 Looks like I lost my internet connection, so let's try this again. All right, I was differentiated between short-term silence and long-term silence, and I wanted to differentiate between the early stage of dating and a more seasoned relationship. Okay, so short-term silence, as I said a moment ago, might be just a day or two, and why that might happen is someone might be checking in with themselves to see if they really genuinely want to explore or just checking in because they have with themselves, because they have something going on in their lives. Maybe they have an issue at work, maybe an issue with children, maybe issue with a parent, maybe an issue with an ex-spouse. So they're taking a little bit of a break because they need to deal with something, versus someone who's experiencing long-term silence, that's seven to 14 days of non-communication. I think that's a clear sign that this person isn't truly a desirous of a serious relationship with the person they're with. And by the way, silence can happen between men and women alike. Now, the primary reason why silence happened, I said this before, is confusion or doubt, but more importantly, it's oftentimes a lack of intentionality, and what I mean by intentionality, a real serious commitment to wanting a life partner, a life partner. I want you to think about this. When men are in their 20s and 30s and they are choosing that they want to get married and start a family, there's a level of intentionality going on inside of them that says, I want a life partner. The challenge with those of us in midlife, because in midlife, the real challenge is many cases, roughly about 70, 75% of singles over 45 years old are divorced. And if you're divorced, that unraveling of the tapestry of an old life might conflict with the previous programming, what I mean to say, if someone has suffered some emotional trauma going through a divorce, maybe a financial trauma going through a divorce, then they're less likely to want to commit to someone in the future. In fact, I was watching a video by an attorney and said marriage is not only outdated, it is a trap from a financial perspective. And a lot of people feel that way. So without this motivation of having a life partner within their psyche, what's going to happen is people are going to use people, not intentionally, but use people that they really like. And I wanna give you an example of this, because most humans are thirsty for companionship, connection and physical intimacy, companionship, connection and coupling. The missing piece in many of these cases is an actual serious commitment to a relationship. I'm gonna repeat that, a lack of serious commitment to a relationship, a life partner. And I know many of people say, look, I don't want to have a life partner. Well, here's the thing, if you're actively dating with the mindset that you don't want a life partner, then what's gonna mostly happen is you're gonna have many either short-lived relationships or something that might be long-term, but you might have one after another and after another. If you don't have that level of intentionality and men that lack that intentionality in the early stages, oftentimes, I jokingly say these men are winging it, they're winging it, but what happens is any little shift in the relationship causes doubt. Any tiny little shift in the relationship causes doubt and that doubt is a pulling back and what happens when someone pulls back is they might go silent for a period of time because they're experiencing doubt. Now, how do we address this? I think the most important thing to understand in addressing this is actually building deeper intimacy in the relationship, building the deep roots of trust in a relationship. One of the things I talk about in my private coaching with clients is the recognition of the five most important areas to build trust in a relationship. And yet, many people don't know what questions they should be asking to build trust. This is why working with a coach like myself and others prepare you so you're not actually, you're not actively winging it out in the process and as I said in the previous video and by the way, this is a part two because my internet went out, what happened in the previous conversation is that many people that go into it with a lack of intentionality, with an actual understanding of compatibility when they hyper focus on attraction and chemistry as the indicator of relationship success, what happens is over a period of time you can find yourself with the wrong person. And the problem is when you're in the wrong person, many people double down on those relationships spending more and more time with the wrong person. How many of you have been married for 20 years plus? Knowing early on this is the wrong person but you hope that magic fairy dust will change this relationship. In some cases, you might have stayed in it for the children, which is a very noble thing to do. And it's important when two people couple together and make children together, they actually find a way to make it work. And yet these days, think about it, the divorce rate is roughly at 50% of new marriages, first marriages. That means basically, think about this, if I was a young person today and I know getting married, I have a 50-50 chance of it not working out, wouldn't it make sense to learn everything you can to know how to make a relationship work as particularly a marriage? Hold on one second, I wanna grab a book for you, where is that book? Oh, I don't have it, can't be, where's my book? It's called How to Make a Successful Marriage by John Gottman, the secrets, the principles to a successful marriage by John Gottman. Why is it important? As I said in the previous video in the Indian matchmakers, they actually understand the important factors to make a successful relationship, particularly having a strong family unit involved. That's one of the primary things amongst many things. But ultimately, if couples aren't working towards building a strong relationship together, what's gonna happen is they're gonna find themselves