Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Dumb Things You Might Believe About Women...
In this episode, Charles and Dan dive into Chapter 7 of Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover: Use the Secret Women Don’t Want You to Know to Your Advantage. Despite the clickbait title, the conversation goes deep on the real myths and mental traps men fall into when trying to connect with women—and how to break free.
🔥 Topics include:
- The hidden cost of believing women are superior or "complicated"
- Emotional vs. logical thinking—are men really more rational?
- Why looking strong is different from being strong
- How media and rom-coms mislead men about love
- Why covert contracts destroy trust and connection
- The truth about the friend zone (and why it’s deceptive)
- How to date with honesty, confidence, and clarity
- The “Icing, Not Cake” philosophy of healthy relationships
Whether you’re new to dating, recovering from nice-guy habits, or just want more honest, meaningful connections—this episode is packed with real talk, insight, and humor.
📍Listen now and challenge what you think you know about women.
I would say spend your time not being a piece of crap and understanding why you're not a piece of crap. Sage advice Instead of figuring out how you can trick the world Right. Really, the people that win in just about every area of life are the people whose subjective view of the world most closely matches up to what the world objectively is, which is up to what the world objectively is, and so if you can look at yourself and other people and the world around you in a way that's as close to the way that it really is, instead of the biased way that you taught yourself to think that it is, you'll have the best outcomes. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles.
Charles:In this episode, dan and I will continue to discuss dating essentials for men by Dr Robert Glover, and we're going to focus on Chapter 7, the name of which is Use the Secret Women Don't Want you to Know, to your Advantage, which Dan and I both find a little clickbaity, maybe cringey, but we'll discuss what Dr Glover gets into. Some of those topics will include common myths about women, emotional versus logical thinking and the accompanying gender stereotypes, mental health and gender differences, authenticity in dating and relationships, security and stability in romantic relationships, the icing not cake philosophy, media influence and unrealistic romantic expectations and other topics. Please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom to find our audio episodes, video episodes and anything else we feel like sharing. Thanks and enjoy.
Dan:Hey Charles, How's it going?
Charles:Still going. Great, Dan Thanks. How are you doing? I am doing great. One of the first sections of Chapter 7, which we're about to cover, dr glover's editor made a word plural by adding an apostrophe s instead of just an s, and so let's talk about that for an hour, because I that absolutely. I fixate on that.
Dan:When people do that, apostrophes do not make plurals, they make possessives, dan, yeah, listen, if it's somebody writing something like an email or a text, whatever, not a big deal, but if you're publishing it, that's a little bit of a faux pas in my book.
Charles:The first subsection in this chapter is Myths About Women. M-y-t-h apostrophe. S, yes, okay, I didn't know a myth, something yeah, it can't, but yeah, we yeah. Well, other than our attention at this point.
Charles:It's actually oh, it drives me it really. Grammatically, it is one of my biggest pet peeves. Yeah, I see it a lot with like days of the week, like how you should spend your sundays with an apostrophe s anyway. So let's talk about some of these myths about women, and again the chapter title is Use the Secret Women Don't Want you to Know to your Advantage.
Dan:They're better at grammar.
Charles:Is that the first secret? Often they are. I do find that, yeah, typically written communication with women is usually better than written communication with men. Fair enough, I can't disagree with that. Okay, so myth number one is that women are inherently superior to men. I don't know anybody that believes this or would say that, so I don't know how widespread of a myth it is. I guess his position is that bad daters and inexperienced daters and men who are not confident in dating they may live as if women are superior to men, but I don't know anybody that is such a blanket statement.
Dan:In what ways are they superior?
Dan:So that's the thing is yeah, I think there's a lot of other things you need to unpack if you are walking around with that type of real general type of feeling, because everybody's different, right, so you can't say one woman might be better than you at one thing and you might be better than another. Dude, come on, yeah, I think that's yeah. I would say I don't know what that would be. Necessarily Could be some sort of trauma as a child or some sort of really bad experiences that make you feel like women are inherently superior than men.
Dan:There's going to be a significant reason why you're thinking that. Yeah, I would say so too.
Charles:There's going to be a significant reason why you're thinking that, yeah, I would say so too, and without follow-up, like you said, superior in what way and superior in what part of life. And yeah, I would say, if you are walking around, I think that's a self-limiting belief, but I would go as far to say the opposite Women are inherently inferior to men. If you're walking around with that one bouncing around in your head, that's a self-limiting belief too, and both of those are going to severely cripple your ability to engage in fulfilling relationships.
