TFTC Curiousity

0:00Speaker 1:Grand Rising Family. Happy Friday? Is it Friday? I feel like it's Friday. I'm gonna go with that. Happy Friday. So for those of you who are just tuning in and have no idea what's going on in our lives right now, this is the second public live of thoughts from the chair that I have done this week. Peaches is homeschooling the kids. So I have from four AM when I get out of bed until about eleven where I've got nothing to do. I go to the gym, do my morning routine, get my gratitude, do all my stuff, eat breakfast, prepare work, and then sit there and tet all my thumbs. We're playing Magic the Gathering on the computer and like real shit fucking over the game. So like this has been a way for me to interact with our community, create content, get some watch times. Because YouTube change their monetization policy. This is a public live.

0:49Speaker 1:There will be ads. We don't ask that you guys send us money for super chats and shit, although that would be super gangster, but the ad revenue is a nice little, you know, bonus being publicly live, So there will be ads. I did create a document. I have some things that I want to go over This has kind of been the theme. I did three of these just for Patreon. The one I did yesterday I used for clips not I don't know if I'm gonna edit that and use it as actual content, but this one is going to get edited and reused for content later down the road. So glad you're doing this. Thank you, Sarah.

1:20Speaker 1:Hopefully you guys get value out of this. I'm gonna just kind of read through a little bit of things. Hello, good morning, Alex. Hope that you're doing well over there on the other side of the country. What I wouldn't give for some duncan this morning? I broke this morning. Peaches and the kids were talking about breakfast and they're like, we're gonna get duncan. Do you want donuts? And I was like, man, I'd love a donut, but no, when we go ahead and just get my breakfast sandwiches and a coffee, and I broke with the coffee. I shouldn't be having that sugar. But this is the first unhealthy thing that I've had this week minus a donut. I had a donut this week, So all right, guys. So the name of this document is called Slow Death of curiosity, trust, and attraction. And the way that I've been I'm doing this is I've been kind of like I prepared the entire document, and then I try to stay on the document, but I also kind of free flow because nobody wants to watch someone do this the entire time that you're watching us, because that's really boring. And I don't want to do the teleprompter thing. Thank you for the jewels.

2:18Speaker 1:I don't know how that works on here. Apparently that's like a super chat on a lower level. Either way, I appreciate the gift giving guys. It's dope. So my first question for you guys is do you actually know your partner or do you know an outdated version of them? Contrary to popular belief, people change, people can change, people do change. Who you are in your forties is not who you were in your twenties. Madman said, thank you for what you do, thank you for hanging out with me while I'm doing it. But relationships often operate from a old perspective, old information, old data. There's not been a whole lot of new data collected. We believe we know our person, and because we think that we just know that them, the curiosity starts to fade. When we first meet somebody. There's a whole lot of curiosity. We ask questions. We want their stories, We want to know what they believe, honestly, what they want. We want to know what scares them, what makes them smile, what their kinks are like. We ask all kinds of crazy shit.

3:17Speaker 1:What their dreams look like, their goals, what success is, what the retirement looks like. Do you want kids? What's your ideal dream job? Where do you want a vacation? You've ever been on a boat? Like? All of those conversations in the beginning of a relationship is one of the things that makes the relationship super fucking exciting because you don't know this person. Everyone gets I can't say everyone, because not everybody has my level of spicy brain, but the data collection aspect of trying to learn something is super fucking exciting for me. So when Peaches and I started dating and we were recording and we were talking about everything that was going on in her life and in my life and trying to learn how to navigate her waters, was thrilling because I didn't know any of it right, and I wanted to know all of it.

4:03Speaker 1:And I was engrossed in the things she was saying and I was really paying attention, and like, that's the courting phase for almost everyone, and it's fucking exciting. Yeah, oxytocin and dopamine to the mix. Man. So eventually we start to think that we've got them completely figured out right, and the curiosity and then stops, and we don't feel like we need to probe or try to understand who they are or who they're becoming, because that's my person.

4:29Speaker 1:I already know, Like I don't need I know, right. I love that Peaches is homeschool and the babies and Chris's homeschool and all of us. Fuck, yes, that's funny. That is funny. She's she's doing a thing. Guys. We talked about this a little bit yesterday on the live stream. I one hundred percent do not have the patience to homeschool. I fucking don't. I I that shit is so fucking hard for me to even be in the room. I don't have the patience, and it's very hard for me to take a breath and like, hey, like, I know you can do this because their kids are used to us doing a lot for them. So when things get hard.

5:07Speaker 1:They expect us to just do it, and that's not what we're doing. They're having to learn how to do things, and Papa Bear wants to jump in, just get it done and go about my life. So like it's very difficult. She's fucking crushing it on that homeschooling thing. Somebody said that that beard though this beard almost got shaved off this morning. I'm I this may not be here much longer. This was a product of laziness before we went to Greece in June, and it's it's pretty fucking hefty now. Anyways.

5:35Speaker 1:So they are your person, right, you don't You're not curious anymore because they are your person. That's when things like I know how she's going to respond shows up or he's not going to like that, right, she doesn't care about that. He's never been an emotional person. She always needs space, YadA, YadA, YadA. Right, this is this is we know the outcome before it happens. So now we're we're rehearsing the things that need to be said, having fear of the conversations because we already believe how it's going to go, so we don't have the conversations that need to be had. We have the conversations in a way that we think is going to be the safest for us to have the conversations, and now it becomes a lecture. It's no longer a curious conversation about what needs to be done or how we can improve or be better. Right, appreciate both you and Peaches. Your conversations remind me of the conversations I used to have with my grandmother all the time about relationships. She passed earlier this year. I'm sorry for your loss. I love that you had somebody in your life that you were able to talk to. That's such a big deal. Chanelle said,

6:36Speaker 1:I took the leap this year, and I'm also homeschooling my kids. Congratulations. I found a very good program where I just need to be there to help in case they have questions. We are very excited for the homeschooling journey and opportunities that will open up other things. I love that, and I love that. I'm going to go back to this. I really want to. I'm going to after we get done with the document, I'll hang out with you guys and we can bullshit in the chat and like I enjoy that a lot. So I'm curious how much of what we know about our partner is from current information, right, And again this comes down to you probed and did the thing in the courting phase and got to know your person. Then they became my partner or my husband or my wife, and then the probing kind of stops because now you've been living together for as long as you've been living together, and you think you know and this is an ego thing when you really think about it, and how much of that information is collected over the last five, ten or twenty years.

7:27Speaker 1:How much of that information comes from the stories that we tell ourselves, not from the actual data. It's important to remember that we are constantly collecting data every time something happens. Let me back up, every time we tell ourselves a story, something happens that solidifies our belief in that story. It then collects data to what we already believe. Right. So, if you know you're looking for something, you're gonna find that thing. It doesn't matter if it's positive or negative.

7:55Speaker 1:If you're looking for something, you're going to find it. If you're looking for an opportunity, you will eventually find that opportunity. If you're looking for a fucking problem, you're gonna find a problem. So as you are telling yourself a story, right because you already kind of believe this is what's happening, then you start looking for the data that supports that story. Then you confirm it, and that story is now real when real, when in all honesty, you're probably missing a whole lot of other facets because you got that little bit of information that supports your theory. Now, you know, right, when we stop asking questions and start taking mental notes, we start living from assumptions, from the stories that we made up, from the situations that made us feel a certain way while not really understanding where they are. We talked about this a little bit yesterday.

8:43Speaker 1:This is us assigning meaning to a situation without really checking in to find out if that's really what's happening or if this is self projection. Right again, I said a minute ago that people change. Even if you don't believe people can change, they do. What made you feel loved at twenty five may not make you feel loved at forty. And there's a really good way to look at that, because everybody has once and desires and things that they need. And if you're in your forties and you look back at your twenties, you're not the same person.

