and you can change and they say no it's not and then they listen and I say this look I have worked with millionaires who've been unhappy into their 60s and they finally come in the latest the oldest client I ever had was 80 years old and he walked in had led an overwhelmingly successful financial life terrible personal life terribly unhappy and it is absolutely fixable once you realize the pieces that were missed the generational gaps the parents who didn't teach you you can come to me with problems and we will solve them together if you build that that's what I call a self correcting family system you don't have to have a perfect family for secure attachment you have a self correcting family system when there's a problem come to me we will do it together I will not be angry at you or judge you we will solve it together will be perfect no but we will take care of each other when you train your kids for that they look for that everywhere out in the world and they thrive when you train your kids when you have a problem it is your fault and I'm going to yell at you until you fix it it will never come to you for help so when we train men like that we say guys you can get help without looking weak right you can do the physical and be the strong samurai but you also have to have the internal work that a samurai would have done this is old knowledge that has been lost when you train men like that and say there's hope and there's solutions they will end to think about it you said old knowledge that's lost what do you mean by that so because I think this is all generational but it goes beyond that then absolutely okay so the work that I've done the research I've done over the last several years on attachment is that this generational problem is stretching back to about World War I World War I we lost a generation of men in World War I everyone tried to play keep up after that and then we had the roaring 20s and Europe also was trying desperately to recover and everything in the west was broken we lost a generation of knowledge and then flooded into hedonism and then flooded immediately into more trauma we had the dust ball we had the Great Depression everybody moved into cities we had massive industrialization fathers were kept away from their kids 16, 18 hours a day to work mothers had to start kind of working and doing all kinds of things to survive we lost extended families then the World War II hit and then the generations through that time they just were silent they just suffered to feed their family and survive their kids couldn't come to them for problems because they had no space to give help at all that's what I think because I look at like my grandparents generation or even my parents my parents were very poor growing up and I'm like yeah you know sitting down and talking to your kids and figuring out what's going on they had no time my grandfather was working all the time for food and clothes I'm not talking about like just normal stuff you couldn't eat my grandmother had eight kids and she's washing clothes by hands and cooking by hand and she's got to go figure out how to make some money sometimes so you can't talk to your child you got to smack them make them act the way they're supposed to so everybody can survive type of deal that's what's getting passed on we have a hundred years of trauma that has never been dealt with and every generation has got worse as we get farther and farther away from understanding that we can solve problems as families that we can take care of each other it's just getting so much worse which is why pediatricians have been sounding the alarm over the last two years about the suicide rates among 11 year olds is getting so much worse because they have never seen a functional family many of them they were born not with a mother and father in the household they don't even have a dad they don't even know who their dad is it's just so bad at this point that there is no hope even at 11 years old that they are checking out at that point what's the old wisdom the most important stuff that's been lost male brains are built to actually interlink and share data to solve problems we cannot function men we will always hit a wall if we can't interlink with other male brains pull their solutions you have solved the problem I need that solution right I come over to you I say hey give me this information I put it in my brain and it suddenly it works I see a problem with me I fix it and it works that was your data that I needed we are all like data nodes that are supposed to fit together with this collective knowledge collective wisdom right fitness fitness is not my thing you guys do that I can come to you and say help me with that give me that information and you can teach it to me I put it in my brain now I have it and I can work better I'm a whole integrated man someone needs attachment help they come to me and say hey Adam give me your information they click it into their brain suddenly they have that information the male brain is meant to work with other male brains and that has been shattered every guy is an individual island women now too every guy is an individual island that says I should be born with all the information or learn it all secretly somehow myself and if I can't there is something wrong with me and no one will ever help me how and why how did we get there and why we got there because exactly parents generation generation I don't have time to talk to you I don't have time to help you and then now friendships are even broken guys live I just had someone in my emails this morning asking for coaching saying Adam everything is successful except I have no friends I don't know who to talk to I spent all my time watching Netflix watching porn playing video games on the outside everything's great I have no male friends I say then how are you living if you don't have male friends that you can go to and say hey I'm having this problem have any of you solved that problem and get the solution from them if they don't know they know someone who does they don't have that that's why people watching these podcasts because this is amazing to them men sitting in a room together sharing data like this this is unheard of now in modern era that's why we have to get that back to them by making it normal for men not to cry and whine like like everything they say nowadays go teach men to cry teach no no no men want solutions men don't go to therapy because they don't think they're going to get solutions that can work they go they don't go therapy because they don't want to sit and cry because then they'll just feel worse they want solutions from other men so teaching men you need to get solutions from a man who has solved your problem and then you will solve your own problem where where do you see us going in the wrong direction from the solution I see two things right now there's a big split one is to help men feel validated and safe and comfortable which is a very feminine kind of approach therapy didn't used to be that way but it has through humanism and everything that we focused on they they comfort you and nurture you while then medicating you and that's a very feminine approach of get you through adapt help you get comforted feel validated then you will take care of yourself that's what women tend to do when they feel safe they start doing the work and they take care of themselves men absolutely not we have broken that model so that's the problem right now is therapy focuses on making men feel loved and validated men need to feel powerful that's interesting because you couple that with the the thoughts around the way we are educating men too so we're educating men in a more feminine way then in addition to that we're even then they come to us for help and then we're also helping them in that well I imagine too like in therapy there's a lot of therapists that probably apply you know the more feminine approach than what you're talking about so I mean how many therapists out there actually apply these concepts most of them don't think about it because through the therapy school the graduate program and then through the apprenticeship afterward most therapists are taught the client is the expert this is a humanistic model the client is the expert they know everything about themselves you just have to help them figure out the knowledge on the inside of them of what they want and then they will just do it themselves so then you just come in for three years and keep having them talk about themselves and eventually they'll feel good if you make them feel loved and safe enough in your office they will find what they need and everything will be wonderful and that is the humanistic model that we have followed especially since the 70s and 80s but it's just grown more and more it's one of the easiest to learn and most therapists say wow I didn't feel loved enough so that probably would help people and it helps sometimes it helps women sometimes it helps some men but guys need power we need power to not over other human beings we need power over our environment power over our pain power over our problems power over solutions we need the power and the belief that we can go fix it it's so funny because my wife and I are we like fit so perfectly in this sense in those boxes like if she has a problem or challenge all she wants me to all she wants to hear and feel for me is like yeah that is hard like I could totally see that and then she like moves forward and does what she needs to I don't want to hear that I want to hear like I told her one time and this is hard for her to understand and explain to her that's because I'm a guy this is what we want to hear I'm like if you want me to be home more you want me to be with the family more if you want me to be more involved just do this when I'm on my way to work say this to me grab me give me a kiss and say you're such a warrior honey go out there and crush for us by the way every man listening got the chills hearing that I said Jesus if you said that to me I would crush and then I come home early so I could be with you guys then she's like that doesn't make any sense because it doesn't make sense to you but to me it does yes it does you know because it makes me feel powerful you know most most men if you sat them down and said would you rather hear I love you or I respect you most men will leap toward I respect you and most men will say I don't feel that I deserve it but that is what I want to hear and a wife who goes out and says this is old knowledge of women used to pass down to each other if you tell your husband you respect him that he's strong you admire him the good care the character that he carries the manhood that he has and you tell him I look up to you that man it's pure pure testosterone straight in your neck like she she ejects you in the neck roaring out there for the day on steroids and that is what she has done and no almost no women in America or in Europe now know how to do that with their men they say I love you you're so special to me I feel so happy when I'm with you it's just so wonderful like a pillow yeah yeah and you feel it is it's like okay I'm a big fluffy dog and you walk out your front door feeling like a big fluffy dog instead of feeling like a man who's going to conquer the world yeah I mean it's nice to hear that but it's not nearly as nice just hearing you know the other stuff and it'll probably give you what you want they will if you say it that way and then what about us what are we what can we be saying to our wives to better support them and give them the the feelings that they're seeking and they want movies lately with my wife and what's interesting is most movies geared toward women especially horror movies or romance movies it doesn't matter if it's hallmark or a murder film the woman's biggest struggle is this she sees the problem and no one will believe her yeah she sees the problem and no one will listen to her it's not that they won't let her do it she's not feeling powerless she's feeling unheard uncared for unloved not taken seriously this is why when you said there's a problem she needs to get that love and validation first I tell men the most problems and you're in your discussions with the resolving conflict with your wife is order of operations guys jump okay there's a problem here is the solution here's the logic here's the information here's the power point I have put together demonstrating and the woman sitting there going I don't want to hear any of this because I don't think you actually love me and when you stop and say sweetheart I'm sorry that you're having that feeling right now what do you need from me right now to feel loved if you can stop and do that all of a sudden she goes from 9 out of 10 almost nuclear down to like 2 out of 10 because you're on her team and you love her and then she says oh you know I I don't know I I just really need to hug right now okay let me give you a hug I really need to hear I'm sorry you know what I'm really sorry I'm sorry that I contributed this feeling I'm sorry that you're having this right now and that I didn't understand what you needed let me help you what can I do all of a sudden why I don't know I'm not sure what I need okay now it's time for the logic okay can I offer a suggestion okay how about this and you start offering the logical suggestion because you've de-escalated her emotional brain and now her logical brain has kicked back online and she also trusts you and will receive the information from you know it's funny about this is most guy I mean me I'll use myself as an example when I go to my friends my guy friends with a problem I don't want to hear you know oh I don't want to go to Adam and Justin and bad guys these things happen I want them to be minimal I don't want to be like oh man that really sucks