in situations of doubt and what happens when you're in doubt, you pull back and when you pull back, you go silent. And while men tend to seem to do this more frequently, certainly women do this as well, we can blame some of this on avoidant love attachment style. And when I say we can blame this, if you're not familiar with the three different love attachment styles, I wanna address that really quickly. If you haven't read the book Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller, I highly recommend this to understand anxious, avoidant and secure attachment styles. Why this is so important to understand is that if your love attachment style is one of anxiousness, you oftentimes attract an avoidant personality, which means is avoidance on the surface fear love. They deeply want love in their life, but they fear love. And so in many ways, they either sabotage relationships or they keep a distance with another person. And when you're keeping distance, it's difficult to build the deeper intimacy, which as I said earlier builds the deeper roots of trust, the deeper roots of trust. So understanding this, we can judge people for being human. We can judge people for being human. It's kind of seems to be a human thing to judge people for being human. What I mean to say is we can judge bad behavior like someone going silent, or maybe we can approach this from a place of understanding. Why does this happen? And how can we avoid this in the future? One of the things you do is you don't hyper focus on chemistry in the early states of dating. You actually focus on the three more important pieces is do you share the same values? Are your lifestyles blendable? And more importantly, is this person emotionally mature enough to actually lean into a relationship? That when you operate from a place of understanding compatibility and then ignite it with chemistry, you have a greater chance of success because the reality is is these days, I did a real quickly, I did a post that said the following. Where is my phone? I just wanna read this to everyone. I did a Facebook post that said the following. I said, dating in most cases is merely a long drawn out form of friends with benefits. I'm gonna repeat that. Dating in some cases, merely a long drawn out form of friends with benefits. What I mean to say is there's people dating for years that they're not actually building any deep roots of trust with any understanding of long-term partnership in the process. Now, a lot of times women go silent on this. They're the ones who go silent on asking, what are we doing and why are we doing this? What are we doing and why are we doing this? Ladies, if you're not familiar with my book, where is my book? What the heck is self love? Anyway, a journey of personal development, self health and spiritual work either where there's a link below to get a copy of my book. Why I'm talking about this is chapter one, is speak your truth, do it with silence. Many of you are doing it with kindness, excuse me, not silence. Many of you are fearful of speaking your truth. You're the one silent in the dating process because you're afraid to lose a guy the minute you ask, what are we really doing here and why are we doing this? What does commitment look like for you? What does a significant relationship look like for you? Listen, I wish I could be there for you on a big first date, like a big brother because a big brother's job is to protect his little sister and literally a big brother in the past would have a shotgun out pointed in a guy's face and say, what are your intentions with my little sister? Because if you use her, you're gonna have a consequence, which is me. You know, it's interesting. I've been asked by many of my clients to mediate some of their relationships, actually speak to the men in relationships. And it's interesting, one of my clients just reached out to me, said, Jonathan, what did you do with that guy, with my boyfriend, he's a different guy. Well, I set him straight on what are you really doing here and why are you doing this? Folks, if you're not asking these questions for yourself, you could be going down the path of a relationship where you find out that not only is he temporarily silent, he's long-term silent because, and which means ghosting, which means he wasn't really serious and he wasn't really looking out for your best interest. You know, it saddens me today, how many people are in relationship with men and women who the other person isn't really looking out for the other person's best interest. We're rather a self-centric selfish society today, here in the United States anyway, and it saddens me that that's the case. Isn't that sad? A big percentage of the population who's in the dating marketplace only cares about getting their own needs met. You know, true humanity and true community is being of service. I mean, to be part of a community, to be humane, is to be of service and in a relationship, a healthy relationship is being of service to your partner. It saddens because today's dating marketplace is all about what can I get, what can I get, what can I get? Can I get your companionship? Can I get your connection? Can I get your vagina or penis? Can I get sex? Without any real care for the other person. Anyway, real trust in a relationship is caring about the other person's needs equal to your own. That's where real trust is built. And by the way, certainly fidelity is an important component of that, but ultimately that is what real trust is in a relationship. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating with you? Please let me know. Listen folks, we did have an internet snafu. This is part two, I gotta jump on. Before I jump into Q&A, I wanna address something. I had a couple of moles removed. So hence why the scar on my forehead and the band-aid on my chin. And hopefully they'll heal in the next week or two. So I think it's time to jump in to answer questions. If you have a question of me, okay. Write the word question and post the question thereafter. Or you can purchase a Super Sticker Super Chat. All the monies from the Super Sticker Super Chat goes to a scholarship fund in the name of my son, Connor Asley. That's a picture of him right there with his brother, Colin. That's my son who passed away four and a half years ago and I started a scholarship fund to donate to organizations like the Hoffman Process and Insight Institute, which are personal development organizations to help improve one's well-being. I mean, if I really get simplistic to it. All right, so it's time for Q&A. If you have a question, write the word question, post the question thereafter, or you can purchase a Super Sticker Super Chat. All right, let's see what we've got here. Oh, here we go, Lisa writes question. When a man chooses a woman based on compatibility and SIM, okay, there's not a question there, but I'm gonna kind of infer from where you're going with this, Lisa, I probably could be off base. You know, there's no doubt that chemistry is an important, attraction in chemistry is an important component of a successful relationship. But I want you to imagine this, and I'm gonna choose a younger person for a moment. You want to have children and they don't ever want to have children and they've already had a vasectomy, okay? You can have all the chemistry in the world, but that's not gonna solve that issue. Those are two incompatible people, okay? Let me give you another example of incompatibility for those of us in midlife. You have great chemistry with one another, but one person lives in New York and the other person lives in Los Angeles and they will never move from where they're at. That's an incompatibility. Now, if they want to eventually get married or live together, now I'm using that crudely because some people go, well, if we love each other enough, we'll change that. Well, sometimes that's true, most of the time it's not. Okay, I'm using that as one example. Another area of incompatibility might be a person, it might be a challenge to be in relationship with someone who works nights and someone who works days. That might make it incredibly difficult. Now, it doesn't mean that isn't impossible to work it out, but that's a level of incompatibility. I mean, here's the thing I've noticed the common thread of successful relationships. They're actively involved with shared activities, hobbies and mutual interests with each other as their root foundation of their relationship or it's spending time with family and friends. Those are the primary roots of a successful relationship. And yet if one person is a skier and the other person is a homebody, I'm not saying it isn't going to work, but they might not find that deeper area of connection of intimacy if they're incompatible with one another and let's not get started with values. One example of values might be someone's political ideology, someone might be extreme on the right and the other person extreme on the left. It's going to make it difficult for them to find a space of being eye to eye or what about religion? Some one person might be an atheist and one person might be a devout Christian that goes to church five days a week might be a challenge of compatibility. Maybe someone is a spender of money and the other is a saver of money. Someone might be frivolous with their money and the other person might be frugal. That could be an issue of compatibility. So it's to recognize that compatibility is an important component ignited with chemistry and not the other way around. We operate from a place of chemistry hoping for compatibility and what happens is we see these long drawn out relationships that go nowhere because they didn't start from a premise of compatibility. Anyway, Lisa, that was me just expanding upon your question. All right, thank you so much. Um, Leif right says, going back to the video it's beginning have a fantastic weekend. Thank you. All right, JM writes question. If a woman has been afraid to ask where a long-term relationship is heading how can she initiate the discussion? Great question. So here's the challenge. I think it starts by being crystal clear excluding the man in the relationship ask yourself what kind of relationship do you want? Do you want a relationship that leads to either marriage or living together? Or do you want a relationship where you live in separate homes until you die? Okay, how much do you think about this for a second? You know, you could be 55 years old. Do you really want to be dating until you're if you live to be 90 and he lives to be 90 do you want to just be in a dating environment? Is that what you want? You want to live in separate homes the entire balance of your life? I think it's important to recognize what it is you want. So that's your standard. Now, many of you know my rhetoric and my standard is I was looking at a minimum in the beginning of the relationship where we spent three or four days a night to week together doing shared activities, hobbies, mutual interests spending time with family and friends traveling together teamwork, building skills both in our personal and our professional life intimacy both physical and emotional intimacy that led to either moving in together or getting married. That was my standard. And there's my beloved right there picture with me. We were in a long distance relationship or long distance dynamic. So in our dynamic rather because we couldn't do that because we weren't living in a proximal area with one another. What we did is we did a number of long visits with one another. First visit was four days. The next visit was 12 days. The next visit was 18 days. We spent a concentrated amount of time together in two months and we made the agreement to moving in together roughly about two to three months in. We didn't have a long drawn out dating process. We chose that is our method. That was our standard when we both agreed to that standard. So coming back to your question get clear on what your standard is. So you know what it is. Now you ask him, what is his standard for a relationship? What is it that he, what does commitment look like for him and what does a relationship