9:12Speaker 1:And if you can recognize that, there's no longer an argument that people can't change or don't change what you wanted, sexually can change or ambitions you're Insecurities, parenthood fucking changes people. Success, failure, grief, aging, trauma, and even healing will change people. And then here's something else I want you guys to think about. We update our phones and other technology more than we update the information from our partners, right from our partners. Guys. This is also one of those things where once again we operate from our own collected data, not the data that they give us, and using the technology aspect of things.

9:50Speaker 1:When you update your phone or your computer or software or a firmware update on a camera or whatever technology that you're updating, you are not updating. You're downloading the data that they are giving you and in installing it on your device so that it works properly. If you are curious and you are doing the check ins and you are engaging with your person, you are now updating your software based off of the data from them to operate your life in a more effective manner. I know I'm a big fucking nerd, but when I created that analogy, I was like, yeah, I was good. So now that I've ended with a great little aphorism, I believe that's the word aphorism, I'm gonna move on to the next thing.

10:35Speaker 1:So sometimes our partner has absolutely changed, but we have refused to allow that change to exist. That doesn't mean that the change didn't happen. It means that we have refused to see it. So maybe your husband used to be really irresponsible, right, Maybe he was bad with money, he was an alcoholic, he spent all of his free time gaming whatever, whatever, whatever. Then over the last five years he's spent a lot of his time working on becoming a very dependable man of his word, living with integrity kind of person. But every disagreement eventually ends with you talking to him like he's still that twenty one year old alcoholic gamer that was very irresponsible. The version of him in your head when you become wronged, goes back to twenty one years old, not twenty six years old.

11:27Speaker 1:In the last five years of work, somehow gets negated because you have this fuck you story in your head. There's a resentment there that hasn't been worked through yet. Maybe your wife used to be jealous and insecure. She's worked on herself for years, but you still interpret every question through that old version of her. So when she's trying to be a part of your world, you get a defensive and attacker. We actually see this a lot on the podcast. We can trap people inside of the identities that they have already outgrown, and kind of here's a good way to say, think about this. All of us have that person in our lives that are not always in our lives, but are in the background at a distance that we view them as that thing. So like, maybe it's a nephew who was thirteen the last time you saw them, and the next time you see them they're twenty two, and you're like, oh my fucking god, you grew up, Like what happened? You're a kid? Still this this shouldn't be a thing. Your cousins look older, The people that you used to work with that you saw at a job have aged a lot, maybe they've gotten fat and had fifteen kids, like who the fuck knows.

12:31Speaker 1:But in our mind we have a very specific version of these people based off of our last good or really bad interactions. Right, And when you really think about how that makes you feel when it sees them, it also reflects back to you because bitch, your aging. Also, like, you ain't that fucking spring chicken anymore. You might be if y'all are in your twenties. Congratulations, you fuckers, I'm not so the idea of who they were become shattered because they have been gone a while. This happens in your relationships. The only difference is we choose to hold on to the older versions of the people in our relationships instead of updating the data all the time. And what's really wild is once I've decided who you are, I start interpreting your behavior through that lens. It's through the conclusion that I already have that you are irresponsible, that you were insecure, that I if I want to come to you about something, I know there's about to be a big mishap or a fight or whatever the case may be, And like, is it really even worth it?

13:32Speaker 1:What the fuck? Now? This is my story, This is what I believe based off of the data of I've collected and the things that I have failed to see. Because there's insecurity or hurt or whatever whatever. There. Once I've decided that you're selfish, I will notice selfishness again. The things that you look for are the things that you will find once I've decided you're controlling, questions become control. If I've decided you're lazy and I see you resting laziness.

14:03Speaker 1:If I've decided that you're emotionally unavailable and you say I need space, that looks like rejection. That looks like you don't love me anymore. Right when you are living through that cognitive bias. Because we've talked about this a lot, you and Peach Burkett, oh, she actually threw her last name in there, have opened my eyes to a new perspective, or multiple perspectives. This helps when I ground myself and make myself think as a process. I wasn't taught how to regulate as a kid. Now as a twenty six year old, it's one of the hardest things to do, having to check myself in the moment. It's the most important part. I do it better myself and my future relationships.

14:38Speaker 1:Thank you both. You're welcome. That's called self mastery, guys, That's exactly what that is. And that's amazing. Again, I will absolutely interact with the chat. I want to get to this document and then we can have all kinds of cool talks. So again, once I understand that I'm no longer responding to what you're doing today, I'm responding to the accumulative stories that I have developed and put to together over the last twenty years of me or five years, or two years or six months of me collecting data about what is So here's the question, how difficult is it to become a different person when the person closest to you continues to remind you who you used to be. This you hear people say a lot of things like, if I'm going to be accused of it, I'm going to do it because I'm already paying the debt, or I'm already doing the time for the crime I didn't commit, I might as well go ahead and do the thing. If she constantly accuses me of cheating, why not go cheat? Like that's a very rudimentary way of explaining what I ask. But there's a good question, and it should be something that you guys ponder on. There's

15:42Speaker 1:also an opposite problem here, and that sometimes we assume someone has changed when they haven't. We project our growth onto them because we've grown. We think, surely they understand that this is different, but we don't ask, right, there's no curiosity. This is the hole. Well they should know? How should they know? You have an understanding of something. I may not have an understanding of something, and that could be very common bare minimum information for you, because that's something that you've done your entire life and I've never even seen that before. So it's not common sense, it's lived life perspective. So again, curiosity both directions that absolutely matters. The first part of this is curiosity. Guys.

16:29Speaker 1:So you may know your wife Starbucks, order her shoe size, her favorite restaurant, her birthday, favorite movie, and exactly how she likes her eggs, and still have no idea what she's struggling with right now. You could know everything about someone without knowing what's happening inside of someone. The Goatmans called this love mapping. For those of you who don't know, we are giant fans of the Gotman Institute, love mapping is something that they talk about in a lot of their books. Love mapping is not about memorizing trivia about your spouse it's about maintaining an ongoing understanding of their internal world. What are they worried about, who are they becoming, what's currently exciting for them, What pressure are they carrying?

17:15Speaker 1:What dreams do they have now? What are their goals now that life has changed. It's a constant, curious dialogue back and forth of the future and what is happening When you guys think about it, dating is a big interview right, the courting phase, the dating phase, it is an interview process. It's it's trying to find out exactly how compatible you may be with another person, and is this compatibility enough? Like is this if we're talking, like, you know, out of a ten point checklist, If we're at a six or below, this isn't worth doing. If we're at a seven or an eight, this could really work.

17:54Speaker 1:If we're at a nine or ten, let's go right. But that's the point of the interview process. It's about trying to understand compatibil If you treat your marriage or your long term relationship as a constant interview, that initial curiosity, learning phase, excitement will never go away because you are remaining emotionally invested in somebody else's existence. So things to do that you can say things like tell me about yourself. I know this sounds really cheesy, but if you're at dinner with your partner and you haven't had a real conversation about anything other than your delegated responsibilities and your you know, your after action reviews, and you are, you know, just going through the motions of dictating what your life has been like having a conversation of you know, tell me about yourself. That that could be an open conversation of why I've been doing pilates or I've been working out again and you know, I'm starting to feel good about my body and and like there can be a real intimate conversation that comes from that because you asked a question that matters to the person and not just

18:57Speaker 1:to the superficial apple aspective. Things. Other questions you can say is what do you want out of life? Tell me something about your childhood that I don't know yet. You'd be surprised at the things that people hold on to that they never discuss. What's what's your new biggest fear? What what do you want our retirement to look like? Has that changed? So it's important to remember that just because you got married, the interview isn't over. You know, the wedding seems to be the goal for most people, and that's the endpoint. The wedding is the beginning of the marriage. It's not the end point. It's the start of your life. So it's important to try to keep that in mind. All right, Before I move on, I just want to say we can simultaneously change internally, communicate none of it, and then resent our partner for continuing to operate from the last information that we gave them.

