 Boom! Welcome back to the 21 convention 2021 of Orlando, Florida being held at the 21 summit 2021 as well our super triple event Our next speaker is a returning alumni speaker to the 21 convention first speaking in 2018 and later in 2019 at our fatherhood patriarch event He's a clinical psychologist at Denver, Colorado you probably know him best from his book the tactical guide to women and Is an amazing man He's a man who I think particularly in the man is fear But even in the wider world today who really cares about truth and science in the pursuit of truth So in our anti scientific age where they tell you to trust the science and all this made-up garbage this is one of the few men who's an academic and Professional actually really cares about these issues on a deep intellectual level So without further ado, please let me welcome back to the 21 convention stage. Dr. Sean T. Smith Welcome back sir Morning gentlemen There's a street in my hometown of Denver, Colorado It's called Colfax Avenue, and they say it is the longest Continuous commercial street in the United States. I don't know about that, but it's 26 miles long and my entire adult life I have had a particular affection and sentimentality for Colfax Avenue So every year about this time of year when the weather is beautiful in Colorado I will gather up some family and some friends on a Sunday And we will walk 18 miles of Colfax Avenue through all kinds of neighborhoods just to see what we can see Because you notice things in life when you slow down for example Here's something that my brother noticed this year He noticed that when he is walking along the well-manicured bike path along the canal in his nice suburban neighborhood Almost nobody will make eye contact and return a greeting But when you're walking down Colfax Avenue, it doesn't matter where you are Doesn't matter what the person looks like doesn't matter how down and out they appear to be or how tough they appear to be Or how many teeth they have in their head if they are awake and conscious There's a very good chance that they will look you in the eye and return a greeting with a smile That's an interesting disparity to think about, but it's not what I'm here to talk about I want to tell you about a scene that I saw on Colfax Avenue many years ago This was a man and a woman having an argument a very loud argument But she was the only one doing any talking this man Literally had his back against the wall and she was in his face on her toes Finger in his face yelling at him on and on and he was standing there looking like a little boy Who was who was just overcome with shame? He's closed body languid he was trying to evade her eye contact and he would look over this way And she would circle around and get right in his face and continue yelling at him And he turned his head back this way trying to evade their eye contact. She'd circle around get in his face scream at him now What can we say about these two individuals? I don't think we can say anything really because this is just one data point and I don't know about you I try very hard not to take one data point and paint an entire picture about a human being But what can we say about the relationship? If you think about the relationship as an entity that two people create it's it's of them But it's separate from them and it's larger from them and there's something going on in this relationship and and While we can't really judge anything about the individuals I think it's fair to say that if you were standing there with me and we were watching this unfold that maybe we can draw some Kind of conclusion about the relationship because we have a woman who it's easy to say that she's the aggressor Because she's the one that's out of control and she was the one that's out of control But if you want to understand an interaction and a relationship you have to look at more than one point of view You have to check out more than one vantage point. So from her point of view Maybe it's pretty damned aggravating to be with somebody who helped you create some sort of conflict And then goes catatonic when you're trying to solve it. So who's the aggressor? I don't know but I think it's reasonable to take a guess that in this relationship between these two people This might not be the first time they've ever gone down that path and might not be the last time where she is pursuing him in Search of some kind of answer to something and he is retreating It's fair to say that maybe this thing that's unfolding in front of us is Is a part of a larger pattern with them So if you think about the relationship as a thing on its own Then you can ask yourself the question What is this relationship bringing into this man's life at that moment and at that moment? It's probably not bringing anything good if you were to ask him In fact if if that blue genie from Aladdin were to come down and ask this man and say hey my man You can have anything you want one wish you name it. He would probably say I wish this woman would just stop talking I don't know if we've all been there a lot of us have been there and When you so when you start asking what is the relationship bring into a life That's really what I want to talk about when you think about I want us for the next hour or so I want to think about relationships as an entity of their own. We're gonna set set the person aside We're gonna set the woman aside. I'm gonna be talking about it the relationship. It does not refer to the woman It refers to the relationship and this This little talk is gonna be a talk in four parts four chapters if you will Chapter one is gonna be called assessment I want to talk about one of the things that psychology is really good at and Psychology is really good at taking something