Is She More Than a Hookup?

In this episode, Charles and Dan dive deep into the complex world of love, relationships, and dating dynamics. They discuss how hormones, past experiences, and biological imprinting influence attraction and decision-making. The conversation is packed with actionable insights for identifying healthy relationships, recognizing red flags, and improving self-awareness in love. Plus, Charles shares updates about his birthday celebration and Thanksgiving preparations.

Key Topics Discussed:

• Coffee, Birthdays, and Ethiopian Cuisine: Charles reflects on his birthday celebration, including a visit to an escape room and trying Ethiopian food for the first time.
• Thanksgiving Prep: Charles’s adventures in scratch cooking, including oyster stuffing and pumpkin praline bread pudding.
• Chapter Analysis: "Is She More Than a Hookup?": Key factors for choosing romantic partners wisely.
• The Role of Hormones in Love: How oxytocin, testosterone, and estrogen shape our decisions in relationships.
• Recognizing Red Flags: Spotting patterns of dishonesty, competitiveness, or drama in potential partners.
• Archetypes to Avoid: Avoiding the "Damsel in Distress," "Drama Queen," and other challenging personality types.
• Improving Relationship Skills: Tips on becoming a better partner and making smarter relationship choices.
• The Limerence Effect: Understanding the "honeymoon phase" and how it clouds judgment.
• The Importance of Shared Values: Why humor, values, and mutual respect are vital for long-term compatibility.

Takeaways for Listeners:

• Learn how your childhood experiences influence your partner preferences.
• Discover why understanding hormones can improve your relationship decisions.
• Get practical advice on setting boundaries and communicating effectively.
• Identify relationship red flags and avoidable archetypes.

What’s Next? Stay tuned for the next episode, where Charles and Dan explore the relationship between a woman's mind and body and how it impacts intimacy and connection.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 6:01 Understanding Partner Selection
• 7:55 Influence of Hormones and Altered States
• 20:17 Red Flags in Relationships
• 31:06 Personality Archetypes to Avoid
• 53:00 Transitioning from Infatuation to Compatibility

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles, okay. In this episode, dan and I will continue discussing the Man's Guide to Women by the Gottmans, and our topics covered will include a couple of personal updates, including my birthday celebration and getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. Then we'll get into the material. The chapter Is she More Than a Hookup. We will talk about the influence of altered states on your relationship decisions, the biological and psychological factors in the relationships that you choose, some of the challenges of modern dating, identifying red flags and potential partners, some of the personality types to avoid, some of the personality types to avoid, improving your romantic relationships, understanding biological and psychological chemistry, transitioning from infatuation to long-term compatibility, and then a quick preview of the next chapter. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, to find audio and video episodes, as well as any news or information that Dan and I want to share and enjoy.

Charles: 1:07

Good morning, charles. How are you? Hey there, dan, I'm doing well. Thanks, how are you? I am doing well. I am enjoying my four cups of coffee in my new mug that I got for my birthday.

Dan: 1:19

Oh wow, I didn't realize. It looks like a little tea kettle. Look at that.

Charles: 1:21

Turn it around there so you can see the Stanley logo. Oh yeah, I usually make four cups in my coffee maker and this can fit all four cups at once.

Dan: 1:30

That's interesting how they went wider instead of taller. Yeah, yeah, definitely more stable for sure.

Charles: 1:35

Yeah, it's called an Admiral's mug, so the idea is you could have it on a ship and it won't fall over on a on a counter or something. It's definitely not suitable for traveling. I I can't leave the house with it, but it works great when I'm just working at home all day. Oh for sure, yeah, yeah, that's great. Had my birthday celebration last weekend, which was meeting you and your girlfriend for an escape room and dinner, all arranged by girlfriend, which she did a great job of putting that together.

Charles: 2:05

I had fun Absolutely the first experience with a real escape room. The only other one I'd ever done was on a cruise ship. So you know that's a little different than the ones that they run on land and I feel like the competitive landscape of escape rooms in orlando especially, they have to be on the top of their game, because there's a lot of fun things to do in orlando, yeah, and I thought it was run very well. The staff seemed to be competent and it was a challenge to get through it in the allotted time, as it's supposed to be I was surprised about how many different puzzles there were.

Dan: 2:45

They tried to get us to was. It was like a mix of them. I think right at least yeah more, and they're all blended together a little bit and I guess that's par for the course with escape rooms. But yeah I really didn't quite. It wasn't quite obvious to me which part of which game we were supposed to be working on at what time, and confusing. But I guess that's part of the challenge right.

Charles: 3:10

Yeah, I think some of that might be for larger groups, so that different subgroups of people can work on different things at the same time or something. You had eight people in there. Y'all can't do one challenge at a time. But uh, yeah, it was. There were some parts that I found confusing and, uh, fortunately they had a button you could press to get a little hint to get you on the right track, and that was helpful.

