 The first convention that I spoke of was 2008, but the first convention that was ever held was actually in Orlando, Florida, and this kid put it together, and it's totally fucking crazy. He got some of the best speakers in the world in terms of personal development and stuff that he was interested in, that matched his ideals. Personal development, better skills with women, and trying to be a better man. And through the template and through the vision of a 17-year-old kid, that's pretty crazy. And the formation of that, renting the rooms, orchestrating the speakers and the production of it, later in 2008 when I came on board, it was already a professional act. You know, it had amazing technical crew. The caliber of speakers was even better than it was the year before, and ever since then I've seen it grow. But what makes that grow, and what I was saying is all the speakers up here, we have our own individual message. We have our own things that we want to say and share, and what we think and value is important to us. However, that is all through the filter of one guy, you know, who started this off when he was a kid and still to this day, you might even say he's kind of a kid, but he's done so much with his life. He's a role model for what you guys can all do with what your idea is right now, which you guys think is important and want to manifest into a dream. That guy is Anthony Johnson. He's doing his first speech of this convention, which is really cool. And opening up the day, I hope you guys have already realized this convention can change your life, because this guy has proven to me that anything is possible. Anthony, come on. Yes, sir. Let's do it. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, guys. If I get a good morning or morning. Thank you. Thanks for showing up nice and early. I know Sunday morning is the toughest. That's why it starts at latest, because it's just you guys go out at night, you're tired, you eat a lot of food, a lot of curry last night. God. Anyway, the title of my speech today is an introduction to the psychology of romantic love. It's a topic I have never covered before at this convention or anywhere else as far as speaking. I've done a little bit of my blog and writing, but nothing as far as speaking. And this topic is somewhat unusual for me to cover, because usually this convention I cover the convention itself, the direction I want to take it, the ideal man, health, fitness, nutrition, exercise, topics that are not psychology, romantic love, deeply conceptual, things like that. So this is new. But I'm excited to present it to you, because it is based on a book, as you can see at the bottom here, that is one of my top three favorite books of all time. My favorite books of all time that have impacted me the deepest, the most, the most profoundly are the psychology of romantic love, as you guys will see here, The Fountainhead and Body by Science. So this book, as we'll get to in a second year, is just huge and completely underrated to a degree that I can't even put into words. So this is the book. Actually, Steve, can you go to the top there? I have the book with me. Thanks. This here is a copy of the book, a picture. It was originally published in 1980. It was updated and expanded in 2007. And as of this presentation, the author, Nathaniel Brendon, is still alive, although if one understands health isn't that great. Unfortunately, I don't know how much longer that'll be the case, which is very sad. Oh, sweet. This is also the physical book. It's my first copy. I read through it in a day and a half. It's pretty quick. It's not super big, but it's big enough. The introduction will be through exploration. So we're going to, as one of the speakers at the convention once put it about exercise, we're going to explore these ideas. I say explore because these ideas are going to be, well, in general, this convention, there's nothing that's not controversial. Everything at this convention. Every speaker, every idea is entirely against conventional wisdom, against the grain, and it's not heard almost anywhere else. This is no exception, except I would say that in particular it will even be controversial in this room. So kind of in and of the 21 convention, even more so than usual. Anyway, exploration through introduction, or introduction through exploration, excuse me. We're going to explore what romantic love is not first, followed by what romantic love is. And then we're going to cover my top 10 myths of romantic love that are, in a way, inferred from the book, from the author, from his ideas. And yeah, it's important to note that the majority of this presentation consists of ideas that I haven't heard, so I don't represent the author. I'm not, I am not the author obviously, and I don't represent him officially in any capacity. Just a huge fan, and I think I have a pretty good understanding of the book and the ideas within. And if there is a direct quote from the book, I'll put that in quotes and you'll see his name next to it. That's how you can know that it's officially from him. What romantic love is not? Romantic love is not a literary invention, an adolescent fantasy, an unattainable dream, an irrational pursuit, a temporary neurosis, a false hope, a fleeting emotion, or an immature ideal. One of my favorite quotes from the author, Nathaniel Brandon, is the opening passage of the book, before you even get into a chapter. And it's that above all, romantic love is not for children, not in the physical sense, and not in the psychological sense. What he means, and what I mean when I put that up there, that's a paraphrase, is that much like Steve mentioned at the introduction of the speech, a person can have, they implied, a person can have a physical age that's very obvious, or not so obvious in some cases, I look much older than I am. I guess because I grew up in Florida I have like little crow's feet. So you have a physical age, but you also have a psychological age. And as Steve implied or hinted at, I'm young, I'm 24, but most of you would say that I look and then I talk and I come