look like for him? Now your standard is most likely gonna be this and his standard is gonna be, I don't know. I don't know. How's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. That's his standard oftentimes. That space in between. You know what that's gonna be called? Drama. Because you're desiring of this and his standard might be minimal. Then you have to really ask yourself, do you wanna invest your time, heart, soul and vagina? Please forgive me for that terminology but you wanna invest your body to a man who doesn't live up to your standard. Folks, you should know your standard before you ever have sex with a man. You should know what commitment and trust means to you because these days people are getting attached to human beings who have really no desire or maybe they're not capable of a serious relationship. Think of how many women or men get attached to scam artists. Did you know just on a separate note, there are men and women who spend months if not years communicating with people whom they've never met. And then these people give hundreds, the average person gets scammed out of $9,000 and online dating scams. And do you know that's a billion dollar industry online dating scams? These are people that get attached to total strangers whom they've never met. I want you to think about this. You can get attached to a person who's completely incompatible with you or worse they're not capable of a real serious relationship. Think of, by the way, I'm almost so passionate about this. If we have a 50% divorce rate for first time marriages, maybe human beings should find out why this happens and maybe they should be doing everything of their power to avoid this. But you know what happens? And I am so guilty when I'm about to say I got divorced in my 40s and I just went back out in the dating marketplace first off with 20 year old eyes, number one, and no real understanding of how a relationship works, how to build intimacy with someone. I was fucking clueless. Now I've spent a significant amount of time learning this but the average person is clueless. This is why second and third marriages fail at even greater rates because you're not investing time to learn how a relationship works. If you haven't read the book, Eight Dates by Doctors John and Julie Gottman, this is what my girlfriend and I did those first few dates together. I'm a walking book. By the way, ladies, before the penis goes inside the vagina, read this book for yourself. So you don't find yourself months or years in a relationship asking, where's this relationship going? You should know what someone wants early on. You have every right to get that, get some sort of a semblance of what do they want? Well, I just want something casual. We can figure it out the way we go. You know, we can figure it out along the way. I just need to take it slow because I've been burned before. Taking it slow means I get advantage of your bot and get the benefit of your body without making any commitment. And by the way, there's no guarantee when you ask these deeper questions but I get, I'll tell you this, you'll shoo away the wrong guy, a lot of the wrong guys, and maybe the cream will rise to the top with that. All right, I hope I answered your question there. J.M., thank you. Akua says, question. My man is a low effort man when I tell him he should have something to think through if he wants to be with me, he doesn't want to leave. What's your take on this? I, okay. I guess coming back to, I literally shared this in the previous comment. Your standards is this. If someone's not meeting your standard in relationship, then you have to ask yourself, why do I want to be in relationship with somebody who's either incapable or non-desirous of meeting my standard? And by the way, the standard I talked about previously, my own standard, seeing each other a couple of times a week, two, three or four days and nights, on average a week is not, I mean, it's not an exaggerated standard. But Jonathan, I'm raising children and I'm busy, busy, busy, busy. Folks, if two people are really busy, then you're really just an occasional friend with benefits under the guise of calling it a relationship, okay? If two people are so ultra busy that all they do is have time to get together on the weekends, they connect, they have sex together and they go back to their respective worlds, you're gambling years of your life with, if you're not actually building a relationship together with some deep roots, you're investing a lot of years on the hope that there's a payoff later on down the road. My goal as a coach is to put the odds in your favor. That's what I try to do. Anyway, and by the way, there's a link below to schedule a discovery call with me. All right, Pamela says, hey, Pamela, question, can a man go silent early on because he's scared? Absolutely. That's the primary reason why men go silent in the early stages. They're scared. There's doubt. That fear is usually because they operate from a place of either lack of intentionality or they were hurt in their past relationships and they don't want to make a mistake again. This is where deeper communication is so critically important. Folks, if you're not familiar with the book, Emotional Intimacy by Robert Masters, I highly recommend checking out this book. So you can understand emotional intimacy. Ladies, many of you think just because you can vomit your feelings, what I mean to say is, say your feelings out loud to your girlfriend, you have very few human beings have a real understanding of the intricacy of intimacy and true intimacy, true intimacy is being with someone you only enjoy their company and like being with them. True intimacy is feeling so safe that you could share maybe your deepest, darkest secret and know you won't be rejected for it. That is true intimacy. Check out the book. I highly recommend it. Patricia, I hope I helped with your question. Yes, this fear oftentimes causes that. Rose, question. Should I redate my ex-boyfriend who I work with? Sure, go for it. I mean, what do you want me to say? No or