Dan:Yeah, generalizing in general is just not a great idea right now. But again, like you said, that kind of goes back to our self-limiting beliefs and our ability to feel like we've got the world figured out.
Charles:It's real easy to do that when you've got these really big blanket generalizations, exactly, yeah, and, but it's not going to get you where you at least say you want to go. It's not going to help to think that all women are great and all men are trash, or all men are great and all women are any of those? Yeah, they're a big blind spot in your game.
Dan:And if that's what you feel like. What are you supposed to do about it? If that's a real belief, then it sounds to me also the secondary, the corollary of that is there's nothing you can do about it. That's just the way it is. At that point, it's almost like you're in this hopeless position so you're just going to go throughout life looking for a way to be subservient to a woman. Is that like your approach?
Charles:then yeah, or, and I would say it can even go in the opposite direction, where, okay, if I believe that all women are superior to men, therefore the only men that can have women are the ones who are really good at tricking them, and it to you know into not into thinking that they're better. The only way I can get a woman is to trick her into thinking that I'm not a piece of crap. So, therefore, I'm going to spend my time trying to hone the skills and the techniques of the tricks for getting to act like I'm worth more than I actually am. I would say spend your time not being a piece of crap and understanding why you're not a piece of crap. Sage advice Instead of figuring out how you can trick the world. Right, really, the people that win in just about every area of life are the people whose subjective view of the world most closely matches up to what the world objectively is, and so if you can look at yourself and other people and the world around you in a way that's as close to the way that it really is, instead of the biased way that you taught yourself to think that it is, you'll have the best outcomes. Yeah, and really the only way you can do that is by practicing engaging with the world as often as you can, and also be willing to let go of what you're convinced is the way things are and look for evidence to say I might have this wrong. I might need to. I might need to edit the way that I see the world and get it to more lineup with the way the world actually is.
Charles:Okay, the next myth myth number two women are complicated. Here's the deal People are complicated and also quite simple, and you need to be able to hold both of those opinions in your head at the same time in a way that makes sense. Because, yeah, we talked about it, I think, with the very last book. We covered the Man's Guide to Women. There's not some deep mystery to how women work or how they choose to operate or the decisions they make. That is just completely unfathomable to men and we can never. They're just so complicated that we can never figure out. No number one.
Charles:You could ask them and assume that, given some thought and some self-examination, they can give you answers that are valuable and that make sense and that are true which I've found to be the Most women that if you go to the effort of asking a woman what makes her tick and what is she interested in and what does she prioritize. Number one, she'll appreciate you asking and number two, in my experience, she'll give some pretty deep thought to trying to give you an accurate answer. Now again, we don't all have ourselves figured out. At some level we're going to do things and behave in ways that we don't even understand, and I think that's natural and normal to understand. That's the way people work.
Charles:But when you ask somebody like hey, I want to connect to you and understand you more deeply, most people, and women especially, will find that a good use of their time to try to come up with a good answer for you their time to try to come up with a good answer for you. So, yeah, the idea that women are chaotic and mysterious and just they're so complicated that you can't figure them out, it's just a. It's a lazy way out to to stop you from having to figure it out. One one thing I'd said before online to people is why is it that the same guy who complains about how complicated and hard to understand women are, if you ask them, what was the last nonfiction book you've read that was written by a woman. In many cases they will say, oh, I've never read a nonfiction book written by a woman.
Dan:That's interesting.
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:Yeah, or a nonfiction book? Oh, almost Right, that's too. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing too. Is you got to? I think the key here is realizing that the tool set that you have available to you and that you're using may not be the right ones to help you understand what a woman goes through and what they, what they deal with and what they think about and how they behave. So that's the thing is, if you are closed minded and not willing to consider other ideas and listen, read and do some research on it and build your skillset. Yeah, a car is complicated to everybody. It's not a mechanic Exactly. Yeah, a mechanic has studied some cars before, so to him it might, or her it might not be a big deal, and it's no different.