across as much older than that. And that's because for the past six years of this convention I've traveled all over the world and I have packed like decades of experience into a few years. So for those of you that might have met me and thought I was older, that I was close to 30 or something, or who knows, that's not the case. And that's because at least I feel within myself as I experience my life, I feel much older than I physically am, which is just 24, still young. But this is important for romantic love because just like it says literally, it's not for little kids, but it's also not for little kids who are little kids in their heads. It's not for children, it's not for men who are in their 50s who still experience life as a child, who are still to some degree to a large degree or a minimal degree. Children, immature, they get, they're easily upset, they're easily affected by the outside world. They don't have a good handle on their life, they're dependent on other people and so on. So it's not for kids physically and it's not for kids psychologically either, no matter what your physical age is, completely irrelevant. So, what romantic love is? Romantic love, despite it being known as an ideal, I think it is so misunderstood that it is accurate to say that it is an unknown ideal, just because of the degree that it's deeply misunderstood. It's a deeply mature pursuit, it's a fully rational endeavor, as we'll explore in a minute. It is a source of profound ecstasy or joy, it is a response to our deepest values embodied in another person, or multiple persons. It is an expression of the best and highest within us, and it is one of the greatest challenges you can ever undertake. As a man or as a woman, there's only one in here, but for any of you watching later on the internet, it's not easy, it's extremely difficult. I mean that literally, it is one of the, this is the author's claim and something I agree with wholeheartedly, that it will be one of the, if you ever undertake it, one of the most challenging things you ever do, and one of the most rewarding, as a direct consequence. Perhaps one of the best summaries of this concept of romantic love that I've ever seen is from Nathaniel Brandon. My favorite is here, romantic love is a passionate, spiritual, emotional, sexual attachment between a man and a woman that reflects a high regard for the value of each other's person. The biggest takeaway from this quote is that it's something that's global, it encompasses everything important that you can even name off the top of your head that would be related to this concept. It's all of it at once simultaneously in one condensed concept. So to visualize this or exemplify this, you can think of the term personality, which is a pretty broad concept, and you could also think of the term sense of life. A sense of life would encompass, personality would be encompassed within a sense of life. A sense of life would be global, it's a much, it's an even broader term than personality, it's how you approach everything in life. Not just how you interact with other people, but how you experience your own life internally, inside yourself. When you wake up in the morning, why you get up? Not just the fact that you're getting up or how excited you are or how tired you are or whatever, it's everything all at once in the same concept. Romantic love is like that. There are specific definitions to it, but even so it's very far-reaching, which is why this quote is so good. To sum up, romantic love is essentially the diametric opposite, the exact opposite of everything you've ever been told. In movies, in the culture, in religion, in schools growing up, government-run schools, in art and literature and everything. If you want to know what it is, a good place to start is looking at what you're told, and then the exact opposite of that, to the T. So we've covered briefly what romantic love is not. I mean, the book covers it obviously a lot more in depth. We've covered what romantic love is, and now we're going to explore my top 10 myths to consider for daily life. Things that you can apply, I think, pretty immediately, regardless of whether or not you're in a relationship or even close, or whether it's even of interest to you. I know a couple of years ago, for me, this would have been like, not even, I was interested in going out and looking at the chicks in the same night, and that's it. This would have been to me just like, what? Why do I even care about this? I think by the end of the speech, if you do happen to be one of these people, this will really pique your interest. I know when I read this book, it was just a game changer. I mean that in every sense possible. Did you get it? Double entendre. It's a myth number one. Sexual exclusivity as a necessity. It's not true. Sexual exclusivity, meaning just being sexually exclusive with one individual person, a monogamous relationship. A, does not necessarily result in mature romantic love. So if you get into a relationship and you start dating a woman and it's monogamous, the idea that this would automatically result someday and you guys falling in love or something like that is just complete nonsense. It is so far removed from an automatic process, there are no words to describe it. It is not that. It is the definition of, you just think of it in car terms as manual. It's something you have to make conscious decisions at every point. It does not just automatically happen as much as you've been told that. Mature romantic love is possible in non-exclusive relationships. I'm not claiming that this is common or that it will ever be common, but I believe it's possible. That's certainly the conclusion the author makes and it's something I happen to agree with. And I haven't even experienced that, but it does seem to make sense. Despite what you've seen in movies, how it can only be between one man, one woman, or I guess, an homosexual relationship, maybe. But the idea that, yeah, it has to be just one to one, I don't think that's true. And we'll get into why in a second. And to really hit on that, when people