let me give you a hug right hey listen I don't care about that right now I want to need some advice like tell me what to do whereas like my wife will go to her friends and that's the last thing she wants to hear from her friend is oh that's your problem here's what you need to do yep she wants the other thing and if we don't understand this we're screwed you just can't work with each other communicate with each other absolutely I tell wives the same thing when there's a problem you need to go to him and say hey there's a problem we need to solve it I was just working with a couple the other day she women won't do this they'll say I'll drop a hint and it won't be as good I'll say oh well I'm not sure I want to do this or they'll just have I'll have sex with him a little bit less I won't hold his hand as often I'll do these little things and he won't get that clue at all he doesn't understand there's a problem right hey you know this this is happening oh okay we just brush it off but when she grabs you by the nose it says hey wait a minute there's a problem and we need to solve it or something or this is going to happen the male brain kicks online and says whoa okay what we got why is this a problem I help me understand why this is a problem oh that's why what's the solution here okay who else has solved the problem who we need to get this information from okay let's do it and that's going to avert that that's that 70% divorce that's gonna avert that okay let's take care of this that's how the male brain works and most women don't have the guts to say there's a problem we need to solve it or this is going to happen that's when guys get serious that's by that time it's almost too late it's all it's too late talk about what you know men it could be both sex I guess what what the four characteristics are attracted to each other and then and then what manifests from that absolutely so with secure attachment you know that you can go to other human beings and by by large most people will cooperate with you right most people I go to you and say hey you know what I'm having this problem can you help me out you're saying okay I'll help and you'll teach me something about it right you're not going to scream at me you're not going to throw a rock at me for asking you for advice that's secure attachment they will always default during conflict to trying to cooperate with the other person as much as they humanly can they will sort themselves out typically from everybody else because they will cluster together because they'll test that with other people and when it doesn't go well they say okay and they just back off because they know there's tons of other people out there that they can go to to get that connection with so the world is sorted into two different movies playing on the same screen there's the secure people over here that you talk to that say hey life is pretty easy life is pretty great yeah there's challenges I just take care of business and my friends and family love me and everything's wonderful and they're over here and most people think that the insecure styles all think those people are delusional like like how did you like are you on drugs how you doing that like you were just born like you must have easy right everybody else over here in the insecure camp of no one will ever help me ever either because of myself because I don't deserve it or because they are untrustworthy either way and I have to play games to make people like me so the anxiously attached people they have all I could talk all kinds of brain chemicals and stuff that's different with them but they have an overwhelming craving to be loved to be taken care of to not be abandoned so they are endlessly chasing not abandonment not even to be kept to not be abandoned so everything they do is to try to go out and have people love them so they become codependent they take care of other people have problems they find some drugged up crazy dude that they can just like take care of forever because he will never leave her because she's never going to run out of problems she can solve for him and eventually he will really depend on her so she will obviously he'll marry her and have babies with her and he'll take care of her and he'll stop using drugs and all the things he's doing eventually because he'll love her enough no he will usually have avoid an attachment style of I can't trust anybody else I got to make them do what I want so he thinks everything that's good happening in the relationship is only because he's constantly pushing good buttons to give her a dribble of good feelings and everything she does is not because she loves him it's only because he's providing her with good feelings so he just sits back and says I'm not we're not solving problems together I solve problems by making you happy so he never properly bonds to her or to anybody else he just withdraws he has to give her good feelings then he frantically chases them becomes addicted to that complete validation it's called oxytocin is the bonding hormone that he's flooding in her he does something called love bombing overwhelms her with that sensation he doesn't mean to but he's making her feel amazing and then she tries to rush at him and get too close and he backs off he says whoa I didn't think we were having that kind of relationship yeah we have five kids and yeah we've been together for 30 years but I don't really think I want to talk about my feelings with you that's a little too deep that's too deep oh you want to get married now you and your five kids over there you guys can stay there marriage is a step too far because I would be vulnerable you could hurt me through marriage we'll do everything else but not sign that piece of paper that's what it is but she chases the anxious person chases the avoidant person avoids and dodges back endlessly over and over and over and you see this dynamic play out constantly with couples who they chase they run away there's always a chaser and a runner during those situations because if you're afraid of abandonment you're probably more likely to cause it because of your behaviors and on the other side as well you're more likely to cause the things that you fear exactly and it becomes like this self-fulfilling prophecy 100% right because if you're I would imagine somebody's afraid of being abandoned might constantly test their partner to say well if I do this will you love me well if I do this will you still love me oh there you left me I knew it I knew this was going to happen type of deal these guys come to me in their 30s they've tried everything else but they've got this constant message throughout their entire life of everyone I ever known has tried to hurt me everyone I've ever got close to has tried to use me I haven't been able to trust anyone I've ever known again the secure people duck out because they say well this guy isn't he's not being honest with me he's not talking to me we're not solving problems together they might even not think he's bad they'll just think I have no interest he has no interest in me I have no interest in him he's not properly bond so for him every person he's ever got close to has tried to hurt him because those are the only people that would pursue him so he has a lifetime guys coming to me for coaching or my course or whatever they have a lifetime of data they think proves that there's no hope they have a lifetime of data they think says I can never bond with anybody or trust anybody ever so they have to watch my videos for six months until they're willing to talk to me usually and then they'll read my book maybe and then they'll maybe they'll think about that point but the whole time they're trying to figure out where the trap is where is Adam trying to lay a trap or is Adam's information going to get me killed or destroyed as usually it takes them so long to even come to a place where they believe it's possible because what I'm telling them is against every ounce of experience they have ever had in their life how do you how do you handle a situation like this you you have to see so many of these couples that are attracted to each other because of their insecurities and that's the main reason why they're even together deep down you're going they shouldn't even fucking be together he don't like that she don't like that they have nothing that would be a good relationship other than the fact that they have found their insecurities match really well yet they're coming to you to help their marriage or relationship how the fuck do you reconcile that oh yeah I have I have women come to me to save their marriage men come to me save their marriage sometimes I have couples come together and what I have found is this almost every couple can make it work somehow if they are both willing to do the work if he says I think this is all crap this isn't going to work but she's 100% in she does the work it will destroy the marriage if he comes in and says I'm going to do this and this is what I want and she has personality disorder something absolutely refuses to do the work it will destroy the marriage when one of the moves to become secure and says I want to get my needs met with you together I want to meet your needs I don't want games I don't want secrets I don't want shore play I just want to talk to you and get my needs met and let's be a team together it's amazing how couples who are very very different when they do that and they are just open and just talk with each other the mutual exchange of needs almost every couple can make it work that's cool you know it's weird about that Adam is in fitness the statistics on a couple that come to you that are they both obese and one of them figures it out and gets fit and healthy the divorce rate goes through the roof unless they both do together it's like marriage glue but if one of them doesn't the other one doesn't do it and it's probably similar to what you're talking about I'm fixing some of my issues you haven't fixed some of yours and that's going to cause some struggle that's why when I have an individual come to me I ask what's your relationship status and I say tell me about the other person this with you have you talked with them about this usually they've kept it a dark secret no I don't have feelings that they keep it a secret sometimes the guys will say yeah my wife knows because that's why I'm here because she doesn't like it but I ask where is she at is she burned out where she's not going to be willing to do this work you know if it's a woman is he going to be completely checked out he doesn't believe this is possible the people who come to me for that I warn them I say look you are going to discover that there is so much goodness available to you in this life so much in your relationships that you've never imagined you're going to want to share that with the partner with the person that you love in your life there's a chance they may follow you into it there's a chance they may absolutely reject it because they don't believe it's possible and they will do everything possible to shut you down they will emotionally hurt you they will wound you they will try to get you back into that box so that you stay away from them without ever coming near them they may do that they may be warning you right now then we work on it and we have to build steps into it to see if it's possible or not so I have to give them like have this conversation with your spouse write it down on this note card use this phrase do this or bring them in and I will train them during the coaching we'll have a whole session just the two of us I'll explain everything if we can get the other person on board even just on board to do it almost every marriage can be saved almost every single marriage can be saved that's amazing so when I look at statistics on divorce it's interesting to me that you see so here in the west through media we say you fall in love and it's a strong feeling and that's what keeps you together and it's just always in love and obviously you complete me you have to always complete me type of deal so that's the message here and then you look at some other cultures that are different like arranged marriages I don't even pick my spouse my parents did their divorce rate is like tiny and I know people like well that's because they can't get divorced no no when they do interviews their happiness is much higher as well what's going on there's four levels of relationships that are supposed to be hit four pieces of relationships that are build security long term when you have just the feelings you skip ahead from all four to the fifth one of just feeling good the first year of our relationships that's super easy to do because the hormones are flooding the novelty is there everyone's trying to bond first year is amazing you can do that for most relationships the four levels are this number one consistency of shared values if arranged marriages they tend to do this really well your families raise you with consistent values honesty loyalty integrity right if those are there that's the first level of trust with a human being I can trust you to be stable and secure and do what you're supposed to do when a crisis hits a conflict hits you don't act based on your feelings what feels good at the moment or your fear you act based on that core principle and that's what you're going to do number two is a long term goal that you can share together like legacy goal I tell a lot of couples they say what's the purpose of your relationship most people have never stopped and said what is the purpose of my marriage your marriage has a purpose it has a mission the marriage itself you didn't get married to have good feelings until one of you dies and that one wins because the other one's now left alone that's not what commitment is commitment is to a shared