Charles:You're right, that's absolutely true. Yeah, I love the quote that everything is a conspiracy theory when you understand how nothing works. Because, yeah, if you're trying to get some insight into how something operates but you don't know anything about it, then all you can really do is oh, there's an earthquake and a flood, it must be the sun, god must be angry. For some reason. You really revert back into being a caveman, exactly. So here's something he says that I'd like to get your take on.
Charles:In general, women have much more access to the right hemisphere of their brains than most men do. Okay, that sounds reasonable. The right side is the emotional side of the brain. Therefore, women's thinking and logic tends to be influenced more by feelings than a man's does. Okay, I don't know if I agree with that. That seems like a bit of a leap to me, and the idea that, speaking again in general terms, men are more logical and women are more emotional. That doesn't seem to play out that way in my own experience.
Charles:Okay, and I thought about this quite a bit on the long drive over this morning. Here's how I'm going to say it. You remember Peanuts, the Peanuts characters, snoopy, charlie Brown and all that? Linus had this blanket that he would carry around with him for security. Even though he was a little too old to, by most standards, to be walking around with a blanket, he did. What I would say is that not that men are more logical and women are more emotional, but I would say that, men, we use logic and order as our security blanket more frequently than women do. Okay, and women use connection and emotion as their security blanket more often than men do. But to say that men are inherently more logical, rational, reasonable and women are more chaotic, emotional than men, it just doesn't play true for me, because I and often the most men, the men who spend the most time insisting on how logical they are, seem to be the most emotional men that I've ever met.
Dan:That's interesting. Yeah, yeah I, I listen. I think everything exists on a continuum right and so I don't know if you can say one is typically more than another. I think you need to really look at yourself and figure out hey, how do I like to typically deal with situations? How do I soothe myself? Yeah, yes, exactly, and it could be you might need more of the the belly breathing, and the for the soothing piece on the emotion side. Other times you might need to do something, you might need to make sense of something, you might need to employ that logic and then it'll vary based on the situation as well.
Charles:If I'm in a stressful situation, I feel better by okay. How can I bring some order and some logic to this and that will make me feel more confident that I can predict what's going to happen next, where I've known some women where I wouldn't say the opposite is true, but definitely the okay. How let me understand the emotional dynamics and the connections that that are in these people-centered connections and that will make me feel more comfortable in this situation.
Dan:So what I will say is that I think, typically in our society, that it's been more accepted for women to express their emotions outwardly and with other people than it has for men, and so I think, based on that it's, it might appear that women typically are more emotional than men are Right, but that's only because that's what we're seeing, because that's what's been socially acceptable.
Charles:Yeah, and I would say and I would even go so far as to say the opposite where it's more socially acceptable for women to come to a situation with their emotions is more smiled upon than women saying, okay, we need to look at this, we need to look at this logic, hold on.
Charles:That makes me uncomfortable to hear a woman say that, yeah, I think so much of this is really. We've got these cultural modes of operating that we're just all so used to that we're also invested in keeping them going, whether in a given situation, whether they're actually true or not. And so that's where, again, the idea that men are logical and women are emotional when it comes to any high stakes situation, it feels like, yeah, there's the men in the situation who want to remain in control of the situation have a very good reason to maintain that dichotomy of men are the logical ones, women are the emotional ones. If I want you to continue letting me be in charge and not have some woman usurp my authority, then there's a pretty good argument for me to say hey, and here's why men are more logical than women vis-a-vis, I also get to stay in charge again. I.
Dan:I think there's some of course there's yeah, there's elements of that. I go for sure.
Charles:But again, in the guys that I see most invested in that narrative, it doesn't take a lot of pushing and prodding for them to get real emotional, real fast.
Dan:Yeah, I think you know, whereas I've seen, I've seen women who actually do handle, do employ logic when things are stressful. I've seen that happen naturally, and I think it's just more about the kind of training that you've had and how often.
Dan:I think a lot of times it's more socially acceptable for men to push their emotions aside and then focus on the logical stuff, and that's just because that's what we've been doing for so long.
Dan:It doesn't mean we're not feeling those emotions.
Dan:It's just that's just what we've been trained and are used to doing, whereas women it might be more.