Charles: 3:35

Yep, the Ethiopian food was good. The seasonings and stuff was what I pretty much expected from African flavors, but it was tasty. I like just about every restaurant I go to with multiple options. The beef and the chicken is going to be what I like the most. That certainly was the case at the at the Ethiopian place, but it was tasty. I've been talking about trying that restaurant for years and I'm glad I she picked the restaurant and finally got me the opportunity to stop talking about it and actually eat there, which it was good. I yeah, I don't know that I'll be a frequenter of that restaurant or that cuisine, but I'm glad I tried it for the first time yeah, yeah, I enjoyed it and I'm at.

Dan: 4:21

The flavors for the all of the dishes were great, but I just like the texture of chicken and beef when you add that to the flavors, yeah, and it just seems to work better for my taste buds.

Charles: 4:36

Today is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Yeah, speaking of meat, speaking of meat. Yes, I've got to do some cooking. Today, I'm bringing the dressing and one of the desserts to my girlfriend's parents' house for the holiday and I'm making an oyster-based stuffing or dressing.

Dan: 5:01

Okay.

Charles: 5:02

And a pumpkin and praline bread pudding for dessert. Now you're making this or you're buying. Oh no, I'm. I'm even baking the bread for the bread pudding and the stuffing from tomorrow. Very nice, so very nice. Yeah, everything is going all the way from scratch. I've got to go, I've got to go up to the Amazon locker. I had to order. Did you know you could order gluten as a standalone item to add to dishes? No, but that should not be allowed Everything in moderation. Yeah.

Dan: 5:34

That's all I just when I'm not being my best self and I'm not following all the advice that I give out either.

Charles: 5:41

Yeah, but the thing you should moderate the most is your impulse to make rules for other people the fair. Yeah, you should definitely moderate. You should moderate the. I don't like what you're doing, so I'm going to make it illegal yeah, yeah, I'm not really a fan of that either yeah, no, nor am I.

Charles: 6:01

Let's let's start on chapter six of A Man's Guide to Women. Is she more than a hookup, which this whole chapter is about understanding what goes into our decisions for choosing partners and what is the criteria we know about. And what is the criteria we know about and what is the criteria we might not know about that our brains are using to determine who's a nice lady to spend an evening with versus who's a nice lady to spend a lifetime with. Realize that, unless you've studied this topic exhaustively, there's probably a lot going on behind your eyeballs that you don't know about and you don't understand, and and you don't really it's difficult for you to make the best decisions when you're when you're evaluating criteria that you don't even know that you're evaluating right and while you're under the influence.

Dan: 7:05

And while you're under the influence, that's for me the biggest warning sign for myself and thing that I watch out for is am I in a clear-headed state? So it doesn't have to be drunk or high or in love. For me, as a type 1 diabetic, it could be a low blood sugar, it could be a high blood sugar, it could be just coming out of a gym workout where my dopamine is like really hot, my adrenaline is really high. All of those things are not putting me, I think, in a clear headed state to make any kind of important decisions and as much as I try to remember, I try not to make important decisions in those States, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time left in the day to be honest with you, maybe five minutes, right.

Charles: 7:55

Yeah, and that's one of the one of the hardest parts is finding yourself in a position where you're having to. The hardest decision you can make in an altered state is am I or am I not in an altered state right now?

Charles: 8:11

mm-hmm because the people who every person who ends up getting a dui before they got in the car probably had the opinion of oh no, I'm fine, I would probably pass a field sobriety test if I got one. And the problem is it's their drunk brain that is making that determination. Yeah, and so that's why it's so important to learn what you can learn, match what you've learned up with your values and then use that to make a plan that is very easy for you to follow, even when you're high on love or drugs or alcohol. If you decide to Uber to the bar to meet your friends, then it's very difficult to accidentally drive home when your car's not there.

Dan: 9:01

Yeah. So you made that decision in a non-altered state of mind. You set yourself up for success down the road. You've made it easier for you to take the make the decision that you would make if you were not an altered state of mind. So you've made it easier to do that. Right? It's much more difficult than to borrow somebody's car and drive home. Yeah, you could, right, but it's a lot easier just for you to get on the Uber app and take an Uber home rather than drive somebody else's car, whereas the other way around is all right. You got your keys in your pocket and now you're thinking, oh, if I take an Uber home, I got an Uber back. So now you're making it more difficult for you to make the right decision. You got to pay for it, right? It's going to take more time and effort and everything else, and it's just yeah, yeah, that's a great example.

Charles: 9:55

And I think part of that. When you translate this to dating and relationships, it does make a good case for the sort of old-fashioned rules that some women would have about not sleeping with a guy on the first date or the second date, waiting till the third date, fourth date, fifth day, whatever their rule is. It's yeah, it's easier to make those decisions. Yeah, this guy, he's fun to hang out with, but I don't see long-term potential. It's easier to make that decision before you're sleeping with somebody.

Dan: 10:31

Yeah, I know there was a lot of backlash from both men and women after, like that book, the rules came out, but I can definitely see the value of having some rules maybe not all of those, but right Putting those rules in place just to and from what I remember, it's not like it was completely obnoxious, outrageous type of rules. It made people feel like they were doing something wrong or uncomfortable if they weren't following them, and so I can understand why there was a little bit of a pushback against it. But I think having any kind of plan in place that you've created while you're not high on life is a good idea.