mutual legacy that the two of you are creating better together than you could ever create separately I've got my wife our four kids my legacy all my work if you like seeing me here and I worked 12 hours a day I could not do that without my wife at my back without her there 24-7 all of my life and me helping her as well because she's stayed home mom she does homeschooling she does our finances she takes care of everything else we have a shared mission so my legacy oh Adam he's you know he's the attachment specialist see that is her legacy too everything I do is part her legacy that's number two a shared mutual goal that actually keeps you two united so that when the feelings are not great you have a purpose to stay together number three is mutual acceptance of bad things of baggage you don't just enable the other person by saying oh you're an alcoholic okay we'll just live around that oh you scream at our kids and hit them we'll work around that have you done as much as you can to get better as a human being where are you at right now that you're still struggling and can I accept you in those moments help you and continue to keep you accountable right wives are great for accountability and call you out but help you and accept you where you are can you accept me for that as well this is attachment really important here but if you don't have good attachment guys won't say oh I have a problem I'm weak in this area how important is it to have those definitive roles established in terms of like the splitting of some of those responsibilities and just that understanding that you can build from yep so we call it division of labor inside the family when you must have a clear division of labor it doesn't matter if you follow traditional gender roles most couples end up doing that anyway but have a strong division of labor so that there's no resentment there's no questions and everybody is also appreciated for the work that they do when you get hired at a company you don't walk in they say okay well we're gonna have you here and you're gonna do some stuff and it'll just kind of be whatever we tell you to and we'll pay you based on how we feel that you have kind of done you walk in it's a clear job description it's a clear mission statement everything is a hundred percent there and that when you do that that mutual acceptance it leads into the fourth level of mutual fulfillment hey you are going to do this part of our job right I told my wife you're gonna be the stay at home mom it's you're amazing at it you're gonna home school you're gonna do this what do you need from me in return not just to live your life but how do I make you feel loved I asked my wife what are the top three things I can do as your husband that make you feel most loved and how often do you need them and how and to what intensity and why does that matter write me an instruction manual for your care and feeding as if I am from another planet and I've never met a woman before what is your mutual fulfillment and here's the three things that I need so that you understand them clearly consistency with values shared mutual plan and legacy the mission that you're building mutual acceptance of problems that you're working on and then mutual fulfillment when you have those four pieces your marriage thrives and in range marriages the good the good ones they they make them do that or old style marriages right a hundred years ago people didn't get married because they felt good people got married because they said well I can trust you life is hard I can trust you we have a purpose a mission together we raise kids who survive and we have these various challenges that we're going to chase together that I have and you have okay and mutual fulfillment what do you need for me during the course of our mission together your wife your wife she should be your vice president she should be the first mate of your ship if you're the captain she's not just over there to look good she is she is right there with you it's a mission together going back to what Justin kind of was alluding to with the division of labor where do you see this has gotten really murky in today's society I hear it I hear it now okay so the research shows that if a couple is more fair and equal in the labor in the home and the chores they're actually more likely to get divorced interestingly for a few reasons there it's hotly argued about why sometimes because the couples who have more fair more equal not fair equal division of labor might have more progressive values they might have more yeah there's a number of reasons that could go into this but if you don't have those pieces there the resentment can boil up so hard because sometimes women don't think they have to bring anything into the relationship apart from sex sometimes very insecure women will say all I have to offer is sex sometimes insecure women will go the other direction though and so they'll say I have nothing to offer so I have to do everything there's so many insecure women out there who think they are constantly on the razor's edge of being abandoned and their husband has no idea that she feels this way he thinks the marriage is solid he thinks they're happy he thinks that she's happy and he's just playing a game he's trying to figure out why she's not in the mood as often as she could be and she's sitting there thinking I am one day away from this man leaving me because I offer him nothing I have to do everything but then she'll do everything and then she won't get her needs met that she secretly has because she also can't ask for those yeah I could see how that would happen because my wife is definitely better at some things than I am and vice versa and if it was like oh we're you know if I'm doing what she does well and we're like I'm like no no no we're doing this equally then I could see how she'd be like I'm better at this like why don't you just hear what I have to say like I'm with the kids all day this is what you know you know our son needs what our daughter needs like and I'm like no no no I you know I only see them for you know four hours because I come home from work but I know what's going on like I could see that and I could also see how if she came in here and she did the same thing here at my work how I would feel the same way so it makes that that part makes sense to me it's like you lead this work together here and then vice versa I also think it's become kind of murky because the messaging around you know maybe you can go back and look at exactly what year this really started to happen because for a long time one person stayed home one person worked my wife grew up in a home with a mother basically telling her that you know work hard make sure you have your own money you know you don't you know never want to depend on a man financially they'll ruin you and so you know you can only imagine that you know the challenges that we've probably had in our relationship and you know it's tough because I see and they have this incredibly tight family they all communicate they all share and this you can see it with all the and the women by the way are all killers they're all badass women they're all degrees high performers of the ants all of them in the family and you know you can see the the trouble that leads and the challenges that we've had I feel like a lot of that pressure isn't just from their home but the society's kind of pushed that message you know absolutely so Forbes magazine ran maybe five years ago they ran this amazing survey that they conducted women up at the top level executive corporate level kind of women and they said do you wish that you could stay at home as a mom and that your partner made more and if so do you resent them and what the numbers came out was this 84% of corporate executive level women said I wish my partner made more money so I could stay at home 65% of them actively resented their male partner from not make enough money for them to stay at home so yes the message is there of work do your own money stay safe he will leave you men will always betray you yes that message is there but women also hate and resent that message at the same time that's not what they want they want to figure out a system they crave to figure out a system where a man will love them and care for them and nurture them so that they can bring up the fullness of themselves and give back the full feminine energy of their family and they resent being shifted into a masculine role because no one is stepping up and taking the masculine role in their life yeah so I see it's funny because I think there's a myth where we can work together we'll have kids together but let's protect ourselves a little bit in case it doesn't like you can't it'd be like running a business with my partners and we're not all in we're just kind of doing it because we're a little afraid that it's not going to work either it's going to work or it's not and your best chances of making it work is you're going all the way in that's been my attitude because I was married before and I got divorced and then afterward now I'm married and I'm like oh this is you either go all in or you don't and I had some fear coming out of getting divorced because that was scared of the shit out of you and it's like I had to get rid of some of that because it ain't going to work if I come into this with that kind of fear the message that I see out there in regards to marriage for men is this and then follow the herd in particular is this if you get married you're going to be having sex with the same woman all the time you can't bang all the time she's going to take half your money so you're going to have less money oh kids that's going to that's a burden and you got to take care of kids all of a sudden you're changing diapers you're not out there hanging out with your buddies having a great time you can't buy fast cars you can't go out and do this awesome stuff it sucks the dads on TV are bumbling idiots there's almost never like it used to be a source of pride how many kids you have five kids oh my god congratulations now it's like oh you got five kids that sucks why would you possibly do that so I see that message all the time and so you get a lot of young men who are like why would I want to get married this totally sucks and then you throw on top of it pornography and ease of access to sex and then it just confirms like oh yeah why would I ever why is that such a shitty message working out is hard right working out is hard why would anybody go to the gym three five times a week whatever why would anybody go to the gym that many times and pick up something heavy and drop it down again why would anyone do that it's stupid you get nothing out of it it's short term it's pointless it's uncomfortable stay at home eat fast food watch pornography isn't that just so much more comfortable why would you go to the gym when you can watch porn at home why would you get married why would you go somewhere where you have to work with somebody else to solve problems you have to raise kids feed them, clothe them, you have to work harder they take all your money why would you do that when you could just be at home and watch only fans why would you do that like just watch only fans for the next 50 years and just jerk off and that's your life like why would you put effort and the pain well just like with fitness it's because it's what it brings it brings so much more wholeness of self it brings better chemicals and bonding and nurturing and fulfillment and the journey and the passion and it brings so much richness to your life and then it opens new doors marriage a good marriage is the same way you know it's funny because marriage gets a bad rap of there's no sex in marriage you will have sex with one woman for the rest of your life but only for the first year and then the research shows that married people are far more likely to have sex on an average night than single people even single people who are on dating apps even single young people, hot people they are far more likely to have sex inside their marriage than anybody else which we don't think about we think hot young singles are out there having all this sex the sex is going down teenage pregnancy rates are going down because fewer people are having sex the numbers actually show that more people have sex at the end of high school than were before 10 years ago the sex is decreasing everywhere because people are having so much of it and they are not finding fulfillment so why would you get married because of the richness that most of us aren't aware is there until we go through a painful event like you with your marriage after your marriage, after the first marriage what did you want differently in your second marriage oh you know real connection it's easy to look at the other partner and I did that a lot but afterwards what did I do wrong and one thing that I did wrong is I thought my value was just earning money that's all my value and I just worked that's all I did and I also tend to be more avoidant which is wow that feeds right into that I'll just get work all day, we got problems I'll just work all day long so that's what I looked at that's where most men they hit a rock bottom moment and say is there anything out there that can work and they accidentally start working on attachment like you did, hey real connection first thing you said real connection well what does real connection come from well it comes from telling the other person when something's wrong it comes from telling the other person when you're sad, it comes from asking for help it comes from all the things you're doing different with your wife now so that you've shared stories here of my wife has said this she was thinking that you are actually aware of what your wife thinks and it seems like what they're told is staying