Dan:So I'm going to then address the emotions in a different way and not push them aside, so I'm going to let them. I'm going to deal with the emotions in a different way. So I think again, and everything I think really exists on a continuum look, the best strategy is really try to evaluate every situation individually for what it is, and that means also evaluating that person, and what kind of. If you're evaluating somebody to be a partner or a girlfriend for you, or somebody that you're going to date, look and see the way they handle things and don't just go in with these assumptions that they might be this or might be that. Look for real world evidence, a lot of those situations where you need to see how that person reacts in a stressful situation, or or just even need to employ a lot more logic than for a home buying decision or a car buying decision. You might not run into that early on in the relationship and it's hard to figure out yes, it's very hard to figure out that.
Charles:That brings us into what. What has been encouraged and discouraged based on your gender. He also mentioned some of the mood disorders or mental illness challenges that women have to struggle with, and again this has beaten that myth of how complicated women are, and I looked it up and it said the stat I saw was that women are three times more likely to suffer from mental health issues. But my initial reaction to that is are they three times more likely to have the issue or are they three times more likely to be diagnosed? That big difference. Yes, there's a huge difference. Because if, if men have more socially acceptable options for dealing with their mental health challenges that are not that do not include going to a professional and getting diagnosed, I could see why that would maybe skew the numbers.
Charles:Because, sure, and look, man, I look at my own group of friends and associates from work and it seems like the women are much more likely to be getting treatment. For, you know, seeing a therapist, seeing a counselor, where, yeah, the guys that are not, yeah I, you can look at them and say pretty easily oh, you've got some stuff you probably need to talk to somebody about, but they're just less, so much less likely to actually do it. So when I see those statistics, I wonder, okay, where is this coming from? And, yeah, are we drawing the appropriate distinction between suffering from versus being diagnosed with? Yeah, and I would say we're probably not, because, again, guys can learn how to hide their issues in socially acceptable ways and feel the pressure to do so. And so you know are. Are women inherently more likely to experience these problems or are they just more likely to get help for these problems?
Dan:Yeah, I would say it's more likely to get help because they're just used to being feeling comfortable communicating about it, guys aren't.
Charles:Exactly, and so I would say anecdotally it seems like a pretty even split between people who have mental health challenges and people who don't.
Dan:And part of that too is, I think, coming from a background of where men are not supposed to be perceived as weak in any way, and that plays into this as well. No-transcript it it. I can see why guys a lot of times resist going, and the same thing even going to a doctor, nevermind a therapist right Like for a medical doctor. Same same concept applies, I think, here.
Charles:Yeah, and I would love it if our society could change the narrative a little bit too. And even if you still want to quote unquote, target men with this, fine, it's like I would rather live in a society that says men should not be weak than a society that says men should not look weak.
Dan:Yes.
Charles:That's great, I'm okay. I'm okay to say men should not be weak. I'm fine with that, whether that's emotionally, physically, whatever, we want to encourage men to be strong emotionally, strong physically, and that means doing something about the weak. Doing something about it, not engaging it. Let's build multi-million, billion-dollar industries on how to help men not look weak. Let's instead focus on helping men not be weak. Yeah, because right now, when you look at the big podcast big industries, big clothing, it's all. What can we do to help men dress up to not look weak instead of what can we do to help men not be weak? Because man, there's no more dangerous of a man than a man who looks strong but is actually weak. That guy is dangerous to his work family, his home family. He's dangerous to everybody. The guy who is invested so heavily in not looking weak are the worst guys you can spend your time around and I get the impulse, though. I get how good it feels to not look weak and it's pretty easy. All you have to do is change the things you say and the way you dress and you can be a guy who looks strong. But to actually be a guy who is strong, that takes a lot more work and there's not as much money to be made of those guys. Yeah, let's, let's talk a little bit more about what it is, what it is that women actually want and why they're not complicated.
Charles:Glover makes a good point that when a woman is behaving in a way that doesn't seem to make sense to you, it's probably because she feels lacking in security and stability. And so if you can acknowledge that and say, okay, if she's acting out in a way that doesn't seem to make sense based on who she's been previously and what she has expressed is important to her, then yeah, there's a good indication that what's going on is she doesn't feel safe or secure or stable. And I should probably, if I'm going to be in a relationship with her, I should figure out what it is that she needs and what my role is in helping her find those things. And I think a generalization that women are security-seeking creatures is pretty fair. It's not going to be the case for all of them, but I think, certainly, if you want to adopt the mindset of, okay, if she's behaving in a way that doesn't make sense to me, then she probably isn't feeling the level of security that she needs. So I'm going to, I'm going to figure out what role I can play.
