 Can we agree that respect is a fundamental for any type of romantic relationship, whether it's any relationship you have in your life to, feel respected to actually respect a person. So I want you to know what it takes for a guy to really respect you, that's for the thumbnail, and really what needs to happen within yourself, but most importantly, is a greater understanding of the dynamics of human behavior and human mating. And let's just get real for a moment. The dating marketplace, and I call it the dating marketplace, because we are in sort of a marketplace, especially with our smartphones and our laptops for dating sites and dating apps, we're in a marketplace. And the reason why it's called a dating marketplace, it's really a meeting marketplace for people to date and to eventually be in relationship with someone. I think the problem is, is that many of us have an old narrative running in our head based on the past, and it doesn't really apply to our current circumstances. I'll repeat that, we have a narrative running of what it should look like, how it was in the past throughout thousands and thousands of years between men and women. And I think it's important to really understand what it takes to be in a healthy, happy relationship, including that piece of respect, is to go a little backward in time to understand where we were to really then get clarity on where we're at today. So in a recent live video, the other day, why men push good women away, I introduced a woman that I wanna share with you today. Her name is, bear with me one second, her name is Camille Paglia. And I shared, by the way, I wanna make a correction here. I said that she was an evolutionary biologist, I was totally incorrect. She's a professor of arts in Philadelphia, in the school in Philadelphia. She's a feminist, and she had a video on YouTube called Stop Blaming Men. And what she says is, Camille Paglia observes that too many women blame men for their own malaise or unhappiness and argues that the root cause is the large-scale changes in society, the loss of community and extended family and a growing isolation that results. A growing isolation that results. So actually, if you're interested, well, I won't play the video, but you can look it up, Stop Blaming Men. Here's the title so you can just see it. Camille Paglia, go look that up. I'll post a link in here in the well as well. So what she, and why it's important to understand this, especially if you want to feel respected in a relationship, is literally up until about, for hundreds of thousands of years, up until about 50 years ago, men and women basically kind of congregated with themselves, men congregated with themselves, women congregated with themselves. And there was a sense of solidarity individually between the genders. And so there was a sense of community, the sense of teamwork that happened from a gender perspective. And then roughly around the 50s and 60s when there was a shift into gender equality, at least here in the United States, which was absolutely needed on so many different levels, because in many ways, because of the patriarch society, because of misogyny, women were oftentimes treated as second class citizens, I mean, men towards women. So there was a real benefit to shifting that narrative. The problem is that from, and she talks about this, this isn't me, she talks about that from the perspective of the workplace where women are now actively in the workplace with men, we're still trying to figure out how this works. I mean, think about this from, Neanderthals are 200,000 years old. So literally for 200,000 years up until 50 years ago, things were a certain way. And then all of a sudden it's changed. And there's this growing pains people are going through. And I feel that's bled into our romantic relationship lives. And there's so much confusion out there. And there's so much, well, we want certain things a certain way and we want things a different way. We want men to be strong and confident, yet that we want them to be, as an example, we want them to be strong and confident and be able to take care of us. At the same time, we want them to be emotional and be able to listen to us and to be attentive to our needs. And so many different things like that, this is for men, women blaming men for not being this certain way. It's really hard for men to respect women when we're at war with one another. Literally, we are at war with one another between the genders. How do I know this? Have you ever saw the book, The Rules? Have you ever read this book? I want you to think about this. It's literally creating war between the genders. Some of the titles here. Don't talk or text a guy first. Don't ask guys out by text, Facebook, instant messenger. Don't sit and stand next to a guy first or flirt with him. Wait at least four hours to answer a guy's text message. Wait at least four, look at, so all of this game playing has caused a divide between the genders. And by the way, let me be clear for the women who watch my channel. Men are just as clueless as many of you are. Men are just as equally clueless. And there's so, I mean, we could spend hours talking about what has caused this. I mean, and so I'm leaning into this conversation because if we really want to respect one another, it's gonna require shifting the narrative, especially in the dating realm to something that I appreciate in the book. If you ever read the book called If the Buddha Dated, If the Buddha Dated, okay? Why I love this book is it throws out the gender rhetoric and says, how can we connect with each other from a heart-centered place? How can we really connect with each other? By the way, there's a link below to get all the books I recommend. How can we really connect with one another from a heart-centered place? Doesn't that matter more? Because if we do that, we will genuinely respect