at home taking care of your kids oh that's dumb you should go get a career or that's where you're going to find all your meaning or your children are a burden or oh be with one man sacrifice your dreams in order to have a family sacrifice all your dreams or here's another message oh hey you can sleep around too now everybody does that it's empowering so why is all that wrong why enslave yourself to one man at home who's going to hit you when you can enslave yourself to a loveless corporate overlord who is just going to run you for the next 40 years until they fire you women are in no win circumstance right now is what they feel they feel like they want families the vast majority of women do they show up to 90% of women who end up not having children regret it because they wish they could have they did not want to have kids 90% of women who end up not having kids wanted kids is what the research shows women are just as trapped in a no win circumstance as men are right now but the problem is women feel vulnerable they feel unsafe they want to feel safe they're the ones that go to therapy and want to feel loved and safe they're the ones who want to feel this enclosed network men we can thrive out in the wilderness with a stick and we kill a creature we wear it's skin we cook it's hide then we kill the next creature they're not usually geared for that that's an extreme circumstance that a woman would have to be on the outside of the tribe women are supposed to be on the inside of the tribe doing amazing work taking care of the tribe and nurturing and loving and providing and everything on the inside so for a woman to be out there exposed among strangers completely gathering her own resources completely alone not even other women are going to help her she's utterly alone it's the worst case survival circumstance for that woman's brain it's an apology for everything that has ever been built in us through evolution as the worst case human scenario so then those women get into circumstances and say well how can I find someone to love me well sex is real easy for getting approval and a woman wouldn't have sex with someone unless she kind of had some sort of connection to them so maybe men feel the same maybe when I have sex with these men maybe they will bond to me maybe he'll keep me maybe I'm worth something maybe the more sex we have the more dirty and crazy I get on the first couple of dates maybe he'll realize how passionate and into I am and he'll never ever leave me men were exactly the opposite wow this girl's going crazy on the first date I don't know if I want to I'll keep her right over here in a pile that's the opposite women are using the wrong tools to solve problems that they don't know how to solve either men and women right now we're so terrified of each other it's not even funny looking at the modern landscape there's a couple things about kids I've seen the data and it's pretty crazy I have four kids with a big age gap and I got two teenagers and I'm seeing it firsthand the anxiety depression it's like through the roof with kids especially with adolescents and teenagers and what's different now I mean the things I can point to are I guess internet social media pornography like what's going on with kids right now why are kids so anxious and depressed and you mentioned suicide with kids they almost never happened that was like a thing that was so rare that it actually never happened now it's happening all the time like what's going on humans are not meant to live like this we're just not meant to live like this we're supposed to have networks around us that catch us if something goes wrong we're supposed to have our core nuclear family then we're supposed to have our expanded family then it was called the kith and kin network around that friends of family and everybody around you we're supposed to have our larger society that's also supposed to be there and then we're supposed to have some sort of some sort of religious group around us doesn't matter necessarily what it is but some sort of religious connection of shared values that shared connection if something goes wrong in your core family then your extended family steps in if that goes wrong your kith and kin network steps in if that goes wrong your society everyone was invested in taking care of each other because that's how we survive together right we've all heard safety in numbers security numbers and none of us live by that we live one person completely alone all those networks were obliterated over the last 100 years systematically destroyed every safety net we would have had so the kids now grow up completely isolated from mom and dad from their families, from their kith and kin networks from their society, from religion, from everything every network that would have caught them now they have the internet and they can talk to other people who feel just as miserable as they do they might form groups but people are going to be very unstable most likely so then they just see those relationships completely crack apart and then they have access to pornography they have access to make me feel better for a minute and then make me feel worse later on everything is in place as a coping mechanism instead of an actual solution so now kids have endless coping mechanisms with none of the networks we were biologically built to have kids are in a no-win game same thing, same thing no-win game pornography a few times the access of it the way it is now hasn't been around that long I mean all of us were kids and when we were kids it was so hard to come by that it was I mean I always make the joke that you could trade a dirty magazine for a bike when I was a kid that's how valuable it was now it's so accessible it's insane what are some of the ramifications of this access to novelty and online what's that causing you know it's funny because so many guys come to me and so many women come to me and they say the women in porn are so happy to be there and they're so happy to be doing what they want so guys right now Gen Z is trying to figure out okay how much cheating is normal it's on snapchat you can go on snapchat and you can actually stalk your partner and then you're supposed to get with them and give them all your passwords to everything and they're supposed to be able to control everything you do and everywhere you go because the guys imagine in their apartment find a dark alley with five guys in it and jump in enthusiastically just like in every porno and that's what he thinks she's going to be doing out there this is how men think that women live we think that women want as much wild crazy random stranger sex as guys in some degree or programmed in some ways want but with that pornography the guys also think okay this is the world this is how sex works I have to be like this and if my life isn't like this everybody else is getting it but not me it's interesting because watching pornography consistently also as you masturbate to it so many guys in their 20s come into me with erectile dysfunction because all they know how to do is get aroused from these pixels on a screen and then bang one out really quick but actually deep connection with a human woman is utterly terrifying it withers it up for them they can't perform once they actually get to the bed and not only that but it rewires part of the brain it makes your brain light up when you see an attractive woman your brain starts lighting up with a tool use area instead of lighting up with the bonding with another person area what's the tool use area? using a tool like a hammer like I'm going to use this to masturbate with is what they have found it re-creates that so you have to let those pieces die off stop using porn let it die off talk to women be around women I run a private community right now where men and women can come in and just speak to each other like humans so that they can get used to women are not monsters who will destroy me if I don't perform sexually and women can say wow none of these men has tried to stalk me or murder me in real life it's amazing porn has created the concept of how men and women will always interact and it's people that grow up viewing that from age 10 that's all they know from men and women how does the male brain look at sexual interaction and how does the female brain look at sexual interaction? very good it's interesting now both of us are supposed to be flooded with a hormone called oxytocin which is the love hormone it makes us feel great it's lack of stress and comfort and nurturing and that actually leads to male erection in a large way it's one big piece of it it also leads to massive female arousal that's the mechanism after the first 6 to 12 months her brain will switch from more like novelty and connection to almost entirely oxytocin relationship driven the female sex drive falls off a cliff at about 12 months if you guys aren't properly bonded great indicator if you have attachment issues one or both her sex drive into the toilet and both of you will wonder why it's because attachment issues are preventing that proper bonding so during the physical act you're supposed to have a lot of oxytocin which actually makes the male's erection stronger makes the female's female various arousal systems better that is how it's supposed to work now once they climax the female typically floods with oxytocin which bonds her to him even more and that she finishes and then says I love this man with all of my heart he is incredible it's a proper mechanism because she might get pregnant and then she's going to be properly bonded to him and stay with him men we have a release of oxytocin but it seems to do something different for us it just moves the semen along we get a lot more dopamine when we do this it feels good it's like hey I just ate my favorite hamburger when I'm hungry again I will come back here and have another hamburger right it's I will come back when I'm hungry but you don't go to McDonald's or your favorite burger joint or whatever it might be when you're not hungry you don't hang out there all the time you don't sit there just in anticipation of getting hungry next time so this is what women are missing and men is men bond better through a hormone called vasopressin it's when we solve stress together we solve challenges together everything we've talked about here today when we solve challenges together it releases a hormone called vasopressin which does a ton of million different things in your body but one thing it does is it associates you with that man and says or woman that person is my ally when I'm struggling I will go to them and get solutions we will fight together we will fight off the other tribes together we will hunt the mammoths together it builds in so guys who love their their wife right you love your wife I won't call anyone out here but I'm sure all of us right when you're in bed with your wife you're not just there I'm going to get this done alright I'm done I'm out you're there and you say hey I'm going to give you some good feelings you're going to feel good today right we're going to give you like 10 of them 10 climaxes and she's like I don't want that many that you're like no we're going to do it and he's mission focused and he wants to get it done because in his eyes that's actually vasopressin bonding yes it'll oxytocin bond her to you there's evolutionary benefits to it right the more she has the more likely she's to get pregnant there's that piece but he is vasopressin trying to vasopressin bond with that woman most women miss this because they're insecure and they say I'm not going to make him do that for me I have a hard time she has low oxytocin low arousal low chance of orgasm and then low chance of multiple orgasm if she starts off with low oxytocin and so she says I'm not going to make him do that I'm not going to make him bond with I'll just I'll make sure he has a good time so then he dope will mean bonds to her but she oxytocin bonds to him and in turn there's no vasopressin so that's why guys that's why a booty call doesn't turn usually into a marriage that's right right there in a nutshell wow that's fascinating do you talk a lot about how evolution and how that leads to you know how we are and what not modern obviously the way we live now is vastly different from the majority of the type of environments we evolved in what are some of the biggest challenges with modern life and how can we great question people always ask me Adam how are we going to go back and I said we can't go back are you kidding me like there were problems originally right imperfections that we can now fix but now we are aware of the problems what we need is intentional solutions intentional family building intentional friendship building intentional community building we have to take the things that were serving us we have to take the bonds that were right I don't think marriage is fully going away but it'll adapt it'll change it'll change into what is our core mission together right we're probably going to form commitments together and then I was reading a great book not that long ago if they get married then they hand over their mutual shared passwords to their bitcoin and what not and they merge that together and it merges all your systems into one so not only are you humanly one one couple but now your system has become one and you're sharing that mission together that that could be something our future could create we need to create useful intentional systems that meet our primal hunter-gatherer needs from back here I'm going to hunt a mammoth then I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife and she's going to really enjoy it we're going to bond then we're going to have babies it'll be great we need that system but for the modern era whatever the mammoth is now now it's loneliness