 And our first question of the day is, it says, why do 80% of midlife relationships go nowhere? Why do 80% of midlife relationships go nowhere? I love this question. Okay, folks, I think you can tell, I don't blow smoke up your ass. I'm not here to sell you on some fantasy of relationships. In fact, as I said, I've said this repeatedly in the dating process out there, quite frankly, it's a mess. It's an absolute mess because really for the first time in history for the most part in the last 50 years, people who meet are absolute strangers to one another. They have, I mean, while there are the occasions where people meet in high school and those occasions where people meet in college, for those of us in midlife, particularly in midlife, the reality is, is we're meeting total strangers. And the challenge with meeting a total stranger is, you don't know if you share the same values, you don't know if you have blendable lifestyles, and lastly, you don't know if the other person and or you have the emotional maturity to actually be in a healthy, happy relationship. So you might be asking, what does it mean? Why do 80% of relationships fail? Well, let's think about this for a second. Roughly 50% of all first marriages end in divorce and nearly 65% of second marriages end in divorce and 75% of third marriages end in divorce. I mean, that is something to really look at. Why is there so many divorces going on for people on their second or third term? You would think it'd be quite the opposite. They would be so much better at picking people that that number would be substantially lower. But why is it so high? It's because as we age, we actually haven't learned how to pick better people. Let me repeat that. As we age, we haven't learned how to pick better people. Now, some of us think, oh, well, I've learned what I want by what I don't want through online dating. Yeah, that's a little bit, but quite frankly, and I want you to also think about this. It's currently a Friday night when I'm shooting this video. There's probably gonna be 100,000 first dates here in the United States, and it could be even higher than that. I'm just gonna take a guess, there's 100,000. How many of those are actually ever gonna turn into a relationship? I'm gonna say less than 1% of those are actually going to turn into a relationship. So that would mean 1,000 out of that 100,000. And of those thousands, how many of those are actually gonna go the distance and go beyond two, three, four, go be long-term relationships? The likelihood of that is 80%. No, excuse me, 20% of those. This is why I say 80% of relationships fail at midlife because the reality is, is most human beings are focusing on the least important, well, I was about to say the least most, the least important thing, but this isn't true. They focus on, they hyper-focus on the smallest piece of the puzzle and not the biggest piece of the puzzle. Let me repeat that, they focus on the smallest piece of the puzzle and not the biggest piece of the puzzle. And this goes back to the relationship iceberg I've talked about many times, and that tiny piece is chemistry and they do not focus on shared values, blendable lifestyles and emotional maturity. Compatibility is what creates relationship success. So when a thousand people start a relationship together and all they focus is on chemistry and not focusing on, do we really share the same values? And by the way, folks sharing the same values isn't, you like sushi, me too. Do you like stand-up paddle boarding? Oh my God, I do it every weekend at the pier. Do you like the Rolling Stones? Oh my God, I've seen them in concert 10 times. Folks, that's not compatibility, that's familiarity. Compatibility is do you share, are your lifestyles blendable with one another? Do you share the same values together at a core level? And again, lastly the emotional maturity piece and quite frankly, I believe, listen, I have learned the hard way that the number one emotional health issue facing everybody is a distressing lack of I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable and I'm not likable. I'm gonna repeat that. I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable and I'm not likable. That's the number one emotional health issue facing almost everybody. Again, this is why I wrote my book, What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? By the way, a link below. It's a journey of personal development, self-help and spiritual work to work on the emotional maturity piece. And this is why I continually recommend the book, The Hoffman Process. The Hoffman Process. This is a deep dive into healing childhood wounds and traumas. I'm gonna repeat that, a deep dive into healing childhood wounds and traumas. Do you realize that I am probably the only, I'm one of the few, let me reframe that. I'm one of the few dating coaches that continually talks about childhood wounds and traumas as well as adult traumas that cause most of the frustration in the dating realm. I'm not selling you on the idea of feminine energy work and that's just gonna magically work out because when you lean back in your feminine, that guy is gonna magically claim you because he's so fucking chivalrous. It takes no into account how fucked up human beings are. We are riddled within securities and I don't care if you meet the quintessential alpha male, the reason why he's that because he's a little kid hiding inside most likely and the outside bravado is just a mask of tons of insecurity on the inside because most likely that alpha male was abandoned as a child or when I say abandoned as a child or he had a domineering parent, someone that was so habitually domineering. Take a look at Tiger Woods and his father and what he dealt with. And we all look at him as having this grand life and this alpha male and the golf course and look how he fucked up his marriage. Okay, as an example, we are dealing, and by the way, I don't care how financially successful someone is or how attractive they are on the outside, there is a good chance there's a little kid on the inside of that person that's deeply hurting because they've done little or no, whether they've not done therapy, whether they've not done personal development work, self-help work or spiritual work to heal that little kid inside of that. And this is one of the reasons why 80% of relationships fail or go nowhere, not to mention the fact that most people at midlife are only operating from a casual basis and not a serious basis. And this is why I continually talk over and over and over again about understanding the mechanics to a healthy, happy relationship. This is why I repeat this book over and over again, Eight Dates by Doctors John and Julie Gottman, I highly recommend getting it because if you wanna be in that 20% category, I recommend reading all the books that I suggest. So you are in a great position to choose the right guy because what's the definition of insanity? Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. Ladies, part of the problem is you're choosing, actually, if you're not familiar with the work attached by Amir Levine and the work of Getting the Love You Want by Halor Val Hendricks and Helen Hunt, this is Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. These two books teach you about love attachment style and a mago, and a mago is when we choose people like our parents. Oftentimes, we're choosing the same type of person over and over again because they represent one of our parents that we need to heal from the inside because we're still trying to get either mom and dad's love. And so I'm bragging here as a coach for a second. One of the few people that's talking about this that isn't a professional therapist. And this is why I'm screaming at the top of my lungs just like you would scream at a child, not to touch that flame. And trust me, folks, I'm your big brother. If I could be there for you on a first date with a shotgun and pointed at the guy and say, what are your intentions so we can get the real answer, I want you to learn to do that for yourself by learning the techniques and asking the right questions early on so you can choose a better partner so you don't end up in that 80% of relationships that go nowhere. And I wanna set you up for success that you can be in that 20% that has a chance to be in a healthy, happy, juicy, delicious relationship. Are you with me? Can I get an amen? All right, thank you so much. That was our first question for the day. We're gonna take some more questions. I'm gonna take a sip from my coffee mug and the coffee mug says, let that shit go.