yes? I mean, I don't know if you should. I mean, you got to answer that question for yourself. All right, let's keep going. Lisa writes, question. My question sent before I was done typing. When men choose compatibility over desire, is that why seemingly happy men leave when most, when they meet someone that causes feelings or lust of desire? So some men, I think if I'm getting what you're straight is the man has chosen a woman that's compatible with them but there isn't a real sense of attraction with that person. You know, the reality is today, especially today because we get to explore our desires in a way that we never did before. You know, sex in the past was very vanilla to some degree in relationship. And today, we're given permission to explore our desires and our passion within attraction. Now women get this benefit because they're no longer as dependent upon men as they were in the past from a financial perspective. So they get to explore their passions and desires more so than in the past. But ultimately, I mean, for healthy, once you think of, if a table had four legs, okay, it's a stronger, sturdier surface. And those four legs are shared values, blendable lifestyles, emotional maturity and chemistry or attraction. That is usually a stronger relationship than a three-legged table that consists of maybe, well, actually that's not fair. So the thing is, the two most, okay, attraction and emotional maturity are probably the two most important legs of the table. Blendable lifestyles can be worked on within a relationship, okay? And shared values can be worked on. But ultimately, attraction is an important piece, feeling a sense of attraction. Now, attraction shifts from dopamine. Okay, oftentimes attraction is dopamine being released in our body. And actually over time, that can shift into serotonin. But humans oftentimes want that dopamine rush and that's why they have date nights and other ways to make that happen for themselves. But ultimately, you need compatibility and attraction for a healthy, happy relationship. All right, thank you so much for that question. I really appreciate it. Cece writes, question, what man actually choose women is not based on attraction? Maybe yes, maybe no. All right, do we have any other questions? Okay, corny cob, hey, we haven't seen you in a while. Question, do you think some jealousy is natural in relationship? How do you know if it's healthy and unhealthy? You know, well, unhealthy jealousy is based on insecurity within the person. Now, some people, okay, so I want you to imagine this. The man is jealous, excuse me, is insecure. And he's with a partner who habitually flirts with men almost seemingly like she's gonna have sex with them. Well, both people are being unhealthy in that moment, okay? Now, if a woman is simply talking to the clerk at the Starbucks and a man gets jealous over that, he's got issues, okay? I do not subscribe to the idea that there is such a thing as healthy jealousy. I think what's more important in a relationship is not jealousy. Some people talk about mystery and healthy jealousy ignites the relationship. I'm a believer that the most important ingredient of a relationship, and this should be a daily vitamin for the relationship is attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance, attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance. And more importantly, appreciation. I believe that gratitude is sorely lacking in relationship because they take for granted for one another. So then they need to use stupid things like healthy jealousy to ignite the relationship. Folks, when you are so fucking grateful for two people to be with one another, when you feel like you got the better end of the deal and you're continually grateful to one another, that is a recipe for a healthy relationship, not healthy jealousy because I don't believe there is such a thing as healthy jealousy. And that's my two cents on that. By the way, is that sinking in with you resonating? Please let me know. All right, thank you for that question, corny cob. You know, folks, I think this will be a great place to wrap up today. We had a little snafu in the beginning, so we have a part two of this title. My hope is you found value in the content I shared. I hope you recognize that I'm here to espouse a notion that conscious and intentional dating leads to a greater chance of success because the ambivalent, entitled, ignorant way human beings are entering the dating process is causing probably the number one emotional health issue human beings face today, and that is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, and I'm not likeable. And dating can trigger this like nobody's business. I gotta tell you the short lived experiences of people that have one short lived experience with someone and another short lived experience with someone, another short lived wears on our emotional wellbeing. So my channel is here to be your big brother, to be the family member here that looking out for your best interests, because ultimately you're gonna have to look out for your own best interest. And the ignorant, ambivalent, naive, disposable way we date today is serving nobody. So my hope is you've gotten value from this conversation. All right, I think this will be a great place to wrap up this video. First, if you like the content, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel. Check out the links in the description below to schedule a discovery call with me, to join my group called Midlife Love Mastery, to get my books that I recommend, or follow me on Instagram. And I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do. First off, giving myself a big, gigantic Jonathan Barrett of self love. I'm gonna reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm gonna ask you to turn to someone, a pet. Teddy Bear pillow and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. I wanna thank Shamer and Lisa and Rina and Joe and Christina and Courtney Cobb, and Martha and Kathy and Allie and CeCe. Everyone, thank you so much today. Have a fab day, bye now.