right now the mammoth world hunting is emotional loneliness and isolation if we can fight that together you know what we're going to bond just fine too how familiar are you with Christopher what's his last name he wrote the book sex at dawn are you familiar with a bit I've heard it in passing tell me about it okay I'll just I thought maybe you would obviously they this is where they compare humans to like bonobo oh yes okay that's and it's become kind of the open relationship manifesto no I hear you and my wife and I actually read it together I thought it would be a great challenging book for us to listen to together and it was created great dialogue between the two of us the takeaway we didn't get what we got from it was not let's add more people to our relationship correct we didn't get that what we got more was it Chris who Ryan Chris Ryan there it is what we got from it was a better understanding of some of these natural instincts that we have and a better understanding of each other that were uniquely different and I have the we each have a different way of looking at sex and wanting sex some of the stuff you're talking about which is what made me think about this and I was just curious if you are familiar with kind of that philosophy and then why there's this huge movement to you know very much so the name didn't click but yes the bonobo chimps so I'm much more interested in friends to wall's work with the sex and power among the primate so he talked about this extensively especially with chimpanzee troops we humans we seem to map better onto chimpanzees than we do bonobos yes bonobos have those features and they're right there close but many of our bad behaviors that we have in an unstable environment or in an overly comfortable environment sometimes can mimic bonobos but we have massive negative features that happen to that otherwise we wouldn't have 11 year olds committing suicide at epidemic rates that no one wants to talk about right that doesn't happen with bonobos they're a little bit different from us but we are built much more like the chimpanzee troops that are out there their their biology seems to reward them in the same way that our biology rewards us for the social behaviors for the power dynamics for those pieces of control for example male chimps who are at the top at the top of the pyramid the most dominant and strongest they are not horrible nightmare tyrants they are the most likely to comfort the other chimps when they're scared they're the most likely to be the first in the battle to protect their families they're the most likely to stop an argument among the other chimps they're the most likely to have some sort of clear code of conduct that the other chimps then map onto and follow so that they can have a structured society that we are much more like chimps than we are bonobos so I've heard plenty of people say well you know I don't have to be faithful to my wife because bonobos somewhere out there is a bonobo chimp and I've heard that all the time if we didn't have that in us though I don't think monogamy would be one of the the driving factor in almost every culture on human history that has ever existed I don't think monogamy is going the way of the dinosaurs I don't think it's necessary for every human being necessarily but I think there's a reason that's been present everywhere that humans have existed and they're doing a tyrannical chimp leader eventually the lower level chimps organize and execute them there's a whole subclass of chimps just outside they usually call them the betas the beta males on the outside they're not like we would understand beta males of sub they are sociopaths they're almost genetic sociopaths who live on the outside they flick rocks at the other chimps they try to establish dominance hierarchies of their own and they will kill him they'll structure and kill him if he's a tyrant but they'll also try to take from him and steal from him all the time and mock him throw pebbles at him try to sleep with his girlfriends kind of thing they will constantly pick they're almost genetic sociopaths whose only purpose is to make sure that the leader at the top is pure in his being it's the guys outside who test the king continuously and keep the king honest that human society is quite similar to me you have to think that you have a criticism of this and I'd love to hear it in the last decade or so we have praised the dating apps as you know 1 in 3 marriages now 2 in 3 just the amount of people that find connection in love through these dating apps but I've recently heard some critiques of it and I'd love to hear what maybe your critiques of dating apps are so in 1995 about 60% of all couples who got together met through family and friends 1995 it was 20-30 years ago it's a long time now the research shows that about 50-60% of couples meet through dating apps it is actually reversed and only a tiny sliver maybe 20-25% still meet through family and friends now that some people will look at that and will say well dating apps have just replaced that we just have to use dating apps from now on and I'm not discounting the dating apps can be helpful some people get married and have wonderful relationships but what that tells me map that now on to the stat that shows that with millennials up to 30% of millennials are so crushingly alone every day that they're reporting suicidal thoughts and that's just so so suicidally alone that's up to 50% up to 60% of millennials are having just ongoing constant loneliness the problem isn't that dating apps are making us freer the problem is that we are so wretchedly miserable we are even willing to put up with beating strangers online that women would never do biologically and just go find a stranger kind of thing that's deaf we need to build a system where people have tighter family and friend relationships where they're built on love and connection and trust and then you can say hey if you know anybody, you know people find me someone who's suitable for me and if you have 5 people out there searching their networks for you and he has 5 people out there searching her networks for her you're going to connect to those quiet girls who are at home who haven't slept with 800 guys they don't have it only fans they live at home they're nice and quiet and they're saying I wish my husband would walk through the front door right now and marry me those are the girls that most guys are out there looking for but she's behind gatekeepers and she wants you to come pre vetted and everything built in and you have to build through your social network that's what humans are supposed to do is there a better method yes I almost feel like the dating apps also produce this issue here where it's like when I was a kid I had VHS types at home and if I wanted to watch a movie I had my 15 favorite movies and I'd always have something to watch now I get on Netflix and Prime and Hulu and sometimes I'm like searching for 30 minutes to give up there's nothing to watch there's too much stuff and maybe I'll find something better type of deal I wonder if it's creating that with some people or people stop right in the middle they say I'm not into this and they click to the next thing and they click and click and click dating apps same thing right your date is basically a condom you put it on you do your business you throw it away that's what a lot of people are getting used to and then that separates into two different camps some people say this is great I never have to connect to another human being I'll just get my needs met and some people say this is so miserably unhappy I hate this is there anything else though there's better and those are the men and women who come to me and say alright Adam teach me about attachment how do I find a husband I have so many women coming to me Adam how do I find a husband who is just honest who just works a job who wants to have a family and is just going to be with me and have low drama and those these women are flooding into me in my DMS my emails if anyone out there wants some numbers let me know but these these women are overwhelmingly coming in saying I want to meet a man that I can get married with and have babies with I just want him to be honest he can be a sort of average I just want an honest man I can trust and there's guys out there saying no those women don't exist those women because they're used to the porn they're used to endless porn they're used to only fans they're used to dating apps they're used to seeing that that cluster of women who are invisible in public who are visible not the invisible women who are at home I've also read that one of the drivers because the male experience when you're dating is lots of rejection oh it's horrible yeah I mean that's the thing like you had a party or a dance even when you're a kid and it's usually the girls sitting around and they're waiting for the guy to ask them and the guy knows he has to go ask them and you're gonna get a bunch of nose and it's scary nobody wants that but I've heard that a lot of that motivation can come from our own sex drive or own desires but when we're when we're you know on pornography and social media and that drive is gone to go out and take those risks so a lot more men or young men are just not going out to do any of that because they lose that motivation that drive there's that too but they also don't believe it's possible the dating situation for men is a nightmare right now did you know the US population is about 52 percent female and 48 percent male the odds are very good that you should find not just one but perhaps two women out there right odds are very good but the women section themselves away behind gatekeepers and wait for someone to come find them through their systems so they can you can come pre-vetted the women who are out in the wild that you see are the women who are so broken or so alone they have to find strangers and then it becomes a meat market you send you send her a DM if they're then it's like 10 guys to one woman you get on the dating apps it's almost 10 to one so she is flooded with every day 300 DMs hey babe hey you wanna give me a head hey how you do it hey I'll make you happy hey how you do it like it's just endless messages and then it becomes a meat market of you desperately trying to get yourself out there I help guys tune up their profiles and tune up their behaviors and it helps but you are chasing an endlessly small pool of women who don't know how to connect and are just as terrified of you as you are of them what does that look like in terms of a male profile that you help them kind of describe like their bio or picture how do you tune it up do you have do you have an example absolutely absolutely so plenty of guys go on right it's the shirt and the flexing or it's just them hold the fish or it's them like just looking nice like a school day photo or something you know something weird like guys think like this will make me look interesting women aren't necessarily looking interesting it's a good professional photo that shows you have money for a professional photo that you are dressed decently like a respectable man right who is a little bit masculine and you have some sort of presence about you're looking at the camera you're not necessarily smiling but you're not scowling you're taking care of that's generally what they're looking for it's that first impression then your profile what job is somebody applying for with you and what does your resume look like for you most guys go on their profile make themselves look fun no go on there and say hey I'm looking for a long term committed relationship with the right woman instantly you're in the top 10% of men right there because that's what most women want but they think you're lying so now you have to come in and say here's some things about me that make me secure and stable here you know I've been working at this job for X number of years I've got a lot of good friend relationships I am here looking for a committed partner who's going to take a family down the road you put on that on your dating profile and then you got a decent picture of yourself not looking haggard like you just crawled out of shower but looking decent and then when you're in the DMS you send her message and say hey you know what you look really interesting to talk to tell me a little bit more about yourself and you pop into a conversation with her instead of playing a game with her if you pop in trying to play a game hey baby how you doing hi I'll make you so happy no that's not no that's not a dick pick I'm not a dick pick make your profile dick pick your bio is just dick it would be a fun it would be such a fun study actually to have the same guy if you actually took like 100 people and actually just took their profiles and just made those subtle tweaks on like the engagement I bet there's a business in her I bet there's like a higher me to make your profile for you I was watching a YouTube video just the other day of a young man who did take himself as a profile it was okay and then a gorgeous version of his profile and then he just did the most stupid things possible you'd message girls and say hey want to give me a head just like crazy things and he got replies the good the gorgeous profile got a lot of replies from girls who were into the sex because he looked hotter and was taller but keep in mind these are probably not the women that you guys want to marry so again what's the purpose of your relationship just to smash through 30 or 40 women yes okay you need to look hotter yes you need to have $10 million in the bank yes if you want a pile of naked women on you every night you need to look a certain way and do a certain thing right right but if you are looking for that one quiet woman who's sitting at home who is going to be a good