19:45Speaker 1:And I only want I only put that on there because I want to talk about resentment for a second. Guys, Resentment changes the lens that you view your people through. And again, I talked about this yesterday on the live stream. Might have been on a private live on the day before, but we we we all have different lenses that we view people through. You treat your best friend different than your partner. You treat your coworker different than your best friend, and like, even in like mentoring groups and coaching and the things that we have to interact with people. When we have a resentment built up towards somebody, we are going to find ourselves very irritable. We are not going to be giving the best version of ourselves. We're not going to live from a place of curiosity. We are going to be very I know that this is who this person is and they're not going to change, so why bother? Right, It creates a lot of like little bitch mentality, like you're kind of quitting, right, and you're doing yourself a massive disservice for that. So so that's the first part of that. That's curiosity. Next part of

20:47Speaker 1:this is going to get into privacy. Somebody said, what happens when you ask those questions but never get an answer? Do they just sit in silence and stare at you? Or do they say I don't know because I I don't know and not answering the question is two different answers, right, Not answering the question and just sitting in silence and staring at you like you got three heads. That's a whole ass different situation. Somebody saying I don't know means they either haven't thought about it or you're not safe enough to really have that conversation. And both of those are a problem for different reasons. I would probe when I hear I don't know, maybe give some of your ideas and the things that you want and try to get them engaged. And as they're talking, shut the fuck up and really listen, let them speak, validate the things that they say, try to ask questions that continue them speaking.

21:37Speaker 1:What I hear you say, is is that correct? And then let them continue to talk. It goes a long way. You have to learn how to open up communications with people when you have consciously or subconsciously trained people not to speak. How do you, guys, get over the resentment? That's a great question. Honestly, that's an individual thing. That's not like a one size fits all. It's it's going to come down to communication. It's going to come down to having hard conversations about the things that build the resentment, and it's about having your partner respond well to it.

22:11Speaker 1:Like you have to find a way to actively talk to them. If you come to your person and you've got resentment and you attack them and they attack you back, that resentment's going to build. If you can come to them about what you're feeling and what's going on, and they're receptive to it and they're able to start making changes and you're able to notice the change that resentment will slowly fade, but you have to also be cognitive of the fact that you are having those problems. It's a lot to think about. It's when people ask open ended basic questions like that, like how do I get rid of resentment? How do I trust again? How do I get over infidelity? Like, there's no answer for that.

22:46Speaker 1:We don't know. I don't know you, I don't know your situation. I don't know what your relationship looks like. I don't know where the resentment comes from. I don't know their hand in the story. Like, that's such an open ended question that the it's generic and I can only give you generic answers for that, and those generic answers will always start with you have to communicate. I recommend that everybody that listens to our podcast do the check ins with their person. It's free. There's a pdf on our website. You can go download it. If you need more support. Beyond that, we have the Patreon and Discord, we have private mentoring groups. There's a whole lot there that goes into all of that. You can find all that on the website as well to Bebetter dot com.

23:23Speaker 1:That's my answer to that. So the next part of this is privacy versus secrecy in a relationship. Does marriage entitle your partner to everything? Phones, passwords, conversations, friendships, finances, financials, location sharing? And where does reasonable privacy end and secrecy begin? I'm entitled to Privacy can be legitimate, but it can also become a convenient cover for behavior that you know would hurt your partner. You guys know the difference between privacy and secrecy. Privacy is having parts of yourself that aren't constantly observed, and secrecy is intentionally withholding information because disclosure would change your person's understanding, choices, or consent. Just because you get married doesn't mean that you are no longer an individual. We tell you guys all the time that you can live as one flesh and still have your own individual wants and desires and hobbies. And it's super fucking healthy to have that individuality. If you guys are up each other's ass twenty four to seven and everything that you do is together, eventually you are going to have nothing to talk about. There's nothing going to

24:38Speaker 1:be new and exciting. Your conversations will be like, oh, I just thought about that time we went ziplining. Oh yeah, that was a great time. You were both there for that. That was it was, it was a good time. Like that's what I got. That's I don't know what to tell you. That those conversations become very shallow, they're not very very meaningful. You might both smile for a second because it's a good memory. But if you have a new hobby and your doing your hobby and you come back super excited because maybe you you know, shot a perfect day at the range, or you took an amazing photo of a bee and a flower, or you know whatever, and you have open dialogue and your person is excited and supportive, and is you know, just happy that you're happy.

25:20Speaker 1:It gives you, guys a whole lot of things to continue to talk about. But you also have to be invested in their shit the way that they are in yours. You should be able to have private thoughts your a journal when you guys, journal should never be invaded. That should be yours, It should be solely yours, that's completely off limit to your partner. You should be able to have conversation with your friends that are not automatically your spouse's business. You should, I mean some of you, I personally poop with the door open, but you should be able to take a shit without being You don't need an audience. I would like my wife in the bathroom when I poop, because it gives me someone talk to keeps me from doom scrolling. It's a great time. You don't surrender your personhood simply because you get married. But privacy can become a really convenient word when what you're actually protecting is your behavior. I deserve privacy. Okay, what exactly are you trying to keep private? And more importantly, why there's a whole lot of people out there that have no problem handing their device to their wife. My wife

26:22Speaker 1:can get on my computer, she can come get my phone right now and walk away, and I would just continue recording. There's absolutely nothing there for me to hide. I also know that if she did that, she's looking for conversations with other women. She's not going to open the conversation between me and Sean, because the conversations that Sean and I have, she knows are you know, what if he's telling me, What if my best friend is going through a really ugly moment, What if he's contemplating removing himself from the earthly realm and he just needed someone to confide in. And she grabbed my phone and went through that and then and the next time she saw him, was like, Oh, I hope you're feeling better.

27:04Speaker 1:You know, I know that you weren't wanting to be here anymore. Blah blah blah blah blah. And he looked at me like, what the fuck, dude, I told you that in private, Like that was me bleeding on you because I needed a brother right now, and you fucking went and told her that. Like, there's a level of it's not just your privacy that's being invaded when you're having conversations with people, it's the other people's lives as well. And we've talked about that on the podcast too, So I'm not gonna go a whole lot further into that, but that's that's kind of important. So if you don't want if I don't want you reading my journal because it's where I process unfinished thoughts, that's privacy. If I don't want you reading my messages because I'm flirting with somebody and I know you'd have a problem with it, that secrecy. If my friend tells me something deeply personal and asks me not to tell anyone, including my wife.

27:50Speaker 1:Protecting their confidence can be privacy. Uh. I've made it very clear that if you guys don't want my wife to know about something, don't tell me, because I'm not going to keep a secret. She's the most important thing to me. I will I will try to prevent from from breaking that the covenant that we have made when you told me something in private. But I'm also not going to deny her if she pries, so that would look like, what are you guys talking about? Uh. He's kind of going through something right now and he's asked me not to talk about it, and I told him I wouldn't, but he knows that if you priye, I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you. So if you really want to know, I'll tell you. But I did tell him I'm not going to break his his silence. That's what that looks like. Where's Peaches? She left me? I'm just kidding.

28:38Speaker 1:She's homeschooling the kids right now, guys. We we Tuesday of this week we started school and we are homeschooling our second and third grader and from four in the morning until eleven in the morning, I have just me. I don't have anything to do other than like my gym stuff. I sit down and create these documents, and I do all of these things, and I am enjoying having the opportunity to go live and hang out with people and try to just get information out there. This is very entertaining for me. I really fucking enjoy what I do. So while she's homeschooling, I'm back here, not being around the kids, letting her do the thing, and I'm in the back half of the house. So it guy said, that's the next internet thing. Oh, it already is an internet thing. Everybody already thinks that we got divorced, and that there's people out there who were saying that we were never married to begin with, and a whole bunch of other stupid shit. So I just couldn't let that go because it was a good opportunity to be an ass. So if I'm talking to that friend about problems in my marriage and deliberately deleting those conversations because

29:36Speaker 1:I don't want her knowing how emotionally intimate we've become, it's also not privacy, right, it's something different. The behavior can almost look identical from the outside, but the intention behind the concealment is what matters. Something to ask your partner in a situation like this is if you knew I wouldn't get angry, would you still need to hide it from me? So sometimes if we're being honest with ourselves, we're not protecting our privacy. We're protecting ourselves from the consequences of the choices that we've made. Here's another question.