Dan:I think men also seek security and trustworthiness as well, just maybe in a little bit of a different way at times, and you know how critical that is to any type of relationship, whether it's a friendship or a romantic relationship, father-child relationship. All of that needs to really be based on do you trust this other person? And when that is called into question based on behavior or situations, that's when things get weaker.
Charles:Yeah, and this is where the covert contracts that he talked about in no more, mr Nice guy, comes in.
Charles:If you see the woman in your life or yeah, we'll focus on the woman in your life behaving in a way that you think is inconsistent with what you come to expect from her or what she says she wants, the worst thing you can do is really try to manipulate her into feeling or acting quote unquote better, oh, I'll just.
Charles:I'll. I'll take time away from work, I'll drop hanging out with my friends, I'll do. I'll start turning my back on my hobbies and neglecting those so that I can spend more time with her and soothe her so that she feels better. No, what you can do is ask her what she needs, believe what she tells you at face value, and then really balance between giving her the space she needs to feel her feelings and be as strong as you can emotionally when you're in her presence, and that will ramp up her ability to feel security in the situation that she's in. Be trustworthy, like we learned from the last book, do what you're going to, what you say you're going to do, and be who you say you are, and that can do a lot to alleviate those feelings that she might be experiencing as a lack of security.
Dan:Yeah, and a lot of that does get conveyed in ways that you may not be aware of, which is if you're looking at your phone, when she's telling you something, you aren't being present, even though you might physically be in the same room, and then you could come back in the argument when she says, hey, you're never present. Oh, we spent an hour together. You didn't spend an hour together, you spent an hour with your phone and she spent an hour talking to you, and so there's a big difference in terms of that quality time and, in order to create that sense of security and that connection, that means paying attention, being there. Yeah, absolutely, and, if anything, it's almost probably worse that you're there looking at the phone rather than if you weren't there at all right, you know, love language is quality time and oh yeah on top of that.
Charles:But even if it's not your specific love language.
Dan:Regardless. Put the shoe on the other foot if you wanted to, if she was looking at her phone while you were telling her something and something that you thought was especially something important to you, and even if it wasn't important to you, just the basic level of respect, and now it's just. That's going to spiral, like our primitive brain is going to now also play into that, and they're going to spiral into thinking, oh my god, what was something? Probably worse than oh, he was just doing really well on his game on his phone. It was it, it could be something. Oh my God, who's he talking to? Right, and you don't know. Now, that has to be, that has to be dealt with, those heightened emotions, and so it really it doesn't take much other than paying attention, being present and really making an effort.
Charles:Yeah, I, it really is. Almost. It's worse to give somebody a weak version of what they need than to not give it to them at all. And Because you're basically saying this is all you get from me or this is like all your worth, I see where he's going with this and I agree with him because the idea that women are more willing to talk about relationships and more willing to investigate the dynamics of relationships, but that doesn't necessarily make them better at relationships. Women do have an advantage over men in getting better relationships in that asking for help or looking for resources to be better at relationships is not as stigmatized for women as it is for men.
Charles:Yeah, just sitting on the couch watching Oprah or Dr Phil isn't going to inherently make you better at relationships, but it does put you in the orbit of experts in a way that men don't typically spend their time. I mean not a. You pick out a 10 random episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast. Not very many of those 10, if any, are going to be some relationship expert who's on there trying to talk about how you can be better at relationships. It shouldn't be more about taking cold showers and training for a hundred mile run. And did Bigfoot assassinate John F Kennedy? It's not going to be a lot of in male spaces. There's not a lot of people talking about relationships.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And so I think the barrier to entry for women when they decide, hey, I do want to learn more about relationships, is quite a bit lower than it is for men.
Dan:And they more support to keep going in that pursuit of knowledge.
Charles:Yes, all the guys I hang out with on a fairly regular basis. We all enjoy talking about relationships, but I understand that most men's social circles are not like that. Yeah and yeah, I don't think just because women are willing to talk about it does not necessarily mean it's going to translate into the way they behave in relationships. But it could. And guys who never seek out that information, never talk about it and never, you know, read books or listen to books about it, I feel like their ability to improve is going to be a little bit lower than a woman who does yeah put in the relationship.
Charles:Yeah, I would kind of disagree with Glover on this point. I do too. Yeah, he says that just because you are obsessed with baseball stats doesn't make you good at hitting a major league curveball Like.