wife who wants to sit at home with you wants to take care of your children I have a wonderful wife like this my wife would not respond to me on a dating profile saying hey babe want to get some head no she it would be to be with me because loving commitment shared mutual values right having honest discussions about what my shortcomings and challenges are and then what hers are and if we can accept each other that way the mission that we're going to build together and then building that fulfillment being a human being who is capable of building a committed relationship and was on the surface level that that's what I wanted that's what gets most of these women's attention especially late 20s 30s let's talk a little bit about fatherhood because another area where I feel like there isn't great information just presented in media is just how to be a good dad and the data is the data on fatherhood is actually quite dismal right that's something like over half of children are raised without fathers or should I say in a single parent household the vast majority of them being fathers that abandon or around or maybe you know pushed out whatever and we're not often taught how to be good dads because we don't either have dads or our dads were there and all the time what are the characteristics of a good father I mean you're raising kids like you know what are the things you need to work on or do to really be the kind of father that a child needs absolutely you need to provide four things as a father four things I was just on with a client just the other day he said Adam I'm 40 years old I don't know how to be a man help me be a man I said okay you got kids yes let's start there four things that a father and husband must provide number one is resources yes you have to feed your children you have to have a roof right water food shelter safety basic resources number two is security right put to provide and protect security not just physical security but emotional security if they get hurt can they come to you for help or just smack them for getting too close when they're scared can they come to you and feel safe when they have a need can they come to you and feel safe right security with you as a father number two number three is stability are you disciplined are you emotionally disciplined so you're consistent you're understandable you're believable you're predictable in a good way they can predict you so they can build a life around you right are you stable in that regard do you provide that stability and not only that but loving their mother so the family will not break up do you keep a stable household right and number four is love do you do all of this not just with a mechanical mindset of fine I'm gonna take care yeah I guess the state says I have to do you seek their the true true goodness for that child what is truly best for that human being or for your wife do you truly do all of the work that you do for their absolute goodness not as a selfless doormat but as a man who is giving that love those are the four things a man must give to his family I've read with the you mentioned stability and I know a lot of men initially think you know stability and protection like physical protection and stability is like okay we got a house or whatever stop there yeah but what I've read is that a child who doesn't know how dad's mood is gonna be or how he's gonna react when I come to him oh is dad in a bad mood is he gonna snap is he gonna yell is he unpredictable that could raise a child to become hyper vigilant to read other people's emotions so they're anxious how's dad doing right now is he mad is what and also with themselves keeping their own emotions because I don't know how people react so I'm just gonna be like this and I'm never gonna let anybody know how I feel so you end up raising children who kind of become like that absolutely that that creates the world we're in now I can't trust anybody no one will ever love me and I have to be careful how I approach people if I even needs if I have to talk to them let me constantly fluff and fluff and fluff and fluff those are the girls that say alright I'm gonna have sex with this guy so he doesn't abandon me those are the guys doing doing chores hoping his wife will take off her shirt and jump on top of him like a jungle predator and it will never happen because that's not how humans are built those are the kids that say I can never trust any human being so I have to perform like a train circus bootle and that's what that creates if you as a father make your kids come to you like that you are setting them up for a lifetime of that the way you present to your kids and listen to them and love them determines everything about their life yeah you know it's interesting about this and I recommend this to to dad's listening because you'll learn a lot about yourself by doing this I've been reading a lot about Savva toddler toddlers are interesting right a lot of very unpredictable they're getting all these feelings they don't know how to cope with them right and through learning about them I actually learn about myself and about my spouse and all that but one of the things that I learned was sometimes oftentimes in a toddler doesn't want to do something we force them put your shoes on no no you got to put your shoes on and what I learned was ask them why they don't want to wear their shoes what's weird about it is I don't know maybe maybe one at a 10 times they'll say something like this happened the other day I told my son put his jacket on we're going outside I don't want to wear my jacket and so I'll say well how come why don't you want to wear your jacket buddy one at a 10 times it's happening yesterday he goes oh well I guess I'll wear my jacket like 10% solved right there then the other nine times he's got a reason why don't you want to wear your jacket buddy oh I don't like the way it feels on my arms or I don't like that particular jacket do you want to wear another jacket or I'm not cold oh okay you're not cold I'll put the jacket here and then if you get cold you can come to say this but we don't do this at all so it's not it sounds silly but it's not showing an interest in how the other person feels and why is a relationship most parents don't have relationships with their kids they manage their kids well that's a big one that's it you teach your children how to have relationships with each other by how to be curious that's brilliant exactly what you did right there I do with my son hey why are you so mad today what's going on with you today and then how can I help you solve that right you're okay you have why don't you want to wear your jacket beautiful beautiful first step okay well then how about this can we provide some alternate solutions to that or here's some more data you might not have known like you're not cold right now outside why don't you open the door and stuck your nose out there and see how cold it is and you'll see how cold it is then we'll talk if you want to wear your jacket that's what I do now so take a step back now I say that to him say hey go outside and check and see if you want to wear your jacket or not I want to wear my jacket exactly like totally avoided all this help them make their decisions by cooperating with them during conflict when there's conflict you cooperate you train your kids for good when there's conflict and you push them or coerce or explode you're training them to never cooperate during conflict ever again train your children to be the adults you want to be with right and that takes more work but I feel like it takes less work later on like it makes it easier later on yeah correct I like where we're going this is more like tactical stuff which is where I want to eventually get with you I'll never forget listening to this episode I think it was Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson who had this conversation where I heard it first and it made a huge impact on me just the way I did something tactically every single day going forward and he used this analogy of how humans we plan these vacations that we're going to our summer vacation it's a week long vacation we spend all year thinking about that one week and the flights and the foods and where we're going to go and we spend months and months like planning this one little week of our life and he goes yeah you will every single day come home from work and greet your wife and kid the first 15 minutes you know and he did the math on the time what that is and it's and yet you don't ever even think about the way you do that and so I've made this behavior of when I come leave here and I go home that I kind of stop and pause in the car especially I know if I'm going to you know off the phone from work I'm frustrated because something here and to like really become present decouple myself from that stuff and then enter the door with a different attitude if I need to switch that and that's been huge for me a very tactical thing I've done what are some things like that that we can be to be better fathers and better partners that are like tactical things that everybody should kind of I had a good friend just just very recently asked me Adam I work from and I have to constantly check in with my child and check out pretty good work and check in with my child and he said sometimes I'm so burned out at the end of the day I don't have anything to give my child or I only approach them in work mode and every man here and every married woman listening to this knows men have work mode and then we have family mode right and you do not ever let those two touch because it'll be nuclear so what I tell fathers and especially if you work at home as this right I worked I worked an office job for a long time you get ready in the morning you put on your office uniform you know nice shirt you have your briefcase you go out the front door and you do your commute then you drive home and then you get home what's the first thing you do you take off your uniform you take off your suit you take off whatever it is you get rid of it then you go in the bathroom and you wash your hands you pee you do you have a ritual right this ritual forms an association of something is changing I am shifting modes so fathers who work from home or fathers who have to switch circumstances you must do rituals and associations of different uniforms so my advice to my friend was this do you have jammy pants comfortable pajama pants he said yeah I said how often you wear I not that often because I just work and then I go and fall down in bed in my regular clothes okay every day at a certain time you're going to stop you're going to take off your jeans and you're going to put on these pajama pants during that time do you ever stop wash your face clean up no I don't do that because I'm not okay you're gonna stop put on your jammy pants you're gonna wash your face with cold water you're gonna take a couple deep breaths and then you're gonna walk out and play with your child and what this is gonna do the first couple of times it's gonna feel weird after about a week it's gonna become a ritual after that your brain is gonna say okay I'm switching modes switching from work mode to dad mode and it's in the same living room where you just conducted a meeting but now you're gonna play ponies with your daughter and that right there build associations if you have to do that with your wife to get into the sexy mode with your wife and she needs to do that whatever your rituals are build rituals into your daily life that help you switch modes it is so much easier that way you know what that's a there's data to support quite a bit of data to support what you're saying like for example if you you're trying to remember something you forget just walking into another room can trigger that memory because you changed environments I see this in my salespeople where I you know things got kind of you know and you'd see more of this like it's like you're changing into a new role so I love this I do this I actually didn't I mean I didn't realize what I was doing so that's what I I'll come home and oftentimes I'll do that I'll and I don't find I'm wearing comfortable clothes like I'm wearing like a suit but I'll go home and I'll just like change my pants into sweats and get out of the shirt and it does feel like I'm switching into a whole new whole new mode hundred percent that's really really cool you know another realization I had a while ago which I wish I had earlier was how sometimes I love your opinion on this or just thoughts when you have your young kids and they're playing and they're off playing on their own sometimes you're like oh they're playing over there I'm just going to be on my phone and work and I don't remember where I heard this somewhere and I thought you know I'm just going to get off my phone and just watch them and I didn't realize how many times my kid checked to see if I was watching them it's amazing yeah yeah it's like just being there it's such a big deal I had a moment with my kids where I would do that more because I was playing I was doing my work right we all do work from our phones and my kids started playing this game where they would check their emails and they would just be checking their emails on their phone on a pretend phone and they would just sit there and be checking their emails and okay now I'm talking to people and it was they were like mimicking you mimicking me and then they're like okay I'm going to get my bag now I'm going to the office and they're mimicking me but they see it I didn't really like what I saw I wanted to see like daddy comes and plays with kids daddy comes and does this so I had to shift from okay at this point phone goes over here got a wicker basket phone goes into the wicker basket phone is no longer visible for us okay now I'm going