say that, whether it's a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a random blogger, someone who's just, you know, writing on the topic, I think they are oversimplifying an extremely complex topic. There are a lot of nuances between two people, two human beings that are capable of conceptual thought, and it is the topic, if you've read the book you'll see, even though it's not that long of a book, the topic is immense. It is really, really deep. It is not easy to understand, just with a quick glance. Even with a good understanding of psychology and a philosophy, it's not easy. It's something that takes a lot of time and effort to understand. The same way male-female relationships in general, I get this event with all these coaches here, you guys see, is a big topic. This is a three-day event. It's the tenth time we've done it, and we'll keep doing it. And there's still decades to go before, I mean, if not ever, that we fully, fully, fully, completely, definitively, finally understand it, in spite of the coaches you guys have seen, who have fantastic understandings of this, of those kinds of dynamics. So to quickly exemplify the non-exclusive thing, if you look at the letter A at the bottom here, that can represent a guy, and then we'll say B is a one woman, and C is another woman. These little black lines represent the relationships. While obviously A is the common factor between these two, these two are not necessarily ever interacting. Even if they do, the relationship you hold with one person is that relationship. It is not another relationship. So when I say that this concept romantic love is possible between or non-exclusive relationships, I mean it, and this is sort of how it looks in real life, as done expressed in just letters and arrows. But, yeah, they don't have to, contrary to what you've seen in movies, they don't have to, there doesn't have to necessarily be this immense drama with resolution at the end, where someone's fucking crying, and everything's just falling to shit. It is possible. In fact, there's some speakers at this event who could probably actually add a lot to that topic. The second myth is that love must be forever, or it's a failure. Probably the simplest way to put this is that eternity is a poor guidestone for success, quote, unquote. So if a relationship lasts 40 years, or four months, or whatever, and then it ends for whatever reason, that does not mean it's a failure. To say that just because you're ending the relationship, ergo, it's a failure, it's just ridiculous. A great way Nathaniel puts this, not in the book, but in other writings, is that if human beings had an average lifespan of 500 years, and you got married in your 30s, or started some kind of relationship and never got married, or whatever, to think that you would last, the relationship would last 470 years-ish, I mean that kind of foresight is impossible. People, human beings are not omnipotent, you cannot see 400 years into the future. So it might be easier to say that you can see 50 years into the future, or whatever, but that's still, where do you draw the line? And so I think when you really drag out the lifespan of a human being to an imaginary 500 years, or maybe someday it's 500 years, to suggest that you're going to start a relationship that's going to last 400 years, it's just absurd. There's no way you can see that. People change over time. Usually for better, but sometimes for worse. So to meet a person and suspect that both of you are going to rely on the fact, on the suggestion that both of you are for eternity going to be on the same paths that really line up and make sense, it's just complete nonsense. So a relationship failing, if you guys have been in one and then it's ended, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a failure, no matter what it ended like. Obviously there's some examples perhaps you could bring up where it really was a failure, but it's not going to be all the time. It's going on good terms and they can be a success even if you guys part ways. Another interesting point is that the phrase as far as I understand it, till death do us part, as said in marriage, was made when the average lifespan was like 30 something. So it was supposed to last like 10 years and then someone would die. So this idea that it's used in movies and whenever I tell somebody to get married and whatnot, it was made at a time when, yeah, I mean it was like, you know, you're expecting to be married for eight years, not 80. Next number three, love must until marriage. First of all, marriage is a completely separate concept for romantic love. People get married all the time that the marriage was arranged, maybe they secretly hate each other, have contempt, resentment for one another. I mean it's just, they're two separate things. They do not necessarily have something to do with each other. People can also be deeply in love for the entire lives and not get married. It's a choice. You are not obligated to ever get married or something like this. It's just, as we'll discuss, it's just nonsense. It's also important to note that marriage and society is a legal contract. Sometimes a little bit more, but fundamentally that's what it is. So again, it's not this conceptual relationship you have with another person. It's a contract that you write and it's recognized by government and so on. Separate issue, it's not romantic love. To confuse these two is deeply erroneous. It's also important to note that marriage today is dangerous for both parties, at least in the United States, I think elsewhere as well. I mean this in the sense of a legal system. It being deeply subjective and you never really know what you're getting into. So it's really hard to go into it. There's a favorite comedian of mine named Bill Burr, I don't know if you guys know him, I met him a while ago. He was part of a skit one time, he was like, yeah, marriage, it's where you get in line to lose half your shit. And this works both ways. It's not as often, at least in the U.S. I think, that women lose half their shit, but it can work either