that's sort of abstract and pin it and get down and measuring the hell out of it And there's a particular methodology that psychologists use that I think is useful in thinking about The people that we bring into our lives and the relationships that we create with those people that's chapter one chapter two Is called Peter the Great? Peter the Great if you'll recall was The Russian czar from 1682 to 1725 don't worry. There's not gonna be a quiz But Peter is an interesting character fascinating character actually because he was so dichotomous on the one hand He's he's remembered primarily as being the great reformer for Russia because Peter inherited The throne at a young age and he looked around and he noticed that Russia was landlocked I was a little bit isolated and it was a little bit behind the times And so he saw what was going on in Western Europe in terms of technology and trade and diplomacy And he wanted some of that for his country So he went to Western Europe and he brought back so much technology and he actually Took this landlocked nation gave it a port created a Navy brought them kicking and screaming into the 1700s So Peter the Great was a great reformer Peter the Great was also in my estimation a bit of a regressive because while he was touring Western Europe He surely encountered some of the enlightenment ideals that were starting to form at the time things like Personal sovereignty and rule of law those things could not have escaped his attention And yet he had no interest in bringing that part of of advancement back to Russia He was pretty happy to be the autocrat and the boss. So that's the dichotomous nature of Peter the Great He was a reformer and he was regressive in my estimation he was also in his personal life very dichotomous because Peter was capable of tremendous violence and cruelty and you can make the argument that any Sovereign of his era that was just part of the job And I don't get the sense that Peter relished in that part of the job torturing people Going to war killing people killing dissidents, but he was willing to do it He was clearly willing to do it. He did it to his own son, which is a very tragic story I think that story shows both his capacity for connection and his capacity for heart his heartbreak and and cruelty at the same time but he was Perfectly capable to be cruel of being cruel and violent at the same time dichotomous Peter the Great was clearly capable of Relationships that were there were kind and compassionate He was capable of romantic connection and loyalty and Peter the Great had an untold number of women in his life But he had three primary relationships He was essentially a serial monogamous and two of those relationships were marriages and those two marriages had Were with women who were ostensibly perfectly reasonable fine attractive intelligent women But they the relationships had very different characters and they had very different effect on his life and his his work So I want to talk about the those two relationships And I think there's something useful that we can gather from Peter the life's Peter the Great's romantic life It's not profound, but it's useful Chapter three I'm gonna call shame And I'm not gonna talk about it in the same sense that people like Robert Glover is such a wonderful job of talking about how shame Can and can infect us and how it poisons our relationships? I'm gonna leave that part to the professionals I want to talk about shame in a More of an evolutionary sense like what's it for? Why do we have this thing and what are the messages that we as men Get from society and how does it affect? If it affects the way we choose our women and the relationships that we choose So that's chapter three. Oh and in chapter three I am going to share with you my favorite gender studies essay If you don't have a favorite gender studies essay, you should get one because that shit is hilarious There's there's nothing that these people cannot ruin for themselves This particular essay you may have heard about because it got a lot of press at the time and it's it's Very instructive the reason I like this essay so much even though it is irrational. It is emotionally unhinged It's very honest about what certain people and influential people out there in a society are demanding of you and me as men So that's chapter three shame chapter four I'm gonna call the experiment and the experiment is something that I'm going to suggest to any man who's interested in Possibly opening a can of worms you should you should take this under advisement that it might cause some problems but the experiment is simply to take an inventory of The relationships that you're choosing again separate from the people the relationships as an entity that you are bringing into your life And maybe there's some room for improvement because one of the things that I noticed Early on in my career was that as I was talking to men about the relationships that they were choosing Almost nobody no man that I spoke to could tell me who sat them down and talked to them about women and the Relationships they choose nobody told them that you can have standards You can you can look for women who are of good character and have shared values and are emotionally mature and who take care of their mental health You can have some standards in your relationships in the women that you choose But even when I wrote the tactical guide to women to try to address that problem and clearly I keyed in on something That is resonating with people I knew that looking at the woman that you bring into your life for the women is only half the equation The other half is the relationship So I'm focusing on this today and the reason I frame this as an experiment. There's actually two reasons one