30:11Speaker 1:Does your behavior change if your partner walks into the room? Right? That says a whole lot about things as well. If you're texting someone and your spouse walks over to you till your phone away, do you close the app? Do you then go back later and delete it? Do you change the subject? This is not automatically proof that someone's doing something wrong, but it's absolutely worth examining, both for you, the one doing it, and them, like why do you feel the need to close that app? That's one of those things that really creates a whole lot of insecurities in people and real shit. Sometimes somebody can walk in the room as you're putting your phone down, and they will think you're putting your phone down because they walked into the room. There's a whole lot of this is the story we tell ourselves in these moments, right, and it's important to recognize that too. And if you feel insecure in that moment, instead of just mentally clocking that they put their phone down, ask them, hey, Like, I just walked into the room and saw you put your phone down. And I don't know if you were done on your phone or if I walked in and startled

31:10Speaker 1:you and you put your phone down, But I'm feeling super fucking insecure right now over this, Like I need to know that, Like you're not doing anything nefarious, right, Maybe this is a past trauma, maybe it's recent changed behavior is making me feel like I can't trust you right now, But like, can we talk about that? Talk about it? What were you doing just now? I don't know, Guys, you need to have the talks. And here's an even harder test. Would your partner knowing the information that's going on reasonably change a decision that they are currently making about your relationship. For example, imagine somebody says something like, my finances are private, and the other person's the one that handles all the finances, takes care of all the bills, and the person who said my finances are private, has accumulated forty thousand dollars in debt because they are irresponsible as fuck, and the person that handles the finances believes that they're putting money in savings and everything is good. Meanwhile, there's forty thousand dollars of debt that no one is really aware of, right, Jonathan, And the chat said, your

32:16Speaker 1:book No One Is Coming to Save You has changed who I am, and I thank you for that. Man. I love that. I fucking love that, you know. I don't really push my books. I wrote them, I got them out there. I got some signed copies out to people, and did like the author thing because I wanted to be an author, and that was a lot of that was about getting the information out and being able to say I wrote a book, and I wrote two of them, and I very rarely promote them. Every once in a while, I'll post them to the Instagram story. But like after I recorded the books and stuck them on YouTube for free so that people can sit down and just listen to it, I quit promoting that shit altogether. Like I think maybe in the last eight months i've posted it twice.

32:57Speaker 1:I just don't think to do it anyway. Once that becomes a thing, then your partner believes that they're financially stable and you've been hiding this debt. That's not privacy anymore. You are concealing things that would change the way that they view conduct and believe about the relationship. The same thing goes with infidelity, gambling, addiction. The same thing goes with maintaining contact with somebody that you agreed to not not have contact with. The question becomes less about am I entitled to privacy and more about does withholding this information prevent my partner from making an informed choice. If you have a conversation about you not speaking to somebody, and it doesn't matter if this is a male or a female, and you know your person has a problem with that person, regardless of what that is, I don't care if they don't like them. I don't care if they don't like you liking them. I don't care if they don't like that you're in a group chat together or whatever it is. This really could get into control and manipulation and a whole lot of other things. Let's assume you have a healthy relationship and just leave it

34:05Speaker 1:at that. Peach just comes to me and goes, hey, I don't like the way that the interactions play out between you guys. And this has actually happened, so this is not a hypothetical thing. And I'm like, well, what about the hobby that we are all engaged in. I enjoy said hobby, and knowing that this is a thing, is going to remove me from the group of people, not just that person, and the hobby that I enjoyed doing. And it took a little bit of time. We had a lot of conversations about it, but eventually I just removed myself from that hobby altogether. I no longer associate with that entire group of people. And it wasn't because she was trying to control me. It was because I could tell that every time there was an interaction with this other person, it bothered her. This is we had a conversation, she explained how she felt and then left it to me to make the decision to do the right thing, and I did right. This is not control, it's not manipulation. This is a man looking out for the emotional well being of his woman. Protect provide, lead, protection and provision does not just mean physical safety and

35:10Speaker 1:financial So when you understand that there are deeper levels to all of this, and you want to be a good man, it makes it a whole lot easier to do this at the thing and ladies, it's no different for you. You guys have your own structure and your relationships and things that you're supposed to bring. And if you are asking your man not to like thirst traps and you're posting thirst traps right this, it's a big fucking problem. So then you've got the other side of this, because transparency can become control as well. I shouldn't have to hide. Anything can turn into give me your password, share your location, let me read your messages, prove where you're going, show me who you're talking to. Take a picture of yourself right FaceTime me so I know you're actually there. That's not trust, that's not belief. That's not safety.

35:59Speaker 1:That's surveillance. That's surveillance. Right. If you need constant evidence that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing, we don't have trust. What we have is verification. That's exhausting. That's exhausting for the person who's attached to it. It's exhausting for the person who's experiencing it. It's exhausting for the social circles around it. If you were at dinner with a couple of your friends and every five minutes your phone is going off and you're interrupting the conversation and you're taking selfies, and it's this constantly and this constantly, and look at who's here, And here's a picture of my food, and here's the sign of Chili's. And here's a picture of my tire parked in this parking spot with Chili's in the background. Like your friends aren't gonna want to go hang out with any I wouldn't want to hang out with somebody like that. I don't want to go and be attached to a digital device and a screen when I'm supposed to be having real life social interactions with the people I care about it. It's fucking exhausting. And sometimes verification is temporarily appropriate after infidelity.

37:01Speaker 1:For example, transparency can become part of the rebuilding trust. Someone who has been set has been deceptive does not get to demand immediate blind trust simply because they apologized so. Ideally, transparency can help rebuild trust until surveillance becomes unnecessary. In the case of infidelity and major breaches, of trust. I think that surveillance is necessary as part of the trust rebuilding process. The problem is is, I mean, there's a lot of problems with that, the surveillance aspect. We've done this long enough now that we've done episodes on cheating apps.

37:42Speaker 1:I know how easy it would be for anyone to do nefarious shit from their phone, if that's who they are, and having full access and being able to go in and look and do the thing. It would not be hard for somebody to hide things if they really wanted to be that person. And if they are continuing to do those things, they didn't have remorse and really want to change, they have just found another way to attempt to not get caught. That says a lot about their character and their integrity, what the relationship really means, and like that's a whole other conversation in itself. So if you have the transparency until surveillance is no longer needed, if you allow this surveillance to continue beyond that point, what you have as a prison guard inmate situation, and when you have that, there's no way to have real intimacy about the relationship anymore. And I don't just mean sexy time I mean true intimate moments. There's always going to be a level of control and insecurity, a lot ugly that comes along with that. You guys think that married couples should have each other's phone passwords. Real shit.

38:57Speaker 1:If I wasn't worried about well, a police officer going through my phone and seeing all the naked photos I have of my wife on my phone, I wouldn't. I wouldn't even lock my shit. I just wouldn't. I have. I have locks in place on my phone for my fourth Amendment. Beyond that, I don't give a fuck. I don't. So all of you who have said yes, why why do you feel well people are saying for emergencies? Is that your only answer? Or do you think that it's so that you can dig through their shit? Like, I'm curious what that looks like. If my phone is ringing and I'm in the shower and it's somebody like, it doesn't say spam call, I'll tell Peters to answer my phone.

39:41Speaker 1:Don't give a fuck. If my phone goes off and it's across the room and I'm not wearing my watch and I see it's a text message, I'm asking for who that was, and what do they want? Respond to it like, I don't give a fuck, which is why I'm asking why this is a thing, because I would be pissed if she went through my wallet or my back pack and there's nothing in there. But everything is exactly where I want it to be. And if you start moving shit, it's like touching my desk. That's really weird when you think about it, Like if my pen's not where I left my pin, it infuriates the fuck out of me, spicy brain. That's the thing for me, guys. Okay, So then for those of you who don't want regardless of what your answer was for the password thing, what happens if your spouse asks for your phone? Would you just give it to him? Would it start a fight?