one another. We will genuinely care for one another. But sadly today, men are complaining about women and women are complaining about men. Men are blaming women in the dating process. Women are dating men in the dating process. And can you see what's happening is there's friction between one another. And many of you would like to go to an old style of doing things. That's why today in my coffee mug, I did a podcast called, it's called the coffee mug says world's greatest idiot. She says, ignorance is blessed. And this was her podcast called Ignorance is Blessed. In other words, so many people want to be ignorant to what's going on today for a fantasy of what happened in the past. And it's time to become self-aware. It's time to actually start working on yourself. That's what my whole channel is about, is about individual empowerment for oneself. Because if you genuinely want someone to respect you in a romantic relationship, if you really want a man to respect you, and certainly if you wanna respect a man, it starts with individual self-respect. Individual self-respect. And sadly, I see this so lacking in the current dating marketplace. There's a lack of self-respect. This is why when I wrote my book, what the heck is self-love anyway? A journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work. By the way, again, the link below. Why I wrote this book is because if you want to feel respected in a relationship, then it requires a level of loving on yourself. Now, here's the challenge with most people. And this is critically important. So listen to this. The vast majority of people have childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas that have gone unhealed that makes them have negative patterns and limiting beliefs in their life. I'm gonna repeat that. Childhood wounds and traumas or adult traumas that have gone unhealed that causes them to have negative patterns and limiting beliefs in their life. And so what that bleeds into in relationship is a significant percentage of people who have terrible emotional maturity or relationship skills. I'm gonna repeat that. Terrible emotional maturity or relationship skills. So when you're blaming men, oftentimes, which is not going to gain any of men's respect. When you're blaming, and by the way, men that blame women, same thing, you're not gonna gain someone's respect. When we're blaming genders, the opposite gender for our relationship demise or our relationship frustration, it's going to bleed into how a man will view you. So anytime I read comments on my YouTube channel where I habitually see the complaining or the blaming of men in this process. Now, I'm not here to say that we don't absolve bad behavior. I'm not suggesting that. I'm merely suggesting all that energy of blame and complaining is really an individual lack of self-love. And it's a lack of individual empowerment. This is why I continually, lately recommend this book, All of You Should Ladies. This is an amazing empowerment book called Why Men Love Bitches. Bitches stands for Babe in Total Control of Herself, ES, okay? Because when you stand in your empowerment and you recognize that most human beings are flawed, most human beings have issues, we don't have to blame them. By the way, I want you to think about this. Think about a relationship that you had with a man that was toxic in your life. I bet you anything. I bet you anything. You go back to his childhood and you, if you could witness his childhood, he probably had significant traumas. I mean, I'm especially about people who are really genuinely toxic, significant traumas. And you wouldn't trade places with that person ever. So when we can shift to a level of compassion, when we can shift to a level of loving that person and still loving ourselves, being in our empowerment, then we can actually change the narrative because this is how we gain respect is by, it's not just respecting yourself, it's also coming at it from a place of genuine compassion for every person on the planet, even those that you actually feel that hurts you, having some compassion. Again, I'm not absolving bad behavior. But when we can lean into forgiveness and forgiveness simply means forgiving love, forgiving love, and we can lean into that, we actually have a greater chance of relationship success and to feel respected by the other person. And I'm here to suggest men need to be doing the same thing for women as well. They need to do their work. This is why I've been telling some of my guy friends to read this book. And you ladies should check this book out as well. Shut up, stop whining and get a life. Shut up, stop whining and get a life. Stop the incessant complaining because when you lean into your sovereignty, when you lean into your self-worth, when you lean into your self-esteem, you're actually leaning into something I really appreciate in this book called personhood. Now you might be thinking, Jonathan, all you do is talk about book after book after book after book. Let me tell you why this is so critically important because if you want to actually become a magnetic attractor for the kind of relationship I think you want. And I think you want a relationship of true intimacy, of true trust. Intimacy means into me you see, into me you see. And trust, trust is so critically important in a relationship, trust isn't just about trusting this person will be faithful to you. Trust is can I count on this person to care about my feelings as much as I care about my own? Because quite frankly, without trust, you'll never have respect. And without respect, you'll never have trust. So these things go hand in hand with one another. By the way, my t-shirt says don't be a salty bitch thinking of the book, the bitches. By the way, salty is the nickname of my son Connor who passed away almost four years ago. Actually, at the time I'm recording this, this is