to get down on the floor and play with my kids or yeah I'm going to sit and just watch my kids and I'm going to talk to them while they're playing and say hey what are you doing there why is Godzilla punching Barbie in the face oh that's why okay I would do that too right whatever it is you talk and again show interest in them they're wanting to see if you are interested in them they're wanting to see if they're worthy of your interest children are endlessly chasing this desire to be worthy of their especially their father's interest and if you don't show interest you are telling them they are unworthy of it oh wow how much of you when you're you know counseling couples or someone in the relationship or do you have to speak to their relationship with the phone and social media how often is that a topic and what do you find oh phones are one of the biggest killers for sex because interestingly one of the biggest complaints I get from husbands is my wife is always on her phone well yes if you don't engage with her and ask her questions and talk with her and hold her hand and build the intimacy and build a relationship then a phone is way more interesting than you're going to be because it's a nightmare a rectangle that you can stare into all the time and watch the world degrade in real time and then switch over to a dopamine machine that's just going to pump you up and make you feel great and then it's just endless validation so if you're not connecting with her as a human being yeah it's going to suck but here's the thing is yes your phone can flood you with dopamine, dopamine, dopamine it's the sugar button it's the monkey punch in the button dopamine is powerful when there's nothing else in it when you're not getting the other chemicals you're getting oxytocin and especially oxytocin combined with serotonin from good social interactions and good connections the oxytocin is like heroin if you think dopamine is addictive oxytocin will keep a woman in a bad relationship for 20 years dopamine is nothing compared to the power of oxytocin, oxytocin and then serotonin which then as the oxytocin releases you get GABA, gamma, amino, biuric acid look that up and then you also get vasopressin bonding the other four, dopamine is suddenly not anywhere near as interesting so suddenly that woman who was on her phone 14 hours a day she can't even find it, she's not even interested anymore now she's all wrapped around you and curious about what you're doing and wanting to get your more attention wanting to connect with you men who complain about their wife being on their phone have no idea how to meet their wife's needs that's usually what it comes down to you just talked about right now so this is wild so I've actually tested this it's pretty interesting how powerful this phone can be there'll be times and I've done this where I've teased it out oh my god I can really feel the difference here where my wife and I are going upstairs if we go, I know we're having sex when we go to bed before a certain time if we're going to the bedroom before 9 o'clock like it's on for sure right so we're heading there I'm already like aroused and stimulated she's getting in the shower I'm totally in the mood and then while I'm waiting for her to get showered in bed and I start scrolling through Instagram with that it'll actually kill the mood for me I'm so aroused I'm ready to go and because I'm just kind of sitting there waiting let me get on my phone and mess around on Instagram with that all of a sudden I can be sucked completely and I don't give a shit she comes out in her sexy outfit it'll pull me that far away from it and simply either just sitting there peacefully in my thoughts of her I stay in the moment or whatever flirting with her while she's finished up makes a huge huge difference let me ask you though how much of that time might you be looking at emails on your phone are you doing something work related on your phone that's us men shifting back into work mode which just kills everything the male brain is larger but it's more disconnected so we have different regions of the brain once any woman out there knows men are laser like focused once you shift to another part of your brain it is so hard to shift back so that's part of it part of it is your phone will shift no that's a big part we've nailed that in our relationship my wife knows to not ever talk about business that is an absolute and even if she works for the company so there's times where I will like ask a question like hey how did that interview go someone's like that and she'll just look at me and she's like I ain't falling for that trap cause you'll get up mid sex and go to your desk so you have four kids they're all young six is the oldest and youngest is one one so let's talk about the role of the father during pregnancy and right afterward cause those are very challenging times a woman goes through she bears the burden of the physical changes the hormonal changes and then if she breast feeds and afterward very connected to child and goes through lots of different things what's the role of the man a good supportive husband in that situation let's come back in a minute to the breastfeeding because that actually connects deeply with women who have attachment issues they have massive breastfeeding problems which can lead to postpartum, baby problems then lead to actually the baby having some attachment issues just because she did from that so we'll come back to that in a minute but the role of a father in that area same thing stability I talked to the female client the other day and I said please forgive me for this analogy but when women have children they become very much like a bird on a nest if a bird is on a nest with an egg she does not want to be moved she doesn't want the tree shaken she doesn't want everything unstable she wants everything perfectly exactly still so it will never move women who have children or are about to have children everything completely stable is this where the term nesting comes from? they want to be nested and safe if she's in a tree that's shaken like that her baby's going to die women as soon as they the moment they become pregnant they become so nested they want stability so suddenly the man that was fun and engaging and connected before suddenly he's no longer a good enough man for them in their life and he needs to change and now he needs to be stable he needs to be calm he needs to provide emotional bonding to the child so the child doesn't grow up anxious the child grows up fulfilled and ready to charge out into life and take life on and bond and connect and thrive that's why women usually will become resentful toward the man that they used to adore after they have children after the children are a certain age she'll start crumbling and angry at him he'll become public enemy number one and she'll do anything to get him out of the home she's never sent divorce static it's that statistic where they're 20 years in and they get divorced that's the switch now what's hard about this just talking to guys is that she wants stability she needs stability and part of it's to care for the child but the other part is she's going through lots of unstable changes so your challenge to be stable is even harder it's horrible it is people don't talk about the difficulty of pregnancy for men, for the guy who's going through it and living it and like I'm going to have a child I remember the first time I found out my wife was pregnant and I remember finding out it was a son and I remember sitting there everyone else was gone I remember sitting there thinking what the heck am I going to do I have to raise a son in this world are you kidding me and I was looking at dating apps how am I going to do this how am I going to raise a boy in this world not to commit suicide just get him through the gauntlet of death most men if you can make it to 25 he probably won't die until he's 55 but the amount of death that happens to boys from 15 to 25 is overwhelming so you have to get them through this gauntlet of death until they're 25 years old and then they'll probably make it and I remember thinking that and then I remember my second child, my daughter was born the first thing a man thinks is how do I make sure she doesn't become a stripper or a prostitute how do I do that and same thing how do I make sure she doesn't get victimized how do I make sure she's not going to become abused how do I make sure she's safe how do I make sure she's happy and you almost feel like you can't so the man is going through this overwhelming feeling he's never going to help him now he is alone against the world he has to carry his wife on his back and he can't connect with her you've talked about your first marriage can't connect with her you now have to outthink your wife and convince her to stay locked on your back so you can carry her now you have to carry these babies on your back and you are utterly alone in this world where no one is ever going to help you the pressure on men is overwhelming no wonder so many men crack in that situation so talk about the breastfeeding you're talking about the facts absolutely so women who have attachment issues will be very low oxytocin so this will show up often they'll have difficulty orgasming especially after the first year they'll have difficulty with arousal difficulty with feeling calm difficulty with all kinds of things sometimes sleep difficulties now what happens is oxytocin allows mammals to lactate that's one of its biggest features is to allow mammals to lactate so women, when they give birth to induce birth, we hit them with pitocin which is an artificial version of oxytocin it makes them feel like oxytocin and it creates contractions in the uterus like an orgasm almost and that pushes it out and that starts the labor process then once the baby latches on there's more oxytocin and the oxytocin allows the milk to come out it makes let down easier a lot of women with attachment issues will have a difficult time giving birth they'll usually have to be induced or they'll have to have a c-section a number of things can happen there a very difficult birth experience can happen but then what happens is the baby comes out and after the first three to four weeks suddenly the baby can't drink anymore because the oxytocin isn't there to let the milk come out baby's working overtime trying to get the milk out but it comes out as a milk supply issue so the nurse will say, oh you have a milk supply issue you need to switch to formula and the mom has all this insecurity and she says, I'm a terrible mother I can't even do my basic job I can't even feed my baby the baby gets jaundiced now I am killing my baby because I'm such a bad mom and my husband's going to abandon me because I'm proving that I'm worthless and her insecurity is just overwhelm her from the oxytocin being low if you can fix her attachment before pregnancy and if you can give her good oxytocin bonding the husband giving her that oxytocin actually feeds your children amazingly well and I've been very careful with my wife as we've done that so a little bit TMI but one of her major things she does is donate a lot of breast milk because she's donated 100 gallons or something like that they actually wrote an article on her with the milk bank because she was the biggest donor they've ever had because I'm the attachment specialist I'm great at giving oxytocin but that exactly that is the quality that a husband and father can bring is you can help her feed your child the love that you give her feeds your child even before your child that's actually really cool what about like that postpartum experience postpartum depression there's a range where it can be very extreme and scary or just mild but still tough to deal with what about the husband's role during that in terms of support well again oxytocin will help her stop any postpartum but will help avoid a lot of that is what we found is that the better the relationships are the better her mental health is we tie it all back to attachment actually so if you can lead your wife into healthier attachment the research shows that if a man converts to one religion from one religion to another 90% of women will convert with him 90% of wives will convert to the religion with him interestingly if she is even just if you haven't burned her out yet the personality disorder the vast majority of men who come to me for coaching or they pick up my course or whatever it is they fix their attachment even the most stubborn of wives will lead and follow right into healthier attachment and a better relationship then they become more feminine, more kind they get more oxytocin, more love, more bonding and then she becomes the wife he always wanted so during postpartum you should be prepping in advance that's like okay you now are dying of starvation other things from smoking clean up your health help your wife build better attachment build better connection 100% and then during you have built an amazing relationship that if she feels challenges so many women with postpartum they come in and they say I didn't think I could tell anyone how I was feeling I didn't think I could admit how I was feeling I felt so alone I felt no one would help me I felt I was a bad mom where she can share some of those fears and concerns with you and then you solve them together it avoids so much of that postpartum issue too were there things that you were doing because you obviously knew this ahead of time so were there like specific things that you said to your wife or asked your wife so here's a technique that I teach I'm gonna teach you guys everybody that comes into me for coaching I teach them what I call the state of the union the state of the union meeting it's very masculine but every single during difficult times every week