way. Both people can get into it, into marriage. It's a contract they have between each other to go through divorce is expensive and you never know what the end result's going to be. You could each end up really, really regretting the decision to get married. You also have to be careful in the U.S. There's something called like common law marriage, which means that if you live with a woman for X amount of years, you become automatically married, which sucks. Watch out for that. And it would suck, not, I mean, it's funny, but it's also, it would suck because it's not intentional. If you didn't know that, and she didn't know that, and all of a sudden you have this like legally recognized marriage that neither of you necessarily wanted, that can be really dangerous, that can have unintended consequences. As I mentioned a moment ago, any mandate, obligation, or duty to marry is antithetical to romantic love, regardless of where it's going from. And I hope that reaches the depth I'm trying to capture, that I don't care where it comes from, whether it's tradition, whether it's your culture, whether it's your society, whether it's some sort of government mandated thing, or who knows. It needs to be a conscious decision. For whatever reason you want to name, it must be something you do on purpose, not just by accident, not because someone told you to, or forced you to, or whatnot. You should resist that. You should take this with great care, plenty of thought, and extreme caution. Myth number four, physical attraction is shallow. This is important to understand in general, in the context of male-female relationships, but especially with romantic love. Because this is a really common myth that if you like a girl because of the way she looks, and that's important to you, you're a douchebag. You have to like her for her personality, for the values, I mean the values she holds are important, but it's like all this other stuff has to come way first, and physical attraction, sexual attraction is a distant second at best. And even then, you should feel guilty. You should feel ashamed of that. And that, as I think a lot of speakers here, that Steve might be one of the leaders in that, telling you that, that's not true. And that's what I want to get across here as well. So sexual physical attraction is immensely important in general and in specific to romantic love. You should take no shame in valuing physical sexual attraction points very, very highly. Sexual attraction, this is a little bit of a separate point, it cannot sustain romantic love in itself, but it's a requirement. You can't, to go without it is, you're on thin ice. I mean to have a long term relationship with someone that you're not deeply and consistently physically attracted to, it's, you're skating on thin ice and you're setting yourself up to really run uphill for years to come and just make things harder on yourself. So it is important. It's a requirement. I even have like kind of an analogy here. So in reference to re-nutrition, sexual physical attraction is at once the equivalent of both outstanding taste, so you enjoy it very much, but it's also an important nutrient. It's something that if you go without it, over time it will catch up to you. Just like vitamins and minerals. You don't need them for the next month, but two months from now you're going to be hurting. You're going to have some kind of conditions come up, some kind of deficiency, and you're going to be, you're going to pay the price for it. So over time the need will surface and you can't get away from it, I think. Myth number five. Sex is negative, bad, and shameful. Those first point kind of brings us into the foresight, earned focus. I'm skeptical in general, but if pornography is immoral, it is so because sex is so good, not because it's so bad, which is what you've been told knowingly or unknownly your entire life, from society and from religious institutions in particular. Pornography is, sex is bad, so if you film it, that's also bad in itself. Just because sex is bad, which I think is just horrible. It's like the most, one of the most destructive ideas you can hold in life, that sex is something you should be ashamed of, that it's bad, that it's evil, that it should be in a dark room with, not that it can't be private, that's a good thing usually, to make it more enjoyable, but the idea that it's something that, it should be a taboo and locked away and just bad, that's really, really bad. And in particular, it's very destructive, I think, for romantic love, to actually have that deep down in your subconscious, like an idea you have kind of floating around, that's destructive. To the contrary, sex is a celebration of self, of life and of reality, which is the exact opposite of something that's evil and bad, by definition. Something that I inferred from the book as well as the psychology of romantic love and elsewhere, is that sex in romantic love is the meeting of self-respect and admiration for another human being. So it's something that's great, fundamentally, deeply, definitively across the board. It's not evil, it's not bad, it should not be ashamed of it, it should not be ashamed for wanting it all the time, as much as you want, indulging yourself and trying new things. A couple of quotes that I really like from the book, I'll read them to you in case you can. This one's directly from Nathaniel Brandon. Sex is the assertion that your partner is a source of joy to you. This is true in romantic love, as it is true in general with someone you've just met recently, but it's even more true in the relationship. Another quote I liked a lot, the bed is like a metaphysical arena in which we play out the basic drama of our existence. This is something that when I read it, I shut up pretty quick. That was one of the true statements I'd ever read, and I've definitely lived that in my own life. That has been... my experiences have confirmed that wholly and across the board. Myth number six, love is selfless as opposed to selfish. And when I say selfish, we don't need to get into it in there, but I'll get