40:33Speaker 1:Would it just be, uh, like, what do you need? I'm going to ask her what she wants to she hands me the phone, because if she's looking for something specific, I can get to it a whole lot faster than her. I'm an iPhone user, she's an Android user, so like real shit that matters. I tried to move to an iPhone and she or to an Android, and she had my phone in her hand more than I did. I don't know how to do any of this shit, Like I fuck androids. I have been on an iPhone for like ten years now and trying to move from platform to platform. Nope, no, I'm good. That's why I don't use Apple. That's why I still use Windows. Shit, even though my phone is an iPhone, I don't do any Mac anything. And real shit, there's a lot of Mac devices that I would love to have, but I'm not trying to fuck with their operating system. Having to press an optional button or an extra button to do shortcuts and stuff like. It's not worth it to me. Somebody said, the only thing I wouldn't want my man to see is my calculator, because then he could see that I can't do simple math. You realize that there's a calculator

41:29Speaker 1:cheating app, right, and it's it's an actual thing, and you have to enter in a mathematical equation to open the app so that you can see all of the pictures, and it's like a whole locked cheating thing. That was one of the most commonly used cheating apps. Yeah, she said, jokes, jokes. I'm just saying I actually know that peaches can't do basic math. I'm the math person because I deal with finances and because I had to know weights and measurements when I was younger. So if they asked to look at your phone, and why are they asking to look at your phone? I think are two very different conversations.

42:07Speaker 1:If Peaches asked for my phone and I got nervous, right or I started to feel uneasier panicky, she would feel that your brain and your heart puts off two separate emf fields. And if you walk into a room and there's tension in the room and nobody has said a fucking word, yet you feel it. You feel it. It's like walking into the mist. You don't know what the fuck is in that myss, but something ain't right and you're about to get eaten. You feel it right.

42:36Speaker 1:So she would feel that anxiety. She would feel that something's not right, and like that could create a problem. Now, on the other side of that, if every time we went to bed at night she was like, let me see your phone, that would create an issue all in itself, because now I feel like you just want to fucking know every facet of my life, and like you don't trust me, and what's the point of being in a relationship if there is no trust there. We've talked about this in season one. If I'm doing something that makes you feel like you need to dig through my phone, the relationship is done. That doesn't mean I'm going to end the relationship because you asked to go through my phone.

43:13Speaker 1:It means that you don't fucking trust me anymore. I don't trust you, or whatever the case may be. And without trust, there's no relationship. There has to be some sort of trust and respect as a base, concrete foundation for you to build everything on top of. Without that, there's no relationship there. So like that's been the conversation. I may not have worded it that great in the beginning because I knew what the fuck I was talking about, didn't quite have the words for other people to get it.

43:40Speaker 1:First video I ever did on TikTok that had more than a million views on it was people ripping me apart because I had said that shit. So so, one person's secrecy and another person's insecurity can create exactly the same behavior phone checking, while requiring completely different solutions. Uh, And sometimes they absolutely feed off of each other. One partner hides things because the other is intrusive and then the other one becomes intrusive because their partner hides things.

44:08Speaker 1:So one person hides things because their partner is intrusive, the other becomes intrusive because their partner's hiding things. Now each person uses the other's behavior to justify their own insecurity. You snoop through everything. That's because you delete shit, right like I delete shit because you freak out about everything. I freak out because you're alwayshiding it's that's the fight, and both people feel justified. They both feel like they're right.

44:37Speaker 1:And now you're at an impasse where you're defending yourself against somebody that you claim you love and trust. Because there's resentment and insecurity being had. Its just continues, round and round and round it goes, and then eventually nobody will remember where it started. They only know that it's happening, and the fact that it's happening is a problem. Now you add friendship into the mix, and it makes it it's even messier. If your friend tells you don't tell your wife. Does that mean that you automatically owe your friend or owe your wife to keep that secret or not keep that secret. I don't think that your spouse automatically owns information that somebody else entrusted you with. I also think that if you have a relationship like Peaches and I, I'm not going to keep something from her, even if it's not my story to be told, because I've made it very clear if you tell me something, I'm going to tell my wife. This is not about trust.

45:38Speaker 1:It's about me not wanting to ever keep something from her or feeling like I have to pick between my wife or my best friend. So this is one of those things where somebody's like, hey, can I talk to you? If they are close to me, they already know that Peaches and I have that type of relationship. If they're not close to me, it doesn't really matter because we're not close, right. So let's say that you think that you should maintain that privacy because you agreed to give your word. Your word fucking matters. If you tell me not to say anything, and I tell you I'm not gonna say shit, doesn't matter who ask I'm not telling What if that thing is information that could directly impact your wife? Well what if it's what if it's something that could hurt them and you have given your word not to do it and then you break that word right, so like, it's not the point of that, it's this is not black and white. This is not an easy wham bam, thank you, ma'am answer. These are things to make you think. Shout out to Gina for subscribing to the channel. It means a lot. Let's say you're regularly discussing your marriage with someone and your spouse already feels

46:39Speaker 1:uncomfortable uncomfortable about it, or you're sharing emotional intimacy with another person that you've stopped sharing with your spouse at that point it's a private friendship. But that becomes a real weak argument, right. This opens up the conversation to emotional affairs, emotional cheating, and eventually it's very likely to lead to physical intimacy. It could be a touch, it could be a kiss, it could be a hug. It could be a weird, in appropriate brushing up against each other or full on booty time like that. This is the steps that leads to those things. So think about this.

47:20Speaker 1:Is there someone outside of your relationship who knows things about you that you are intentionally preventing your partner from knowing about. It's just something that you guys ponder because it says a lot about where you're at in a relationship. Right. I'm not going to answer it for you. There's nothing else to say about that. I just want you, guys to sit with that question. The next thing is shout out to the one hundred and twenty five people on YouTube and the twenty three people on Facebook watching right now.

47:44Speaker 1:I appreciate that, guys. The next part of this is location sharing. Some people share locations because it's convenient. When Peaches and I got together, I didn't even know how to use that feature on my phone. I have never shared my location with another human being ever. I think that's an invasion of privacy, Like it's not happening. Got on the motorcycle one day and she's blowing my fucking phone up. She's like, where are you? You should have been home already, blah blah blah blah blah. I'm worried.

48:12Speaker 1:I pulled over. She's like, can you turn on your location sharing so I can see where you're at if you're not moving? Maybe you went down like, I'm like, yeah, I can do that, and no big deal. I just fucking went ahead and turned it out. Well, she had to walk me through it. She had to walk me through how to turn on the location sharing and I did and she until she got went back to Android. She had my location all the time. It's one of those things that like, it doesn't impact my life for her to know where I am because I'm not doing anything wrong. And the argument isn't you know, well, if you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't be worried about it.

48:42Speaker 1:It doesn't matter if she knows where I am, even I guess say, even if I am doing something wrong. I would rather her know where I am and know that I'm alive than fucking be worrying that I went down on my motorcycle or calling hospitals or jails to find out where I'm at because I should have been home an hour ago, right Like this also speaks to your inability to be respectful enough to your person to be honest with them about what's going on and where you're at a whole last conversation anyways, So some key people share locations because it's convenience. You can see how far away I am, you know, if I'm still at the store, if I'm driving whatever. But there's a huge difference between access and monitoring I can see where you are.

49:21Speaker 1:Isn't the same as I need to know where you are. If I'm turning off location sharing and it causes immediate accusations, that's a conversation that needs to be had. I think people sometimes misunderstand the trust that needs to be presents present in the absence of boundaries. Right, trust is not you should trust me enough that I can do whatever I want. Trust is closer to you know enough about how I behave that this shouldn't bother you. Right Transparency isn't you have the right to inspect everything I do.

49:57Speaker 1:It's I'm not deliberately constructing a false version of reality to gaslight you or manipulate you or whatever. You can have privacy while being honest. It's much harder to maintain secrecy without eventually requiring deception. Guys, all of this deception lies. All of that shit requires a whole bunch of maintenance. You have to emit something, you're changing a part of the story. You have to delete something. You have to remember what you said because, believe me, they're gonna remember.