Charles: 11:11

Yeah. So let's talk about that a little bit. The amount of hormones in your body, they really do work for and against you, work for and against you. When you meet somebody new and you're very excited about the prospect of a romantic relationship with them, it's your body's job to help you bond to that person for, ultimately, survival. And and all your body really cares about is your genes making it to the next generation. And so it doesn't care about you being happy. It doesn't really care about you being healthy. It cares about your genes making it so.

Charles: 11:46

As a result, you're going to get flooded with some real feel goody hormones that try to get you to stay the course, so that when, as a man, you are put in the position where you might have to die to protect your family and your village, you're willing to do that.

Charles: 12:08

And as a woman, you are going to need some pretty strong motivation to risk making a baby and caring for that baby for the rest of your life potentially and being not just inconvenienced but being like at the mercy of the guy that knocks you up, essentially for resources, for food, for protection, for shelter, for all that stuff. At least, that's how our bodies are convinced that it works because that's how it's worked for X number of thousands of years, and we're running off pretty old hardware and old firmware when it comes to that stuff. Even though the cultural software gets updated more frequently, the hardware doesn't. So, as a result, when you get into that relationship, even if it's just a casual relationship, if you're having sex and having orgasms or even just experiencing deep affection for somebody, it's going to convince your body that this needs to continue. This needs to keep going, even if it's with somebody who might not be an optimal choice for a long-term relationship.

Dan: 13:18

Yep.

Charles: 13:18

Yep for sure. And so how do you make those decisions about what's a good person to continue staying with and who's not? And just keep in mind that the more intimate you get with that person whether that's about sharing your story with them or it's about sharing your bed with them the harder it's going to be to make that decision of this. This doesn't. This isn't the right thing for me. I need to back up off this.

Dan: 13:48

Yeah, yeah. And he points out quite a few things that are not as obvious as I would have thought in terms of warning signs of that she may not be a good fit long-term. One of them one of them was like the competitiveness. He talks about that quite a bit.

Charles: 14:08

Yeah, he goes through a few profiles of different kinds of women and different kinds of compatibility. One of the things that he mentions that is a little uncomfortable but true nonetheless and good information to keep in mind is you're going to be imprinted with what you consider to be a worthwhile connection to another person, based on the experiences you have from your childhood, and so in many ways, you're going to look for a partner that provides a familiar feeling of connection to your primary caregiver not necessarily a healthy one, but a familiar one. We tend to make our choices based on familiarity more than we do out of health or even peace or calm or any of those good things. It's no, this feels familiar. That's going to rile me up or inspire me more than something that is ultimately good for me.

Dan: 15:14

Yeah, I think the difference there is one is experiential, the other might be logical, the other might be logical what our experience with our caregivers, in terms of that relationship and how love was expressed, that's been repeated, most likely multiple times, in what we've gone through, with multiple senses. We might have some strong memories and emotions attached to those experiences and, yeah, it makes sense to me that that would be the way we really believe and feel, quote unquote, in our bones, what a healthy relationship is, or what a relationship should be, even though it may not be healthy, it may not be the best thing for us may not be the best thing for us.

Charles: 16:05

Yeah, and there's multiple reasons for that. Number one is, like I said, it's it feels familiar. It feels oh, this is what I'm used to, this is what I know, I know what to expect, I know what this feels like and what this looks like. So, again, ideally you have a childhood where the familiar and the healthy overlap with each other and they look like two overlapping circles on that Venn diagram. For most people, that's not exactly how it goes down. There's nobody had a perfect childhood, and and how not perfect it was is going to impact what you expect from your relationships. And so that's one thing is the familiarity. The other thing is the.

Charles: 16:43

We do this thing as adults when we're looking for romantic partners where we feel like, if we get somebody similar to our primary caregiver and we're somehow able to figure out how to make it work with them, even though they've got some of the same problems that our mom or dad had, then we feel like, okay, now that I figured out how to make it work with a person like mom or like dad, now I could feel like I've healed some of the trauma that mom and dad gave me when I was that little kid or baby even. And there's a couple of compelling reasons that our minds decide to put us through this ringer of picking out partners like our parents, and it can be difficult and it can be, especially when it falls apart, when we find out that it's not sustainable yeah, and I think a lot of times it's we become the person that whatever parent that was, or a mom or a dad, I think we we become the person that we, that they needed us to be in order to receive love from them.

Dan: 18:07

Be a good version for your own, your own life and your own values and your own mental health. Becoming that person it might not be because you're just trying to fix a wound or, yeah, basically get that love that you, or the little missing piece of love that you didn't get when you were a kid yeah, and you're, and in so many cases you're, and in so many cases you're not really even becoming that person, but you're portraying that person right.

Charles: 18:28

You're playing that part of okay. This is when I acted this way, I got what I need, and so I need to continue acting this way so I can continue to get what I need from my partner.