and during peaceful times every month the husband and the wife should get together or the boyfriend or girlfriend or whoever it is get together and say how are you feeling in our relationship so far how are you feeling in our relationship so far you can put a number on it you can say on a scale of 1 to 10 how satisfied are you in our relationship right now and most guys your balls are already shriveling just thinking about asking you that question and women too because they're afraid like if I ask that question it opens up all the problems and then we'll see that it's unsolvable and we will break up on the spot that's most people they don't want to talk about their relationship or how the other person feels when you stop and say how are you feeling about our relationship scale of 1 to 10 and the only other question you're allowed to ask is how do we help you go up by 1 point 1 point most guys will jump to it how do we go to 10 how can we help you go up 1 point here's what's gonna happen if she doesn't think you're gonna pursue her and demand answers you say hey babe where are you at where are you at this week with our relationship satisfaction why she might say you know I meant like a 6 out of 10 if she's honest she'll tell you like a 6 out of 10 you don't say why you don't do that she'll never answer you again you say okay 6 out of 10 how do we together help you go up 1 point by doing this you have already helped her go up 1 point because you've asked and you now care enough to ask so you've already helped her go up 1 point she will give you an answer like something small usually it's top of mind like I just feel like really overwhelmed by being mom or postpartum I'm really overwhelmed by this I'm afraid of this it's not you it's me I am feeling disconnected from you I don't feel like I'm useful to you I feel like whatever it might be she'll tell you something then you say okay so what do you need from me and you guys can work on a solution men are amazing at this this is where you bring in the solutions and you say okay would this help yes it would and then you verbally commit okay I'm going to do that I will do that for you now you've helped her go up a second point and you've improved things and then you actually follow through on it and you get a third point this is the easy easy you've gone from six most guys are like oh she's at six man I hope we don't get divorced then you've gone up to nine with one conversation and you have this conversation during tense periods you have them every single week on saturday night or whatever or during peaceful times you make sure you don't stop you have them during peaceful times once a month think if you were running a business unless things are on fire you have routine meetings and check-ins and say where's everybody at does anybody need help hey where are you at are you having any challenges how can I help you with that how can we as a team solve that okay everything's great that's even better news thank you guys what can we do to celebrate that this week have business meetings with your wife and run your marriage like a business and it's going to thrive well so a lot some of the stuff that you're saying I can only imagine to some people especially men might sound uncomfortable that with me this seems really weird I gotta imagine though you just gotta start and with practice it just becomes more and more comfortable most men it's death first like I will die before I do that Adam why would you ask me to do that but most of them it's because I haven't we haven't primed them yet right like you can collaborate with your wife to build a better marriage it's not going to fall apart by talking about the problems you talk about the problems and she actually wants to fix them with you you just have to work together to fix the problem if you can establish that then most men will say okay I'm willing to maybe think about it then you say here's the exact solution here's how to get through it and you're going to cooperate and then they try it and it works and they're like okay you try it with something little then you build up to bigger things and bigger things and once men see it working you can't stop them from doing this because they love it so much one last thing maybe a bit of a personal question I have something personal selfish too all the time you have four kids you said they're homeschool why homeschool, why did you choose because that's the direction we're going to go with our younger ones 100% people ask me all the time aren't you afraid that they won't be socialized like everybody else and I say that is the point that is the point now people think you're going to be homeschooled so you're going to lock them in your barn and never let them outside to see the sky and when you're building co-ops are amazing you can build those systems in building intentional systems in like we have had for millions of years well hundreds of thousands of years with us if you build those systems in on purpose your kids thrive they have social networks they build great social skills you can teach them skills everybody else can come in you raise your kids together when you build it that way it's just not good especially for boys if you put your boy in school the odds are right now one in seven little boys is medicated for ADHD specifically and a lot of schools the teacher will diagnose your child then go to the principal and say if you don't put your child on meds we will expel you we will expel your child because he is not on the meds we have diagnosed him with so find a doctor who agrees with our diagnosis and will medicate him immediately and then provide proof that you are medicating him every day speaking of medicating this might be a little controversial but the data on the amount of children that now are going through transition or medication or hormone therapy in that regard has exploded and I hear arguments from both sides that's because it's more accepted and I also hear well this is maybe a social contagion what do you think is going on is it an extreme form of body dysmorphia is it that they are just vulnerable and this is a new ideology do you have any opinions on this so I get this question a lot from the right and from the left everybody wants to ask that question and what I say is this we will not know what is nature and what is nurture until we get ourselves to a place where we are raising kids with fully healthy attachment and their needs are met and taken care of and then we can say okay this is how you actually are great we'll take care of that or the problem will be solved if it's not how it is either way we need to fix the attachment first and see what shakes out after that that's a good answer did you have something before I asked myself you go ahead this is kind of weird actually I get these all the time I feel like I should have a cigar tell me about your mother this is like reverse I've actually been building this list this is actually long before my wife and I have been together for 12 years now as you can imagine any 12 year relationship there's peaks and valleys relationship I mean all aspects laughter play time together sexes through the roof all the positive things you could possibly think of and I actually made a point to I said you know what we should do because we both agree on this right and we do this kind of check in like you say like almost once a month her and I will be like you know hey how are you feeling am I meeting your needs vice versa and we both agreed oh my god nothing it's never been better we should have each other and going on I said we should make a list or like ask her questions about like all of the things that are you know and I was thinking of things that I thought that would affect that like for example like my relationship with my family how's my diet how's my relationship with my exercise my money my business partners and my reading and growing at the time like so do you have some things to add to that list if I'm going really good what should I be asking okay well that's it too fuck I had like this no this will be simple I'm gonna make it real simple okay where are you oxytocin bonding with her and where are you vasopressin bonding with her okay so the research shows the couples who stay together the longest renew their vasopressin bond every couple of months or every year so the vasopressin is we are a team we solve problems together so many times when the wife gets cancer and the dude spirals off and has an affair with the secretary it's because they were not vasopressin bonded together so the problem hit and his brain went I'm gonna solve this alone I'm gonna feel better over here when you vasopressin bond together routinely by doing escape rooms or building a deck together or solving challenges together or building a business together when you build vasopressin bonding on purpose the man is 100% invested and he's all in because he trusts her with his life so when a problem hits he will go to her and solve the problem together she will too but here's the other thing is oxytocin then that opens the door for the man to want to emotionally bond with her because he trusts her with his life but then it opens the door for her to feel safe and secure with oxytocin bonding so many men forget that when you're driving with your wife you should hold her hand if you're gonna watch Netflix together have her lean against you and get body to body contact after sex have what we call after care this is the biggest moment of oxytocin bonding right here snuggle a little bit right we laugh at women they're having a snuggle after sex but they are flooded with oxytocin and then having skin to skin contact floods you with even more oxytocin the hospital that I gave birth to my wife gave birth to our children and they were born in they make them husband they make the father take off your shirt and have skin to skin contact that's such a great hospital nobody taught me that until I had my younger ones and I read about them they require it they say you will do this and if you say I don't know if I'm ready they're like no you are they shove the baby onto you and it's skin to skin contact and you actually can kind of like if you can relax into it it feels weird but you kind of like you kind of feel the closeness it is so important to have oxytocin bonding routinely with your wife on purpose schedule it we schedule everything else and then we try to kind of think about time with our wife it's like well I could probably get a blowjob no hold hands talk spend time together physical contact outside of sex and then physical contact do that on purpose and you'll find that you like each other more so that when you get to any other problems it's super easy to solve them because you'll already like each other so you saying that makes me go and trying to like unpack what I've been trying to piece together is we're probably doing a lot of that in the months right now and that's why and then feeding both those areas pretty well and that's why you are keeping a list of things to do to make the relationship better that is a sign that you are actually doing the things great because you are keeping a list of how to make things even better wow that's cool hit me well I just was curious how psychedelics have kind of made this resurgence it kind of goes back I think when I was listening to your initial like the core of what you are trying to get at in terms of like peeling back all the onions and like addressing like your childhood sort of trauma and all that stuff like what are your opinions on now like that being incorporated into therapy also what are the dangers of people like recreationally using them 100% so I have plenty of clients who come in who say Adam I'm coming to you because a year ago I did psychedelics in Israel and it didn't fully solve problems but it did help a little bit psychedelics and micro dosing and things what I have found with clients I don't do that with them but clients who come in and have had that experience is it shakes up their brain chemistry so they are willing to question everything instead at the beginning of this conversation I said attachment works this way gravity makes things fall down water is wet and I'm an unlovable piece of crap that no one will ever care for right when you do psychedelics you don't trust gravity anymore you don't trust water anymore and also you start thinking like maybe I haven't been thinking about relationships quite the right way when you come out of the experience your brain chemistry is so shaken up you don't go back into the same patterns immediately so a lot of people chase them in a new idea and then they say well even being open to psychedelics I wasn't open to that before but then I was and it kind of helped what else might be out there then they start studying then they listen to podcasts the biggest biggest driver of coaching and things like that for me is people hear me on a podcast contact me and say Adam I need to work with you right now I say okay great but the reason for that is because they've done something unusual and now they're trying to learn from other people what other solutions are out there it's the male brain and female brain sometimes healing and saying I need data from other people I'm going to plug back into the network I'm going to pull the collective unconscious information into my brain and I will find my solution and that's so many people guys right now if you're listening to this and you're crapping your pants you have just learned about attachment and that's how that works awesome it's great man we've got to have you back on at some point I'd love to appreciate what you do and I can tell that you really find a lot of meaning in what you do so core my life and it's core my family too so awesome thanks for coming on appreciate it