Dan:Okay, that's true, but he just talked about the visualization, though I remember a couple a little bit right, so it's just okay. You're visualizing now, yeah, maybe hitting that ball over and over again, and that's literally what you're doing. You're picturing things as you're reading them, listening to them and the more you're exposing yourself to them. Yes, all right, you might not be good as somebody who is like a professional therapist in that area, but if you are constantly bombarding yourself in your brain with information and concepts and you're visualizing things and you're hearing and watching examples of people doing conflict resolution and communicating, yeah, you're gonna be better than somebody who watches baseball yes, I would put some money on that.
Charles:Yeah, because part of it is okay, let's. I don't think reading a book or listening to a podcast about relationships is not the same, and expecting that to make you better at relationships is not the same as going over baseball stats making you better at being a hitter. But if you are going on youtube and watching videos by hitting coaches talking non-stop about how to be a better hitter, that probably will have some positive impact on your ability to hit a because it's more apples yeah, yeah, that's a better analogyter that probably will have some positive impact on your ability to hit a because it's more apples to apples.
Dan:Yeah, yeah. That's a better analogy than than just looking at stats. So there'll be, there'll be, like somebody doing scientific research and going oh, women's brains are more apt to do this than that. That's stats. That's not actually watching, which is not what they do. They're engaged in Exactly the things like you said the videos and the culture around relationships.
Charles:Yeah, that's not in that. He does say watching Oprah, watching Dr Phil and most books about relationships, oprah although Oprah had some pretty smart people on there giving practical advice, I don't know that Dr Phil does. Dr Phil is more.
Dan:He had some basic principles that he even mentions. Is how's that working out for you? Dr Phil is more, but he had some basic principles that he even mentions. Is how's that working out for you? And that is a quick question to ask yourself. Fantastic question to ask to break your patterns and to make you aware of. Oh wait a minute, I'm not getting what I say I want.
Charles:Yeah, Watching an episode of Dr Phil where I mean I don't need much more than that from him, but I think that was a pretty powerful question.
Charles:Yeah, watching an episode of his show where he basically gets some drill instructor to yell at a kid who's not behaving, that probably does not help out your relationships very much. But yeah, as asking people you know who, yeah, a lot of the guests he's going to have on his show and I don't watch his show. I've never really watched his show but I've seen clips of it where it's pretty extreme behavior and basically just a lot of entertainment yeah, exactly, exactly.
Charles:No, not the same. As same as Oprah Winfrey having Brene Brown on her show and talking about shame for an hour. I think, yeah, you will probably take away some stuff from this. It's going to make you a better person, even if it's just interacting with your own feelings. Yeah, yeah, I would see the boat on this one. I think so. I think so, and I also don't want him devaluing the use of books and podcasts and even TV shows in learning more about relationships and look that old saying of basically you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself with.
Dan:You know what If you are listening to and I just went through this with my sister, actually, the other day was she said I don't really surround myself with anybody who's better than me. I'm like, wait a minute. You listen to podcasts. You listen to books, audio books, from personal development stuff. Those are your mentors. Even though you are not physically talking to them in person, you are still hearing the best of their information and it's even better than if you were friends with them. So you're sitting at a bar with Brene Brown. You're not going to be talking about shame the whole time. Right, you can be. Oh, these nachos were really good. That's the thing. It's like you're getting the best of them consolidated if you're listening to these books and these podcasts. I count that as people you're surrounding yourself with.
Charles:Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it for sure, especially if you're really immersed in to consuming everything that they're putting out, which I do get that way with some influencers and experts sometimes, where it's man, something they said really resonated with me, or I heard them on an interview and now I'm going to go out and get every book, I'm going to listen to every podcast episode and just yeah, that I definitely spend more time with some of those public intellectuals and experts than I do with a lot of friends that I don't see.
Dan:And, that being said, you're going to be, then, maybe not an average, but you will definitely raise your level of information and competency in certain areas.
Charles:All right, let's hit the rest of these myths as quickly as we can Rapid fire. Number four is women expect perfection from men. That's silly. Nobody wants to be around a perfect person. It's exhausting and it makes you feel bad about yourself. So that's true for even beautiful, successful women are not looking for guys that are perfect.