Dan: 18:39

Yeah, and I think a big problem is at times that could be in conflict with what you really want and who you really are and what you really need. And now you are really falling into that like nice guy syndrome where you are pretending to be something for somebody else and it's not actually who you are and then eventually those who you are is going to eke out in a little different ways and it could cause a little confusion with your partner because it's like who you are and then eventually those who you are is going to eke out in little different ways and it could cause a little confusion with your partner because it's like then who you want, who are you, right, I think, and that can easily lead to questions of trust intent, unintentionally, and now you're adding some conflict. You may not even be aware of it, I know I'm I'm speaking from experience where that's happened for sure.

Charles: 19:24

Yeah, I think that that level of portraying a character it certainly in the lives of men can manifest itself in multiple ways, and two of those are. One is, like you said, being the nice guy, where you're essentially pretending to be kind and accommodating and needless all the time so that you're not a bother or burden, and it's perceived that you're just. You're so accommodating, so easy to get along with the idea. The other thing is pretending to be some tough, alpha, impenetrable, invincible guy that you're not that either and you're still living your life based on some script that somebody else wrote for you and then, when the real you shows through, it tends to do it in some sort of a meltdown or unproductive, unhealthy behaviors. Yeah, yeah.

Charles: 20:17

Yeah, that's tough. Okay, let's get back to the ladies, ladies. So the three levels that he talks about getting to know someone is heart, mind and body. And he talks about heart first, which is when you're trying to evaluate a date or a potential, a romantic partner. Notice things like is she a kind person? Is she a complainer when something negative happens? Does she only blame others? Is she honest or does she tend to lie and make excuses? Can she keep a secret or does she gossip everything? And again, even if this is she's, in most cases, you're not going to see this behavior toward you, these negative behaviors. You're going to see them toward her existing friends and family relationships. But keep in mind that generally, given enough time, the way you treat anybody is the way you treat everybody, and so those are things to watch out for. And again, it's going to be so hard to notice these negative tendencies If you're already in limerence or lust or love with somebody. You're just going to whitewash all these red flags and not see them for what they are.

Dan: 21:35

And you may not have the. She might not share a lot of information and stories that she has with her friends and family with you right off the bat, but he did mention something another way of looking at how she can take an idea of who she is as a person is see how she treats her pets. And looking back with some of the relationships that didn't work out for me if I had I saw that pretty early on how they treated their pets and they certainly weren't mean or cool or whatever, but weren't quite as affectionate, I would say, as I tend to be with animals or talk about them with as much affection as I tend to do, and that did show up a little bit in in a relationship down the road. In terms of that that element, in terms of care and thoughtfulness and affection, we were on different pages with that and I did see that fairly early on in a couple of people that I've dated in the past in terms of the way they treated their pets.

Charles: 22:44

Yeah, you just want somebody who has healthy, balanced, peaceful relationships with the friends, family and pets in their life, where it's not nothing is extremely negative or extremely time consuming, because, yeah, that that can be a sign that, all right, this is a person that might have some work they have to do on how to have healthy relationships and sustain long-term healthy relationships.

Charles: 23:12

That's the thing. If you're just casually dating somebody and neither one of you are looking for it to go beyond that or looking for it to last a long time, maybe stuff like this doesn't matter. But keep in mind it's hard to shut down those hormones because even if you have a casual friends with benefits relationship with somebody, the more time you spend together and the more orgasms you share, the harder it's going to be to maintain those lines and those boundaries, and that's why he makes a reference in the book. That's they usually. I don't know anybody who's got a 10 year long friends with benefits relationship with somebody, but just that doesn't doesn't seem to happen that often yeah, that's why that's not really a realistic type of situational.

Dan: 23:58

Platonic friends with benefits is really difficult because you are fighting a lot of biology on both sides right when when you try to do that yeah, and it can work for a time, and I'm not going to say there's.

Charles: 24:11

There might be people out there who have found each other and have exactly that scenario. It's not. It doesn't violate the laws of physics, so it's not impossible.

Dan: 24:20

Yeah yeah, yeah, you're definitely fighting biology and it's not going to be an easy fight and it's going to be. It's going to be the exception and not the rule okay, so after heart.

Charles: 24:31

The next category here is mind. Does a woman's, do her words and actions match up? Does she follow through with what she says? Is she a trusting person, a suspicious person? Does she say she trusts you but she still likes to go through your stuff and your phone? Those, yeah. Look for somebody whose words and actions match up with each other.

Dan: 24:52

Otherwise it's very hard to know what to expect from a kind of person like that, where there's that disjointed behavior and speech from somebody now, something that was important that he said also was to keep in mind that you, if you are exhibiting player-like behavior, that could be causing her to then act in a way that is not characteristic for her normally either.

Dan: 25:20

So if you are acting shady and suspicious, then, yeah, maybe she starts going through your phone, maybe she starts questioning you about who all your friends are on that are female, like on social media, right, yeah, whereas normally she wouldn't be doing that.