his birthday today, May 24th. And it looks like I'm gonna hit a hundred thousand subscribers on my channel by the time you're watching it. I should be there. And I'd asked him for this as my birthday present from him to me. So, salty bitch, being in your empowerment. Because ultimately folks, I'm here to say, and please forgive all the noise outside. I shoot these out on my balcony. If you want to really shift the narrative, then it's time to do the work, a lot of work ahead of time. Because that's how someone is going to respect you when they see that you're in your empowerment, when they see that you're in your sovereignty, your self-worth, your self-esteem, your self-confidence, that place of self-love. Listen, you know, I'm a big believer that if people haven't done therapy, if they haven't done individual personal development work, self-help work or spiritual work, that they are going to be problematic in relationship because I believe roughly about 20% of the population has clinical mental health issues and another 60% have real dysfunctional issues when it comes to their emotional maturity and relationship skills. So the reality is is one, two, let's see, eight out of 10 people that you meet from the dating marketplace, which what I shared before are going to be problematic people. So here's the thing, if you want to actually figure out who are the emotionally healthy people and who are the ones that you might want to avoid, check out the link to a free discovery call with me because that's my area of expertise in coaching. My coaching is all designed to help you learn how to ask the right questions to determine is this person worthy enough to be with me? Now, I talk about how important it is for you to shore up your emotional maturity, but ultimately you have to be able to find that needle in the haystack. So if you want some support again, check out the link to a call and schedule a call with me because look it, I started this conversation about where we were in society, okay? And how it's changed, okay? And one of the significant problems in the dating marketplace today is men are blaming women and women are blaming men. So we're going in two different directions. The only way we're ever going to find this unity with one another is when we come at it from a place of compassion, kindness, care, understanding, and most importantly, being realistic. Many people are literally delusional on their own level of emotional maturity and many people are living in a fantasy of what they can attract in the world today. And how can you respect people who are living in their own delusion and also have a fantasy about relationships? This is why I'm merely asking you to invest one year of your life, reading all the books I recommend. Go back to some of my past videos, I recommend dozens of books, often dozens of books in the last year and spend reading one book a month and you will change your life or at least you'll begin to change your life. Maybe go to therapy, maybe go to a workshop because if you really want to gain someone's respect, it starts with that self-respect and that self-respect happens when you are in your own individual empowerment in your life when you can operate as a babe or boy in total control of themselves. Because that's the most attractive person on the planet. Look at, I know we can look at the alpha male who's financially successful and say, I want that guy or the man could look at that sexy swimsuit model woman and say, that's what I want. But believe me, people that haven't done their individual work can be, look like a great package on the outside, but what's the definition of insanity doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results? So if you want to change the narrative, start from the inside out, stop being arrogant or ignorant, excuse me, not arrogant, ignorant to all of this. Understand that what happened in the past doesn't apply today. We have to approach the dating marketplace in a completely different way and that's my invitation for all of you. Is this sinking in? Is this resonating with you? If it is, please hit that like button. Please share this video. Please subscribe to my channel. I'm a bit of a contrarian, so my advice is contrary to public opinion and traditional expectations. So I invite you to watch some of my past videos to see if it resonates with you and if my work does resonate with you. Listen, if you want to connect with me directly, schedule a discovery call or join my private group. This is a group, Midlife Love Mastery. There's a link below. This is a group where you can have direct access to me on a regular basis through a Facebook group and I shoot personalized videos just for you. So check that out. I'm here to change your life. My hope is I'm making a difference. Am I, if I am making a difference, post a comment below, write your thoughts about this video. I'd like to hear, are you gonna choose to be in your individual empowerment and have compassion for the opposite sex? If you're willing to do that, then you're gonna find that men and women will begin to respect you more. And ultimately, isn't that what you, and I was gonna say, isn't that what you want? But you don't need their respect. What you need is your own respect and that's what matters most, at least in my opinion. All right, I think this would be a good place to wrap up again. Don't forget to post a comment. I'm gonna wrap up this video as I always do. First off, give myself a big, gigantic, Jonathan Barrock of Self Love. I'm starting to lose my voice. I'm gonna ask you to turn, turn to a, wait, give myself a bet. I'm gonna ask permission, if I can give you a big, gigantic, Jonathan Barrock, I'm gonna ask you to turn to a friend, a pet, a teddy bear, a pillow, here's a teddy bear, and give inner them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye-bye now, bye-bye.