into it here. When I say selfish, I don't mean petty selfishness. I don't mean lying, cheating, stealing, self-destructive behavior. I mean it like Yaron Brooks said this convention just a few months ago in Texas and in London. Rational self-interest. Just like, as Nathaniel says, your next breath of air is selfish. You want to live. So you're going to breathe. You're going to eat. You're going to drink. You're going to enjoy life. These things are selfish. You enjoy these things. But they're rationally selfish. You're not selfish. You're not hurting people when you breathe. You're not hurting people generally when you eat. Let's see, rob them. And drink and enjoy life and meet women and so on. The selfishness in rational self-interest, the best sense possible, not what you've been told about selfishness as far as it being lying, cheating, and stealing, which in my opinion is not selfish but self-destructive. And it's obviously destructive to the people around you. So one of the greatest aspects of mature romantic love is that your self-interest, your selfishness, grows to deeply encompass another human being. That is almost a direct quote from the book. And I agree with that deeply. If you're in a committed relationship that you care very much about, well, if you value your partner very much, your interest in life, how much you care... You care about... I mean, this is seen in movies. Sometimes it's not too bad. But you care about the other person almost as much or as much or maybe even more than you care about yourself. So it becomes something where you're interested in life. I mean, she is just on every level with you which is something that's really rare and really powerful. As far as selfishness and being selfish and self-less, as far as the myth goes, you should not only bring your best self to the table in a romantic relationship. I think it will be absolutely necessary in the long term. So when someone says that love is in any sense self-less, this is just by definition false. You really need to bring yourself to the table, the best self possible, the self that you have developed, that you have created, that you have authored in your own life. There's no way around it. Nor would you want to avoid that in any capacity. Finally, to choose a woman out of billions and assert the fact that she is of particular and immense importance to you is one of the most rationally selfish acts you can take in life. When you choose a woman to be in a relationship with of any degree, of any caliber, you're declaring that she is more important and she's of greater value and importance to you than all the other ones. No matter how many you've met, whether it's 10 or a thousand or a million. So this is just the act itself of being in a relationship and of choosing her and of judging that she is of great value to you and she shares your values in life and you want her to be a part of your life to a great capacity. This is just selfish in itself. You want that. And it's a good thing. It's not selfish in the self-destructive sense, obviously. Myth number seven, I used to fall from this one back in the day. Love is irrational and above reason. First, reason is not knowledge. Reason is thinking. It is a process by which you obtain knowledge. The reason is not the knowledge. It's how you get it. You think. I would argue very passionately that nothing is above reason, above thinking and above reality. Which doesn't mean you can just think your way into acquiring any piece of knowledge that may potentially exist. There's a couple more obstacles before you do that. Just measurement is one of them. How do you measure the information you have presented to you? Getting a little bit off topic, but nothing is above reason on this earth. Nothing that you're going to encounter cannot be thought about and solved. If you think hard enough and you're persistent and you work hard and you take life seriously and you take reality seriously, mature romantic love is only possible with a strong connection to reality. If you do not have a love affair with life, with reality, with this world, with earth, with living here and enjoying life, it's just not possible. You're not going to have it. You're going to have something much more, if it can even be called any degree of romantic love, it would be immature romantic love. It would be something that is very chaotic, very dramatic. It's something you've probably seen a lot of your friends go through. I know I have throughout the years. You don't even need to see it physically. You can just look on Facebook and see people just posting all this shit about their life, how crazy it is with their, in particular, with partners and such. Another way of saying this is mature romantic love is not possible to individuals or couples who are deeply irrational. I don't just mean this either in the sense of like someone being a drama queen, because some people may have personalities that are more prone to conflicts like the surfacing, but I mean beyond the point of a person's personality or particular approach to life, kind of surfacing conflicts and creating excitement. I mean beyond that. I mean the point where they're sabotaging themselves, sabotaging their partner, lying, cheating, stealing, cheating on their spouse, their partner and so on. Love at first sight. I'm probably preaching to the choir here thought about this. You guys aren't particularly probably prone to this, but it's important to discuss both of the concepts it entails and then for anyone on the internet 10 years from now watching this, it's a little more susceptible to this perhaps. So first of all, this myth exists and I assume everyone here is familiar with this. Does anyone not familiar with this? Love at first sight? Probably not. We're all from western culture, so to speak. So this myth exists because sight, as far as I understand it to be, is our most important sense. If I were to go around this room and somehow force you to lose all but one sense of your five senses, the one almost all of you would keep is sight. You would forget hearing long before