Dan: 25:34

So keep in mind that, if you are also I guess the best way to think about it is, if you've been playing the field and looking to settle down with somebody, be aware that you might not have completely clipped all of your habits and traits that you were using or were when you were dating multiple people, and so some of these things might sneak out. Definitely it's good to have somebody to talk to, a friend who might be a married friend or has a relationship that you're looking to have to bounce some ideas off of, just to check yourself, to make sure that you aren't still exhibiting traits and behaviors that could cause mistrust or issues in somebody that could be an amazing partner for you long-term, that you've just basically caused to not trust you without even realizing that you were doing it experience of independence and getting to do what you want to do and talk to who you want to talk to whenever you like, then you're going to have to find finding a partner who's going to be willing to put up with that and deal with that.

Charles: 26:52

Is is going to be a bit more of a challenge. Generally, if you're expecting her to make you the focus and be her only partner, then you better be prepared to say no to some relationships that you might value less than the one that you're in or dial them back to a level that you're both going to be comfortable with, because you can't have a long-term partner and also have the attitude of I'm going to do whatever I want whenever I want and nobody's going to stop me.

Dan: 27:25

Yeah, and so you've got all these patterns that may have turned into habits from basically maybe been doing this for years and years. When you have time to settle down, you need to break these patterns. You may not even be aware that you have these patterns or habits, and one of the things that you do need to probably work on and would be, my guess would be is your communication habit, which would be communicate more than you're used to having to communicate in the past, so that you can understand what her expectations are, are what, and and if you are doing anything that might be causing trust violations or questioning her trust in you because of some patterns and things that you've been doing in the past that you just might not even be aware of. So one of the best ways to do that is start a pattern of communicating more than you usually do when it comes to anything related to interacting with your partner.

Charles: 28:25

Yeah, that's great advice. The last category here is body, and he makes a good case here for the idea that if you don't have some level of chemistry and desire for somebody you're not going to be able to talk yourself into. Yeah, but she's a really good fill in the blank. She'd be a really good partner, she'd be a really good wife, she'd be great to help me in my business, she'd be great to raise kids with. If you don't feel that that chemistry where your body wants her body, that is unlikely to be something you can talk yourself into a week, a month, a year down the road. It's just, it doesn't work. It doesn't seem to work that way.

Dan: 29:07

Yeah, I think that is less changeable than actually somebody becoming a a good mother or a good business person, or I think the chemistry is biological, they and they talked about that in terms of our pheromones.

Charles: 29:26

And some of those are immutable. You can't really talk yourself into changing those preferences or those feelings. Get to a certain age where they feel like their clock is ticking. They may feel like, okay, I can make some compromises in this area and in the interest of finding a good partner Ultimately, yeah, maybe that can work for some people. But going up against biology is hard. It's difficult. It's. Trying to deny what your body wants or requires is going to be a long-term challenge that most of us can't do.

Dan: 30:10

Perfect example is everybody trying to watch what they eat and not eat the processed tasty foods that have been engineered specifically to activate our taste buds right by millions or billions of dollars worth of research and chemistry done by some of these food companies. It's the same thing. It's so hard that there's studies to show that a lot of these processed foods are more addictive than cocaine, and they've proved it time and time again, and that's why it's difficult. It's really difficult for us. As much as our front evolved, part of our brains, the prefrontal cortex, has evolved. It's still. We know we shouldn't be doing it. We do it anyway. It's crazy, like how strong that biological instinct is. It uh yeah, and and takes over.

Charles: 31:06

Yeah, biological instinct is it? Yeah, and takes over. Yeah, let's, uh, let's, cover some of the profiles of different kinds of gals that you might find yourself attracted to that are difficult to get the kind of relationship we all say we want. Okay, first one is the damsel in distress. So a lot of us, especially codependent guys with difficult childhoods, we do feel the pull of being the guy that saves a girl from her circumstances, whether that's her own traumatic childhood, absent father, just life circumstances, bad luck, whatever it is. We can feel this. Bad luck, whatever it is. We can feel this. I can feel like a good guy, an effective guy, a powerful guy, by being able to pick someone up out of their negative circumstances and make life better for them. And that is a tough position to put yourself in, even because you know if somebody is perpetually having that life where they're always in distress, at some point you're going to become the source of her distress and she's not going to be into having you around anymore. At least that's the way it seems to work.

Dan: 32:14

Yeah.

Charles: 32:15

If it's always oh, you're the best, You're the only good guy I've ever dated. All these other guys have treated me like crap. Blah, blah, blah. Usually her pickers is going to be at least part of the problem, and the same picker that picked all those bad guys also picked you and at some point, either in reality or in her mind, you're going to turn into one of those bad guys.

Dan: 32:41

And the irony is and I've been in that situation the irony is, if you eliminate all the distress in her life, she may not feel love because that's what she looks for and so Familiarity, right. So then she may create some distress with you and so that she feels because she wants to be connected to you on a logical level, but I think emotionally a lot of it comes from, okay, what is love, or what does uh, closeness feel like, or what is familiarity feel like? And it's distress. I don't have any, I better create some. And right, I've been on the receiving end of that and it's frustrating, to say the least.

Charles: 33:22

Yeah, and the way he expresses this, I think is valuable, which is this is not just about don't date girls that have been through difficult times. Don't date girls who get their identity from the difficult times they've been in. If who she is, I'm a person that terrible things happen to, instead of I'm a person who's experienced some terrible things. That's a very important difference when it comes to, and part of it is also what is she doing to make things better on herself? Yeah, is it where she's in the inter-recovery group? Is she in therapy?