50:26Speaker 1:And if it's true and it's something you experienced, it's a whole lot easier to remember than some bullshit fucking lie that you made up in the moment. Then you have to defend why they shouldn't have asked, like, this is just a fucking mess. The original behavior might have been small, but maintaining the secret starts changing the relationship. There's also the question of agreements. Different couples legitimately have different standards. One couple may share passwords, another may not.

50:52Speaker 1:One couple shares locations and other things that it's weird. One couple is comfortable with friendships with exs and another isn't. The mistake is assuming that there's one universal rule for all healthy couples of what they should should do. What matters is is what did we agree to when you guys start courting and you decide to move into the dating phase. When you move into the dating phase, there should be a conversation of expectations. I would I don't want you going to the bar. I don't want you posting pictures of yourself on a bikini on the internet.

51:27Speaker 1:I don't want you watching porn. I don't want you going to the bar. Right Like, there's a back and forth of all of the things that is to be expected in this new covenant that you're making with somebody, even if it is just agreeing to be monogamous with each other in the initial dating phase. These conversations set the pace, the expectations, and the tone for the relationship moving forward. And this needs to happen when you move in. It needs to happen at the engagement. It needs to happen when you exchange your vowels, like it needs to happen as you renew your life expectancy. These conversation need to be continuously agreed upon. New information is going to come up, new ways to live your life is going to come up, new technology is going to come up, and you are going to have to to reinvest your time into your relationship. If we've agreed that flirting with other people is unacceptable, unacceptable, I don't get to secretly flirt and then defend myself by saying, well, you invaded my privacy. If we've never agreed to share locations, you don't get to demand mine and then say that it's

52:29Speaker 1:suspicious because I'm refusing. Healthy boundaries will require real conversation. So if you hear something like if you trust me, you shouldn't need to see my phone, fair But on the other side of that, if there's nothing happening on your phone that threatens our relationship, why are you so terrified of me seeing it? Neither statement proves anything. I actually think that if worded differently, this could create a new curiosity that would allow you to have deeper conversations.

52:56Speaker 1:So instead of give me your fucking phone, you can say something like, something about your behavior is off lately. I'm feeling insecure and the way that you've been using your phone is making me feel like you're hiding something. Can we talk about it? Instead of you're crazy? You need to trust me, you can say something like, what specifically have I been doing that is making you question whether or not I'm being honest with you or that I'm trustworthy? Why are you all of a sudden questioning my character? That gives you an opportunity to have a conversation without it becoming a fight. It could still become a fight, it could, but at least now you're trying to understand and you're being honest about things. Right, Hopefully you're being honest. I don't fucking know. You can ask yourself, what information does the person I've chosen to build a life with reasonably deserve to know. Maybe the line between privacy and secrecy is that privacy protects individuality and secrecy protects information. Then we have to ask ourselves why that information needs protecting, because if you don't, oh, your partner

54:00Speaker 1:access to every thought, conversation or private moment you have. But if you're withholding something because you know the truth would change how they understand the relationship, it's probably not a privacy conversation anymore. Privacy was a lot longer of a conversation than curiosity was. I already know min no location sharing, no posts on social media, no going through each other's phones, though, would be big ones for me. I would want trust to develop that enough. So how does that look? Though? Like you have to me, I totally think that that's all fair. So I'm not saying that you're wrong for that, But how do you build that trust? Let's say that guys, we live in a world where people are fucking promiscuous and like, there is so much attention seeking from everyone online and this goes for males and females. You guys post in pictures of yourselves.

54:49Speaker 1:You don't do that because you want to update your profile photo you do that because you want to be recognized. Sometimes you might have gotten a good photo and be like, this is a great picture of me, and I'm going to post this instead. Maybe that's a thing, right, You're still hoping that it's a better version of you than what was previously there, which speaks to ego in its own so like, you know, real shit, Like, how's that a thing? What is the name of your tattoo shop?

55:12Speaker 1:In case me and the wif friend in the area want a new tattoo, It's sacred rights tattoo our. It s sacred rights as in rituals in Port Charlotte, Florida. Chris, thank you for everything. Because of you, I understood how to communicate my relationship and manage to have everything under control. Love that all right. So the next part of this is can attractions survive familiarity? This is going to be an interesting conversation. Okay, So we'll get to the chat, guys.

55:38Speaker 1:I am absolute gonna hang out with you guys in the chat after I'm done with my document. So we talk about love lasting. We talk about roommate phases, honeymoon phases, the seven year itch, and all of the things that are cliche conversations. In the sphere of the podcast, we talk about desire, We talk about all kinds of crazy things, lots of good fun informing shit. But what happens when your partner becomes familiar, predictable, and safe. Does maintaining attraction require intentional effort? How much responsibility do we have for remaining attractive to our partner physically, emotionally, and behaviorally. I was going to go down a whole rabbit hole of women who no longer get dressed up and done up for their man. And as I was thinking about this document, while I was in the shower, it dawned on me that over the last six months, I've only put on regular pants once, and it was so that we could work.

56:33Speaker 1:Put my boots on and did everything so that she could see me not looking like a bum. And today I'm wearing jeans and got my shoes on. I made myself look presentable. And when she walked in the room, she saw me put my jeans on and she went, oh, I'm like, yeah, I'm just trying to look good for you, because I realize I wear hair and pants all day, every day, and I would imagine that I look quite bummy to you from time to time. She said, well, I like your style, and I'm like, I'm sure you do.

56:57Speaker 1:But there's a difference between me being comfortable and looking like a fucking house bum and us going out and doing things in public and me looking presentable. Because even when we go out and like, if we were to go get sushi or somewhere, I'm wearing my hair and pants. That's what I wear. It's comfortable, I enjoy it. But if she wanted to go to a show or something, I would have to get done up right, So, like, is it really that big of a deal for me to put on some extra clothes and kind of do the thing to look good so that when she walks into the room she goes, oh, right, that said everything that I needed to know. She's obviously seeing the hair and pants and the T shirt thing, and there's object permanence there now, and just me putting on jeans and shoes instead of being barefoot was enough for her to take a step back and look at me a second time.

57:41Speaker 1:It's important to think about in the beginning of a relationship. Attraction gets a whole lot of help from oxytocin and dopamine. On top of that, everything is new. You don't know exactly what they're going to say. You don't know what they're going to wear. You don't know if or when they're going to text you. You don't know where the relationship is going. The uncertainty, the anticipation, and the discovery is fucking exciting. It is exciting when you are doing something going about your life and that new relationship is happening, and somebody shoots you a text message and it's a dirty text message. You're like, oh, oh, I'm being thought about.

58:20Speaker 1:That shit can happen way into your marriage. She waits until I'm in the most inopportune moments, and she fucking knows it to send me dirty photos. I was at the bank one day, talk like we have a credit union that everyone in that bank fucking knows me, like from the branch manager all the way down to the new employees. And I'm standing there having a conversation and my phone goes off and I open it and it's her butt. I'm like, oh my god, and then more pictures and I'm like, I can't do this right now, Like, oh my god. I got in the car and I was like, thank you for that, but oh my god, I think everyone in the bank just saw your butt right, Like it's exciting. It's no different than having that new courting phase where you're getting the random good day tech messages. Right, So you have all of that, you've got the good times, and then life starts to happen and you get to know my person like I was talking about earlier. You know how they order their food, you know which position they prefer to sleep in. You know the sound they make when they're irritated. You've seen them sick, constipated, exhausted, stressed, broke,

59:20Speaker 1:angry and secure and half dressed looking for a missing sock. Somebody said, so what I'm hearing is send him dirty picks randomly while he's at work. Yes, yes, that's exactly what the fuck I'm saying. Men, if you're women listening to this podcast, I'm doing you a solid right now, Ladies, send the fucking text messages. We love that shit. Not only real shit, Not only is it great to see the women that we have decided to spend the rest of our life with, We most of us understand that you actually took the time, like you're not gonna just quick send a photo and go You're gonna take multiple pictures, look for your best angle, and then send that shit to your man. That is not a quick done. That shit takes effort, and we are aware of it. We know how y'all are with your pictures. Yep, yep. Anyways, that kind of familiarity can create incredible intimacy, but it can also kill desire. Do you think that you can feel deeply safe with someone and still experience them as exciting?