sight, taste, touch, taste and so on. So it is immensely important. There's a reason it's not, yeah, I knew I loved her when I first heard her or when I first tasted her. It's always the sight. Like this isn't, I mean, that might be one of them for some people. It's not usually what's, it's not popular and it's not popular for a reason for that kind of phrase to be beyond the point that it sounds kind of funny and such. There's a reason it's sight. It's sight. You get the most data and put it into your mind through sight more than anything else. So that's where that comes from and I think if you understand where it comes from you're probably a little bit more about it, how to get it out of your head if it happens to be in there. By my judgment, this myth mocks more than almost anything else a deep, complex, highly abstract concept. The idea that you can have true, mature, deeply romantic love in five seconds, it just makes a mockery of something that is very complex, takes a long time to develop and can be developed over a lifetime. So to say that you just look at somebody and that's it, it's just nonsense. Can you have a deep affinity for someone very quickly? Just based on physical attraction? Sure. Can that feel emotionally like a lot more? Sure. But that doesn't change what it is. It's just sight, it's just physical attraction. And as important as that is, as I discussed, it's not the entirety of human life, of reality and of romantic love. That's something that's a lot bigger, a lot broader and takes time. It takes work, it takes effort, it takes your mind, it takes thought, it takes reason, it takes your emotions, it takes everything all once at the same time. So the idea, again, that you can just look at somebody and then all of a sudden your love is just, it's just nonsense. It would also be important to note that so it doesn't happen overnight, romantic love, but it also doesn't develop into something that is deeply mature overnight. Again, it takes time. So two people, if they really hit it off and they meet and they talk throughout the night and it becomes something just amazing overnight, I mean, in the most extreme of circumstances, maybe that could be called immature romantic love, maybe, but not something that's deep, that's mature, that's developed. So it takes time. Again, effort, time, reason, thought, emotion, spirituality, whatever you want to say into that mix, just about. It doesn't happen overnight and it definitely doesn't happen just in the first sight. Myth number nine, sex without love is empty. Nice follow-up to love at first sight, I thought. So this myth says that meaningful relationships are not possible, but in fact they are, outside of the realm of romantic love. An example I came up with for you guys that I think would be very easy to understand is think of James Marshall. James Marshall understands himself, understands life, understands woman very deeply. Do you really think that his sexual encounters are meaningless and empty and worth nothing? Just like he discussed, literally. They are important to him. They are not just random encounters that he just has and fucking forgets about. They are important, they are deep, they are fulfilling, they are gratifying and they are satisfying. And for the woman as well, when they meet, they both profit, profit. They have a great experience and they have a great time. So, yeah, sex outside of relationships can be fulfilling. It is not necessarily empty. It surely can be, but it does not necessarily so. I would also argue that theoretically you can go your entire life without experiencing any degree of romantic love. You can live well and you can achieve an incredible level of happiness. You just might be missing out on a great secret. Something truly great. Myth number ten, love is unconditional. This is a big one. First, to love is to value in general. The most general sense possible. That's what that means. To value something is to judge something to be of value by definition. To love anyone is to love them on the condition that they are who they are and that they do not become someone you disvalue. They do not become a monster over time. Someone you want nothing to do with. Which they certainly can change into. An extreme example would be that Hitler's immediate family was not unconditionally obligated to continue to love him when he started slaughtering people. If anyone in your immediate family became a rapist, someone that physically or sexually assaulted people, or a murderer, you would not in any way. Now the same would be true for anything, any kind of friendship or relationship. This is a complete nonsense. They have broken the condition that they are who they are. They are not someone who is a murderer, someone who is a killer, someone who you want nothing to do with. And it doesn't have to be that extreme though. The person you love, family, friend, intimate partner, fundamentally changes who they are for the worse. You are absolutely not required to continue loving them. They have broken the condition. So what I mean when I say fundamentally is that they don't just change superficially. They don't get sick and gain a little bit of weight and then you're like, oh fuck that. That condition broke, I'm gonna do more for like just this next few weeks. I mean fundamentally. A couple years ago, Jason Savage, he introduced a concept to me that was profound. That in a way I was aware of but not explicitly or consciously. He told me that the pursuit of health is a sign or an expression of self-esteem. So what's important here is having self-esteem or having fundamental values that are important to you, your partner. So again with just physical appearances if that changes just temporarily that's not that important. What's more important is that she has a pursuit of health. That she is a happy person that you like to be around, that you enjoy. Not the day to day small things that can change for better or worse very quickly. It's the fundamentals that matter. You just rip off DJ Fuji. Those are the 10 myths. That's a crash course in this book and in romantic love. Some further reading beyond the book which is just a psychology of romantic love. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, so on. Would be a follow-up book, this one that is not very well known but is really, really good. It's hard to find but you should be able to get it on the internet. And that's the romantic love question and answer book. It's a direct follow-up to the book. Came out three years later, I want to say. It's just as long and it's just a Q&A. But it's really, really good and he does it with his wife at the time. Another book from him is this is my second favorite book from him right after the psychology of romantic love. It's called The Art of Living Consciously. The power of awareness to transform everyday life. This is fantastic in general but in specific as well. I believe for romantic love. As far as being conscious in your daily life it's just like he says, 5% more consciousness and awareness to your interactions, to your endeavors, to your pursuits in life. It's really, really good. And I mention this in specific because he is known as the father of self-esteem so he has like a whole list of books on self-esteem that are really, really good. But that's what he's mostly known for and books like Psychology of Romantic Love and this book, they kind of get brushed to the side. They're of secondary importance behind so I would say first look at these because I think these not saying anything about the self-esteem books, they're great but these are harder to find and they're not quite as popular or discussed as often. You can also check out the author's website at his name so it's NathanielBrandon.com he has an entire section on romantic love that I think is really, really good. It has books, articles excuse me and audios from speeches like this he gave back in like the 80s they're great. They cost a couple bucks, there's MP3's and they're really, really good I would highly recommend them they're absolutely worth like $9.95 for every charges form and that's it that's my presentation on Psychology of Romantic Love a brief introduction to it. Hope you guys have enjoyed it and if you have any questions I'll be happy to take them. Thanks guys Questions for Anthony Johnson Thanks Anthony it's a great talk just wondering why do you think a society plays such a big value on marriage as it is He actually, I should have mentioned that there's actually an entire section of the book he starts off, it's actually it's really good but it's not as good as the rest of the book, the beginning of Psychology of Romantic Love he goes into history so it's like maybe 30, 40 pages on the history of romantic love how it's developed throughout the ages and different cultures and religions and so on and how it's been treated so the book answers that really, really well I would say I'm not even sure if this is exact inclusion but mine is that it most has to do with religions religions have wanted to control sex for hundreds or thousands of years that's why it's such a big issue or that's kind of self fulfilling prophecy there I think that sex is such a profound celebration of your life and happiness on this earth that people want to control so to control that they create things and I'm not bashing marriage here but they create things like marriage they and then they create certain rules for it and such that sex for example, sex outside of marriage is evil, you're going to go to hell you're going to burn for all eternity from this God who also loves you or something so it's things like that they create and it's it's not like some big conspiracy but it's a system of control so they make it and it's it's easier to control people to get people fearful of you to have them do what you want and to I guess make them obedient which the guys in here I don't think any of you are very obedient so power to you, fuck I ain't does that answer your question I think it's most, it most think of designer religion it's not even, there are a lot of traditional cultural things too but most of it I think is stemmed from religions does anyone else have a question no, yeah okay there we go all of a sudden zero to like three what to know how does the psychology of romantic love impacts offspring children I mean you're talking about marriage it's not an obligation well oh yeah if you get into it, liability more likely with social norms and everything it seems that raising children it's pretty much an obligation to be married otherwise they're going to have bigger in certain factors I mean we're a progressive society but when that's hard I think that was for example bigger when I was a child and it's gone away a little bit but you're right, it's still around so the question is specifically so children and marriage so it's not really related to romantic love per se it's more so like marriage okay he has a section on that and he also answers it I think quite a bit in the Q&A book so the follow-up book first I would say that something I read the other night when I was reading it for like third time is that a lot of people they feel obligated first and foremost to have children so it's another thing that religions have like ingrained people to do well like you guys are here even you go to school, you get a job you get married, you have kids forever and ever and ever you make more of this kind of religion or more of that one or more of that one more little offspring to populate it and then to feed the coffers whatever they call it I would say that having children is a huge responsibility and that any sort of obligation that they should have children at all to begin with is just deeply antithetical to taking full responsibility for what you're about to do to make another human life the same is also true then with marriage as I discussed and then as far as being obligated to get married it's because you decided to have kids assume that someone decided to do so rationally and fully aware of everything I was going to entail yeah I don't I think it's something you should fight against I think you should disagree with it you should speak out