Dan: 33:57

And if she's not doing anything to make things better, I think that's the warning sign, right, that's where her familiarity is, that's probably where her identity is, that's probably where she's comfortable, right, because she's not uncomfortable enough to make the change If she was something different. So it's I'm a smoker and not a smoker. Right. If you're not a smoker and you're forced to smoke cigarettes, you want to stop and do everything as much as possible to stop smoking. The reverse is also true is, if you're a smoker and you're not going to struggle, you're not going to go under any hardship, or you're not going to do anything to stop smoking. And I think the same can be true, said, of that distress that you're just talking about.

Charles: 34:38

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay. Next, the princess. Does she present herself as if she's above everyone else? Does she treat others badly? Waiters, service workers, strangers act as if they're beneath her in class, status or value. A princess might rarely say thank you when you open the door or pull out a chair for her. She has this attitude of entitlement, unrealistic expectations. So when you read this, if you don't have experience ever dating a girl like this, you might say well then why would anyone want to date somebody like this?

Dan: 35:09

Yeah.

Charles: 35:10

Boy, do I have the answer for you? The answer is there is something about a woman that conducts herself that way. A lot of men, some men, this man in the past has you buy into the hype. Basically you buy into their marketing where it's like, oh, she must actually be this much better than me and everybody else. So getting to spend time dating her is a privilege and something I need to keep working at so that I get to keep staying around her.

Dan: 35:41

It's no different than somebody selling a course online and saying this is what it's worth, but it and it's like this outrageous price and then they give you like a little discount or whatever. So you're devised, but it sets in your mind the value of what it is and I think that's similar here is they're trying to set this value in your mind. That's not really based on anything else. That, I think, is healthy, but it does tie into a lot of our, I think, primitive and biological feelings and thought processes, and so I think we can feel like their value is high based on these behaviors and actions. But I think, when we logically think through it a lot of times, it's not a good way to go about your existence.

Charles: 36:35

No, certainly not, but it does. I think a lot of us, if not most of us, have this impulse uh, men and women, where part of us wants to feel like the person that we're with maybe we're hitting a little out of our league, like maybe punch it above our weight class, whatever sure is metaphor you want to use. Like you want to feel like okay, I got this partner who's a great catch, and I had to be super charismatic and work super hard to get a person of this quality. And if she behaves like the princess, it can reinforce that message of yes, you did get somebody a little better than you, and boy doesn't that feel exciting.

Dan: 37:16

Yeah, the way I look at it is and I totally agree with that, for me it's. I just I look at it in different areas, areas of life that I respect how good of a mom she is. For example, like with my current girlfriend, how does she, what do her friends think of her when she's not around? Or what do the friends say when she's not around and I hear them talking about her? What do people that she works with, what do they, what kinds of things do they say about her? What kind of things do the kids say about her? They, what kinds of things do they say about, or what kind of things the kids say about?

Dan: 37:54

A lot of that has basically weighed into my decision in terms of and my value of people are the reaction of others around them and, yeah, I think again too, was the person that is waiting on them at a restaurant. Are they being treated well, and how she treats those people. All those things I think are important. Yeah, I can't imagine, though, you falling, you being with anybody who would treat waitstaff like rudely. Yeah, I think that definitely doesn't line up with what I know about you no, and certainly not with any.

Charles: 38:36

If, yeah, if that was something that happened on a first date and then that first date we will only date. Oh, yeah, for sure, that's yeah, and I've been out with I've had friends who have had girlfriends that would treat service workers that way. Man, I know Number one. I know we're not going to be double dating and I also know you're not going to be with her all that much longer.

Dan: 38:59

I mean, yeah, that's just embarrassing, I would not want to be anywhere near that table, even when you hear another table at a restaurant, I know when somebody's getting out of hand is is just cringe worthy.

Charles: 39:12

Yeah, absolutely. All right, let's talk about the computer Now. This isn't just someone who has a competitive nature, competitive spirit. Maybe you met her in a run club and she likes to finish first among the people in the club. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about somebody who excessively talks about their conquests or achievements, tries to one-up people around them.

Charles: 39:35

The one-upper, yeah, usually has some sort of a chip on their shoulder. The one that that he really mentions here as it relates to relationships, is that she will flirt with other people to make you jealous and to remind you that she has other options, and so being competitive in that kind of way is not what you should be looking for. It also means that she may have a very restricted eating behaviors and may struggle to experience joy and pleasure. So, yeah, these are some things to look out for, if really the computer can also be called the control freak, somebody that really needs to have a tight handle on everything and make it seem like they're proficient and competent in every area okay because ultimately, they've got some fears and they've got some insecurities and they're overcompensating for those.