1:00:24Speaker 1:You can, but it has to be intentional. One of the problems with long term relationships is that we stop seeing our partner as someone we are still trying to attract. Dating becomes possession. We go from I want this person to choose me to this person has already chose me, and honestly, most people quit trying at that point. We have said in the beginning of this podcast, and it's still something that we say today. You should be chasing your partner. You should be courting them, you should be fawning over them. There should be a whole lot of I want you, I don't need you, I want you right, and that could be a facet of things I want.

1:00:59Speaker 1:I'm just about to very vulgar. I'm gonna just move on. When when we're dating, we groom ourselves right, We flirt, we ask questions, We fucking pay attention, We plan things, we touch more, We wear things that we know the other person is going to like. We make an effort to be interesting. Marriage becomes the place that all of that slowly disappears and its choice. So my question is is do you think that we have a responsibility to remain attractive to the person that we are asking to desire us. I'm very curious how many of you actually believe that you have a responsibility to remain attractive to the person that you're married to. A whole lot of people if this was a TikTok thing, the amount of fucking feminist that would be in the chat right now losing their goddamn mind. If you've put on fifty pounds, stop dressing up, stop shaving, stop getting your hair cut or styling your hair. Your hygiene has gone a shit.

1:01:56Speaker 1:Do you think that your person's going to desire you? If I didn't where deodorant, and I didn't go to the gym, and I only ate fucking ho hoes and bond bonds and funny bones and all the little Debbie snapcakes and I, you know, my teeth are starting to ride out of my fucking head, and I haven't shaved my head and months, and like all you can see is my big George Carlin fucking bald spot. And you know, my clothes don't fit anymore. And I got fucking cheeto dust and my fingernails and stains all over the place.

1:02:20Speaker 1:Do you think my wife is gonna look at me and be like, Oh, yeah, that's what I want. She don't look at me and go, you're fucking disgusting? What did you do to yourself? That's the thing. When was the last time that you saw your person and inadvertently smiled at them? Right? Not not like a not like a oh they're looking I should I should flaunt something or like get their attention. But you guys seen the tiktoks of the angry the angry person. And it's like when my wife or my husband sees me and they're just mean mugging, like fucking crazy, and then they see their person and they light the fuck up. When was the last time you lit up like that for your person?

1:02:55Speaker 1:That genuine excitement is fucking everything to us. To men, I can't speak for women. I would imagine that you guys dig that shit too, But like not seeing your wife for a while and her running to your arms, Like that's some fucking like movie rom com shit that like every man secretly desires. You guys know why thirst traps get so much attention online, Like why it's such an effective marketing employ You look at all the influencers that are trying to sell you something, it's almost always sexual, and if it's not sexual, they do something sexual in the beginning to get you to watch the video. And the reason for that is that it's people who take care of themselves. They're dressed up for attention, they're smiling or trying to be seductive. And for someone who is disconnected in a relationship for a long time that hasn't experienced it, it hooks us. Like if you've been in a twenty year sexless marriage, you've been fucking miserable and you're doom scrolling and something comes up that makes you feel something. Your brain feels that something before you even register what you're watching. That's why sex sells and works

1:04:06Speaker 1:the way that it does. So Yes, I do think that we have a responsibility to remain attractive. But I also think that attraction is much bigger than your appearance. You can be physically beautiful and become deeply unattractive through content, contempt, excuse me, criticism, entitlement, resentment, helplessness, constant anger, emotional absence, or treating your spouse like a parent instead of a partner. You could have the most sexy person on the planet, and if any of those things align, they're not sexy to you anymore. That shit goes right out the window.

1:04:37Speaker 1:Sometimes I'm not attracted to my husband anymore really means I feel like his mother. Sometimes I'm not attractive to my wife anymore really means every interaction between us has become criticism, logistics, kids, bills, problems. I just didn't want to say nagging. I wanted actual examples there, but nagging was the word I was going to use when I wrote this. Attraction has a physical component, but also has a relational and always always has some sort of emotional subconsciousness attached to it. There's also a difference between loving someone and desiring someone we want to be. We want those to be the same thing, but they're not. You can deeply love someone and feel very sexual a very very little sexual desire toward them. You can also feel an intense sexual desire to someone and not love them.

1:05:25Speaker 1:This is basic fucking uh. But I felt the need to say it, and you could feel that and not want to build a life with them, right, just because it's only a sexual attraction and nothing else. So what do you do what helps maintain that desire? First and foremost, I believe it's admiration. Admiration to your person is one of the biggest attraction factors. Sometimes attraction spikes when we see our partner doing something that they're good at. Right, Maybe they're a natural leader, and you see them walk into the room and take control of everything and just fucking do the thing, and you're like, whoa. Right. Sometimes it's seeing your wife be a good mother to your kids and knowing that you picked a partner that's going to raise your children in a in a really good way.

1:06:12Speaker 1:Sometimes it's them accomplishing something. Sometimes it's just the way that they confidently carry themselves, interacting with other people, or simply looking different than they did yesterday. In those moments, we stop seeing the person who forgot to unload the dishwasher, and we see them as a separate person. Again, Familiarity can make us stop looking, can make us stop really looking at our partner. I actually think that for some of us, or some people, having object permanence, even with their wife and kids, becomes a thing. They believe that they're never going to lose this thing that they've built, and that can be a problem in itself. Right, So, when was the last time that you actually looked at your spouse instead of simply being around them. That's part of object permanence is actually looking at them. Take five seconds and really taking them in. See if they've gained weights, See if they've lost weights, See if they've got a pimple, See how their shoes fit, See if they're wearing different clothes they normally wear. Are they wearing different jewelry? Like, really take inventory of your person. It takes a few seconds.

1:07:16Speaker 1:It's not hard to do. Novelty matters as well, but it doesn't have to mean some wild sex or constant vacations. It can be a different restaurant, a new hobby, getting dressed up, having a conversation you've never had, going somewhere without the kids, or doing something slightly outside of your routine. Familiarity isn't necessarily the enemy. Stagnation is You can know someone incredibly well and still be curious about them. You can be married for twenty five years and still meet new versions of each other as both of you are continuing to constantly grow, and honestly that growth matters. Purpose is attractive. Confidence is attractive, Curiosity is attractive, Competence competence is fucking sexy. Taking care of yourself is attractive. Passion is attractive. Having something to talk about besides the kids, jobs, electric bills, honeydeo lists is also an attraction. Healthy couples also need separateness. If we do everything together, have all the same friends, hobbies, routines, and experience, there's nothing left to discover. I talked about that earlier, so I'm just going to skip over that paragraph. This doesn't mean that

1:08:23Speaker 1:you need to create distance or have jealousy. It just means that remaining a person. It means remaining a person, have interest, have goals, have something that you are passionate about, and then come back to the relationship with something new to talk about. The physical side deserves an honest assessment as well. Guys. Bodies change, right. Pregnancies happen, kids happen, age, hormones, sickness, fucking car accident, stress, all of it can leave some sort of change to the body. Nobody gets to demand that their spouse remains twenty five. It does not work that way. Your body is going to move on and you just have to fucking do the best that you can keep up. It's also dishonest right to prove or I'm sorry to pretend that physical attraction doesn't matter. You can be madly head over heels in love with your person and no longer find them attractive because they've let themselves go, or something has changed in their appearance. Maybe they got lip filler and you think it's fucking stupid, or whatever that thing is that you don't like that they did. Anyways, I don't think that it's fair to

1:09:26Speaker 1:say to your person that you owe me a certain appearance, right. I think that we owe our relationships some effort of taking care of ourselves though hygiene, grooming, health, being able to properly and effectively move your body, clothing, sleep, sexual energy, and how we present ourselves absolutely matters. Not because our spouse owns our body but because romantic relationships involve attraction, it's necessary. So can someone demand desire without helping create the condition where desire can exist. I don't think that they can. I think that this is an ebb and flow.