against it that just because you have a child then you automatically have to get this legal contract for it I don't think so it's not just to not getting married it's worth fighting those it's worth disagreeing with them it's worth paying whatever the short term prices are and 18 years later when they're an adult it's not going to matter so I'd say yeah stay again stay away from the obligation that's supposed duty that people make up for you that society makes up that you just have to get married just because of getting love or just because someone told you to just because you had kid pop out I'd say does that answer your question? shoot that's another thing too yeah the marriage rates are like the failure rates as they call them are like astronomical for getting married in your early 20s it's like 98% you get divorced it's huge sorry to interrupt I mean you should question in the first place whether you even want to get married at all is it necessary or is it even beneficial I'm pretty skeptical as far as it like being like a legal contract specifically I think that you can have a life long if you want if you want some life long relationship with another woman that's deep and that's intimate and that's filling I mean that can last 50 years or more and you don't have to get married I think it's just is this something you've been told and you've seen in like a thousand movies and TV shows that you have to do this you have to do this and you have to do this and you have to fucking do this now will a woman be aware of that automatically off the bat no I mean women in particular seem obsessed with like weddings and marriage and dresses and like what the fuck else yeah you should you should gently educate or nudge her to question these things if they're really a value to her if they so happen to be so be it but only when she is like fully aware that she's been fed this fantasies and she was fucking too and this things like that yeah you should does that make sense stay away from the duty the obligation we're short on time there's one more question we should have actually a few minutes well there you go but we are short on time we're about 30 minutes behind let's start a little bit late one is if we cook it off in a new way no not at all yeah hoping it'd start that off too non-exclusive I think monogamous relations are great that's what I have with Merrily up there the redhead yeah I think there's actually a speaker here that is very in support of monogamous relationships not at this event but at the Texas conventions here named Greg Swan so in my opinion most people are actually going to benefit the most from monogamous relationships but I don't think it's going to be everyone I think that's kind of what I was hinting at is that there's a population where guys just don't want that I think I know some well they'll never be happy and truly happy for the long haul monogamous relationship but I think that's the exception I think most people will benefit from that from a lifelong partner who you are sexually attracted to physically attracted to a lot and that can last over a lifetime it might not be as intense as it was when you were like 21 50 years later I think that's certainly something you can attain that's an ideal that's achievable and that yeah it can be done so does that answer your question monogamy is I think great but yeah it's not going to be for everyone so anyone else? a bit more on common law I'm only familiar with it as it's practiced in the US it depends on which state you live in in the United States out of the 50 60s because it seems like it's the same thing as marriage so why not get married if it's the same thing just to keep everyone else happy oh well what I was getting at in the speech is that you should be careful of common law you should find out about it and then avoid it it's not in Florida but other states if you just live with a girl and pay the bills together for like 7 years or whatever you're automatically married automatically you don't have to say the matter that's kind of what I was getting at to stay the hell away from and watch for that and stay out of it rather than just staying away from it just again well in that case it's an obligation that's forced on you unknowingly but what's your question exactly I'm kind of losing train of thought here sorry he was asking about common law marriage which is mainly an American thing I wonder if it exists in Australia does anyone know yeah so he just said Australia de facto relationships have billed after 7 years it's like in a lot of states 6 months fuck that god you guys are you guys are fucked man sorry in some US states it's 6 months so yeah it's something to be no I would say no I would say find a way move move get away run I'm sorry man I know you like where you live or something yeah there must be a way around it I think there's things you can do in certain states where you can if you write out explicitly that you don't want this I think you can avoid it so it's not always going to be forced on you it happens to a lot of people unknowingly and then they break up with their girlfriend and all of a sudden they have this court or a judgment against them to lose half the shit so just be aware this whole convention a big part of it is being more aware and being conscious in your life and looking for stuff like this that are bad arrangements people before you set up and then you just get sucked into not knowing it so watch out for things like that there's a lot of things in life like that that if you pay attention people will suck your soul dry and this is one of them if you don't want it if you don't want marriage and you get forced into it that's this horrendous I think it's a tragedy that's an abomination so even if you have to move I don't know man fucking move it's worth the fight because someday I think that can be defeated that can be changed we don't always have to live like that you can win that fight things like that that are horrible I think can be reversed if you fight hard enough alright guys let's give it up for Anthony Johnson thanks guys