Charles: 40:29

Yeah, I could see that the drama queen do. Drama and chaos seem to follow her around, is her life a series of problems, one after the other, and she's looking for you to fix them all. Yeah, you don't want a project, you don't want to fix her up, or you want somebody that is their own self-reliant person, who is bringing equal amounts of value to the relationship, not someone that is constantly running out of gas, getting locked out of her house, endless drama and fights with exes and friends and family members. The drama queen also could tend to have an alcohol or a drug problem. How much is she drinking per day? She always two or three drinks in every night that you hang out. Are her pupils overly large or overly small? Yeah, this is a lot to this is a lot to try to manage, a lot to try to be happy and deal with.

Charles: 41:27

So I would say, yeah, steer clear Again. If you had a mommy who was like that, you're going to be drawn to women that are like that and you're I've noticed in my own life you're going to be attracted to partners and attached to partners who have a similar level of either mental health or mental illness than you do. It's going to be. You don't find people who are a perfect 10 when it comes to their mental health married to a two or a three. It just doesn't. It doesn't seem to happen. You could have dramatically different styles of mental health or mental illness, but your overall level, in my experience, is going to be pretty much about the same. Yeah.

Dan: 42:13

Yeah, and if you find yourself dating people of the nature that you just described, it might be a good indication for you to look into your own mental health and see. You just might not be aware of it and it couldn't hurt to just have a conversation. You don't have to agree with it. You have to just have a conversation. You don't have to agree with it. You have to keep going forward. But just be open to having a conversation with a therapist about you know, about what's going on. A lot of times they can see and find things that aren't obvious to us. That's part of the value there, and I think a lot of people don't realize how much of that external, objective type of perspective is part of the value of talking to a professional or going to a group disappointed with the outcome of your romantic relationships or the lack of romantic relationships in your life.

Charles: 43:14

It always seems to be the product of one of two problems Either you're not good at being a partner or you're not good at being a picker. And never have I met anyone who was bad partner or a bad picker who just solved that problem on their own. They just listened to the right podcast or they downloaded the right audio book and then boom, all of a sudden they're a good partner and a good picker. I have not found that to be the case. The people who have put in the work to become a better partner and a better picker, they've had to do that by relying on the brain of someone else, either a coach, a therapist, a a very close, intimate friend who had the kind of relationships that they had there and it was able to model that behavior for them it's. It just doesn't seem like sitting down in a room with a podcast or a book is enough to get you to make the kind of changes in yourself. You need to go from being bad at relationships to being good at relationships.

Dan: 44:15

Yeah, ironically, when it comes to our jobs, it's much more obvious. We study books and take courses for a few years, but what really makes the difference is the experience that you actually get while on the job, and a lot of us haven't even had training books wise. When it comes to relationships, when it comes to being a partner, when it comes to picking a partner, there's there are no course. At least when we were in school, there weren't courses on that. And even if you do take the course that listen to the podcast or read the book you still need to actually have on the job training.

Dan: 44:57

And the difference with a job is there are very specific rules and guidelines that are provided when you take a job in terms of what dictates success and what does not, and you also have a peer support group as your co-workers to correct you as you're going along and learning, whereas in relationships we don't have that all the time unless you seek that out.

Dan: 45:23

So the coach, the therapist, the group that's going to be, or your corrective evaluation, provided that you're also telling them about it too. So it takes more work to do that because they're not there every day like a coworker would be or a boss would be to correct you. So we really need to be proactive. And that's the funny thing is, we spend as much time, if not more, in our relationships than we do our jobs, and we have a lot less training and a lot less ongoing corrective measures in those worlds in terms of the relationship than we do in our jobs. So I think if we all approached it with a little bit more seriousness, as if we need some training and correction, I think a lot of us would be a lot less hesitant to get that training and that corrective, take those corrective measures, and I think it'd be a lot more commonplace and be more supported across the board for us to do that and to do that.

Charles: 46:27

So yeah, two cents, no, I think you're absolutely right. Yeah, two cents, no, I think you're absolutely right. And to take that analogy even further, it's yeah. Imagine if you did start an apprenticeship with an electrician or a plumber or something like that, and you literally had no contacts, no knowledge of the industry at all. You didn't know what a pipe was, you didn't know what a wrench was, you didn't know what a toilet was, you didn't know what a faucet was. And that's what it's like growing up, looking to your parents for developing relationship skills. It's like you could be apprenticing under a plumber who's absolutely terrible at their job, but you have no idea that they're terrible at their job.

Dan: 47:05

And here's the kicker too right is if we would be an apprentice to somebody who also most likely based on what we're talking about here right is, we're only attracting people at our level in terms of mental health and how we approach relationships. So, more likely than not, they may know what a wrench is, but the person that you match up with also may not know what a toilet is. They may not know what a pipe is, but at least you know. So they might know a couple more things than you, but not a whole lot. And you might know a couple more things than they do, but not a whole lot. So it's different than going to work as an apprentice for a master electrician or a master plumber who has all the answers right and yeah, dude, great point there.