1:10:06Speaker 1:And we have stated over and over again that women dictate the emotional intimacy or all of the intimacy in the relationship. And every time I say that, somebody's got something to say, and even Peaches and I have disagreed with about this on the podcast and I had to explain my position and then she got it right. I believe that the physical, emotional, spiritual intimacy in the home is one hundred percent dictated by the woman. However, if a man is not doing what is necessary to provide safety and security inside of that relationship, she's no longer responsible for the intimacy because he is failing to do the thing that is necessary for her to dictate the intimacy within the relationship. There is an ebb and flow, right, So I think it's important to recognize that we have our roles to play and if you're playing them properly, then should fall into place. If you hear somebody say, my spouse never wants sex. What's happening outside of the bedroom? Right?

1:11:08Speaker 1:That matters? Are you affectionate? Are you constantly arguing? Does your spouse feel emotionally safe with you? Do they feel desired or merely a hole that's trying to be filled or used? Are you trying to use your partner as a physical masturbation? Right like? Are they exhausted? Are you carrying your share? Do you flirt? Can you trust? Can you touch each other without every single touch turning into initiation? Sexual attraction doesn't only happen in bed. Sometimes for play begins days earlier, and how you treat each other right, especially if you've guys got kids. Desire also suffers when sex becomes an obligation. If every hug becomes initiation, someone may eventually stop hugging. If every rejection becomes a fight, sex becomes loaded with pressure. If sex becomes one person's proof that they are loved, the other person can start feeling responsible for regulating their self worth through that sexual access.

1:12:05Speaker 1:That's a whole ass thing in itself. That pressure will one hundred percent kill the desire that they're using it to try to create. Right, predictabibility matters too long term. Couples can fall into a script, same time, same place, same initiation, same sequence. Predictability can be comfort comforting, but it also becomes boring. The answer isn't necessarily to become more adventurous. Sometimes it's simply continuing to talk. Even if you guys, if you guys are super busy and you have Wednesdays is sexy night, and you know that's going to be a thing, you can do things leading up to sexy time to drive that want and desire. It shouldn't just be like, oh, we're going to bed sexy time.

1:12:47Speaker 1:That's not exciting. Like just saying that makes me want to gag. That's that's the like at that point, I would just go to sleep. That's not even an exciting thing that that's lame. That's real lame shit. So what do you like now? What has changed? What do you miss? What makes you feel desire? What shuts you down? What feels playful, what feels like obligation? These are all things that are really well done inside of a check in. If you guys are not familiar with the check ins to bebetter dot com resources tab, scroll down to have you checked in lately and download the pdf there's an entire playlist on the YouTube channel where you can watch how to do the check ins. We give a whole lot of real information I versus you statements. There's a lot, there's probably four hours of content for you guys to watch through that will help you effectively do the check ins.

1:13:33Speaker 1:And if you do them enough and you learn how to communicate, you won't need them anymore. You can do many check ins every time something doesn't quite feel right, and your life will get really, really smooth. So the check ins are not just about understanding what's going on in life. It's about learning how to effectively communicate in the moment. So we ask these questions while we're dating. That's absolutely normal during the courting phase and dating phase, and however, as we get married and life goes on, we tend to not really it just kind of stops right because again, it becomes your person. You know, you know these things, but you don't really right. You just have stories that you've backed up with the data that you've collected that verifies what you believe you already knew, and now you're moving about your life. Talked about that at the beginning of this episode. Resentment is another major piece of this. It is very hard to desire somebody that you are chronically angry with. If your husband has become synonymous with disappointment, attraction can suffer. If your wife has become synonymous with rejection, same thing, attraction is going

1:14:38Speaker 1:to suffer. Sometimes couples try to solve a sexual problem with sexual solutions, and that's not what the problem is, right. It just seems that way because you want more of that thing, and the problem is more relational. You don't always need laingerie. Sometimes you need an apology. Sometimes you need sleep. Sometimes you need to stop treating you each other like shit. Sometimes you just need to feel respected again. Right, And then there's aging guys. Getting old sucks ass. At forty five years old, my biggest regret in life is not keeping up with my mobility work and waking up and being stiff the way that I am in the morning.

1:15:18Speaker 1:And it's not stiff in a good morning, sexy time. It's stiff in that it hurts to get out of bed to tick abyss. If I would have done after my motorcycle accident, the mobility work necessary to maintain the flexibility that I had, my body would be a whole lot better. So, as I'm touching on aging, I just have to tell you guys to do your fucking mobility work. Long term attraction has to evolve because neither of you will be twenty five forever. If your definition of attraction never matures, you're going to lose a fight that you can't win. At some point, attraction becomes partly about the body and partly about everything that body represents. It's the woman who raised the children beside you. It's the man who stood beside you through loss. That's the person who face carries decades of a shared life. There needs to be real appreciation that happens there. I said that I'm gonna go Appreciation matters. So maybe the real question isn't can attraction survive familiarity? Maybe it's can attraction survive neglect?

1:16:15Speaker 1:Maybe the question is not can attraction survive familiarity? Maybe it's can attraction survive neglect? Because familiarity isn't necessarily what kills desire being taked for. Granted, does stopping flirting, stopping growing, stopping the touches, stopping the admiration, becoming roommates, treating romantic connections like it should simply maintain itself all of these things. Do we spend a lot of times asking is my partner still attracted to me? Maybe we should be asking am I still giving my partner a reason to experience me as attractive? Not performative, not becoming somebody else, not living in fear that they'll leave, simply living with intention.

1:17:00Speaker 1:So take care of yourself, stay curious, keep growing, flirt with your person that you already chose, look at them, touch them, and admire them out loud. That's my document hour in thirty one minutes. Not bad. I was going to try to do ten things, and I picked my ten topics and I got my first three typed out, and I read it and I was like, this is kind of long. And I took the other ten things and I stuck it on another document so that I can continue to do this when I feel like doing it.

1:17:28Speaker 1:And I have seven more topics that are just needing to be mentally worked through. You mentioned women should send the text. Did you mean specifically as a wife or a husband, or should that start in the early courting phase. What do you mean by the text right, Because if you're courting, sending pictures of your huha in a really promiscuous position. I wouldn't do that. If this is this is just me being completely honest. If this is she said no, no, no, no, not picks. I'm going to say this anyways. If I am to get to know a woman and I wanted to really develop a life with them, and they were sending me dirty photos during the courting phase and we're not even dating yet, that's an instant red flag. I don't want that. You are giving this a way way too easily, Like I'm good initiate the combo and ask questions first. I honestly don't see anything wrong with being the first person to text. I think that this whole don't be the first person to text.

1:18:27Speaker 1:Don't chase. I'll run after an ice cream truck because I'm a fat ass, but I'm not running after a woman. If you tell me you're leaving, you can fucking leave. But if I am pursuing you and I had a great time, I'm gonna let you know I had a great time. Hey, I'm thinking about you like that is. I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't think it makes you look desperate. I think it makes you honest. If you are feeling good about something that's going on right now between somebody that you're courting or your initial dating phase, why hide that, you know, I hope that you're having a really fucking dope day right now. I'm just thinking about you goes a long fucking way, So yeah, send that initiate the conversation. That whole they need to be the first to message is kind of toxic. I also believe you're setting yourself up for failure. Guys. I'm gonna wrap up Peaches and I will be going live probably in the next hour hour and a half for Patreon to do some email reads and hang out with you guys, so you guys can see my wife's gorgeous face.

1:19:24Speaker 1:I won't be jealous about you looking at her. It's okay, I look at her too, so I get it. And we will see you guys later. So maybe I'll do another one of these next week publicly. We'll see have a good day, guys,