Charles: 48:11

It's not easy being in a relationship and I think that's why, without having a third party getting involved who does understand these things at both an intellectual and experiential level that you don't, it's gonna. It's very hard for two people in a relationship to say, hey, there's some things in our relationship that aren't going great, let's try to figure this out and figure out a way to make this work on our own, and it's okay. But you're still coming into this with a very limited tool bag and it's quite possible that number one, you can't even figure out together what the problem really is. And even if you do figure out what the problem really experience, both in my own life and in the lives of my clients, patients, whatever here's what I think your problem actually is and here's how you fix it.

Dan: 49:02

And here's the thing too, is that you're only spending maybe what an hour a week and sometimes aggressively would be two hours a week with that person or that group that can guide you, whereas I think that's probably why the love lab from the Gottmans was so effective, is they literally were able to see 24 hours a day, or almost, information about the dynamics of the relationship and what was going on in that communication, and that is a rare thing to happen, but it is probably why it's so effective.

Charles: 49:36

Yeah, and it's unfortunate that so many people that I've seen will get into therapy or coaching or recovery group of some kind and I know things are working poorly enough for me that I need to go to somebody else for some assistance.

Charles: 49:54

But then when they try to tell you, okay, here's what you can do to turn this around, then you go back into I know better than them mode and you don't do what they tell you to do. Yeah, and I think a lot of guys butt up against that, especially when they're they find themselves in marriage or relationship counseling that they don't really want to be in, especially when they find themselves in marriage or relationship counseling that they don't really want to be in, and then it's okay, I'll go sit in the chair for an hour, but then as soon as we get out I'm going to dismiss all the ideas and all the recommendations, because even though I'm miserable in this relationship or I'm okay in this relationship but your partner's miserable I'm still not going to do any of this stuff to change it, because I still think I know better.

Dan: 50:32

Yeah, yeah. How would that work If you did that in a job, you'd be out the door.

Charles: 50:36

Yeah, absolutely, and that's how well that's eventually. That's how it's going to go with your relationship too.

Dan: 50:42

It just takes a little bit. You just take a little bit longer.

Charles: 50:51

Yeah, you'll be out the door, half of your possessions will be gone. You might only get to see your kids every other weekend. So yeah, the stakes are pretty high, even higher than with a job 100% but yet the effort that we often put into it as men is far less than we would put into a job.

Dan: 51:02

We've got far less training.

Charles: 51:04

Exactly. Okay, let's see. So that covers the different kinds of and keep in mind some women may have some of these tendencies and some of them may have full on personality disorders. And it's hard, again, to make the determination which it is when you're in the middle of limerence, in the middle of romantic obsession, to be able to put the brakes on and say, whoa, I need to slow down, this is not what I need to be involved in. It's almost impossible because you and I've talked about our previous relationships and the ones we're in now and what that, what you're willing to overlook and override. When you're in that feeling of I feel like I'm on drugs whenever I'm around, whenever I'm around this person and it's oh, my, yeah, it's you can overlook a lot of flaws in yourself, in the other person, in the relationship, because you feel like, as long as I'm just in a room with them, everything's gonna be okay and that does wear off over time for both you and the other person. And then it's okay, what's now? That's gone, what's left over? Yeah, it's left what? And I'll tell you, if your sense of humors don't match up, if your values don't match up, if your religious and political beliefs don't match up. It's going to be very difficult to try to hard knuckle your white, knuckle your way through making things work when the feeling of being on drugs goes away. Yeah, okay. So to summarize, oxytocin that that hormone that's released at the beginning of a relationship and through affection and sex, it will cloud your judgment and lower your fear response. You will put yourself in dangerous situations, whether that's emotionally dangerous or physically dangerous, just to be around this other person. That, if you were in your right mind you would not do.

Charles: 53:00

Limerence is that first stage of attraction or love, when you obsessively think about the other person and the cascade of hormones flooding your body during limerence will cause you to completely ignore red flags and warning sign. That's its job, that's what it's supposed to do, and you need to get that front part of your brain involved in this process before and during limerence so that you can make good decisions for you and the other person. You can be attracted to someone because of hormones like testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin. And you can also be attracted to someone because of hormones like testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin. And you can also be attracted to someone because of imprinting. That happened to you when you were a very little kid and note that can be a factor.

Charles: 53:42

The reason that a girl just lights up your nervous system like a Christmas tree could be because she embodies the most negative traits of your mom, and that sucks, but that's the way that biology and evolution have worked it out. Again, keep in mind that body, mind, heart and connection with somebody to determine if they're better for more than just casual dating A better match for you, I should say, if there's no physical connection or chemistry at first, there never will be. So those are the big points to take away from this chapter. In the next one we're going to start talking about, we're going to start part four of this book, making love to a woman, and the first thing we're going to cover is understanding the relationship that a woman's mind has with her body and understanding a little bit of how she thinks about herself and what impact that's going to have on your physical relationship.

Dan: 54:40

Sounds good sir.

Charles: 54:42

All right, thanks, dan. We will stop for now and we'll talk to you next time. All right, Talk to you then. Thank you for listening to the entire episode, dan, and I appreciate it. We know you have lots of choices for podcasts with men and microphones who think they're sharing wisdom, and we are thrilled that you picked us. Please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom to find audio episodes, video episodes and any news or info we find worthy of sharing. Thanks,