Dan:And put the shoe on the other foot. If you were looking for the perfect woman, you'd feel a little insecure about the whole time that you're with that person. So she's not going to be looking for the perfect guy either, because that's not going to make her feel great about herself either. Correct, if you could do no wrong, which is completely. Perfection doesn't exist.
Charles:All we may say that, yeah, what? And if we say we're looking for the perfect partner, we're looking for the perfect partner for us. We're not looking for one who's perfect all the time by any means. Myth number five friends to lovers. The idea of just trying to get in with a gal and being her friend, because then eventually maybe you two will kick it off or it'll light needle strike and you'll go from being friends to being romantic partners.
Charles:Now, I've done this before. I've gone from being somebody's friend to being somebody's boyfriend. But in my experience it never works when you go into the friendship with that intention. If you go into the friendship to be friends with somebody, then yes, something may spring up from that eventually. But the problem is, if you go into the friendship thinking I really like to be her boyfriend, so maybe if I become her friend first, that'll happen. It usually doesn't because, number one, you get completely obsessed with that friendship that you have with her at the expense of dating and going out with girls in a romantic scenario, which is not good, because you're investing all your time and your effort into this friendship when friendship isn't what you're actually after, and so you also take practice time away from engaging in other relationships.
Dan:And again put the shoe on the other foot. So now? So a girl, let's say, wants to be your friend and is acting as a friend for you for months or years, and then all of a sudden or wants to change the foundation that they've built and your interpretation of what your relationship is. Again, that's a, it's a violation of your trust and the security that you've built, and so that's never really going to go well.
Charles:Yeah and exactly built, and so that's never really gonna go well, yeah and exactly.
Charles:And it is inherently deceptive to treat someone as a friend when you find them attractive and you're attracted to them and you want to relate, like the previous partner, that we were friends first, and one thing I would see guys do is, even though we were friends, we were still flirty.
Charles:We weren't looking for a relationship from each other, but we were flirty with each other and I didn't behave as if every time we hang out, I'm going to take my genitals and lock in a safe and not act like a man around her. I acted like a man around her and I was not dishonest about the fact that she was an attractive, interesting person to be around. I just wasn't looking for a relationship from her. She wasn't looking for one for me. So we were just. We were real men and real. We were a real man and a real woman who were in a friendship with each other. And so I didn't have I didn't feel like I had to hide any parts of myself where, when I see guys crushing on a girl and be in in her friend zone, a big part of the time is they're hiding who they actually are, and that's a vibe that you can't choose not to put that off.
Dan:And here's the thing I I don't know of many women who don't really know what you really want Exactly. If you are in that position, I don't think you're fooling anybody. It's almost like they have yeah.
Charles:It's like we're both going to have a covert contract with each other where we, where I pretend I don't see what you really want and I pretend not to be what, not to be after what I actually am after, and it's just science. Good point. What a, what a vibe killer that is. We're both of youers. You've got this unspoken agreement of I won't acknowledge that you want me and I won't acknowledge that I don't want you in this way, and we'll just be friends, we'll hang out, we'll be social, social. But there's this other thing going on that we're both going to pretend, isn't there?
Dan:here's the thing is. Even so, let's say best case scenario you are able to fool that other person and they really think you're just a friend, right, and then all of a sudden you're like oh, one day the reveal comes right and it's like holy shit. You've been lying to me for how many months or years? What else could you potentially lie to me about or be deceptive about?
Charles:I thought you found me valuable, are you? I thought you found me valuable as a friend, and now it turns out you never really did oh, that's a good point too.
Dan:Yeah, it's. Oh, now my self-worth. Is you really wanted just something else from me? Correct and all the other things and I thought you're willing to tirade me as a friend to to get me as a girlfriend yeah, that's I don't know if that just comes from a lot of the rom-coms that we watched growing up that that friend to the girl realizes oh my God, this guy.
Charles:Or he was there for me all along. Yeah, I've never seen it happen in real life where the guy accepted a friendship because that's all he could get and then she eventually realized after she's been heartbroken from all the other people that oh, realize after she's been heartbroken from all the other people that, oh yeah.
Charles:Think about the most striking examples, probably Ross and Rachel, where the first one or two seasons of Friends where he was absolutely in love with her and he would pretend that he wasn't, and then in that one episode she sees the video of him putting on his tuxedo to take her to prom because she got stood up by her prom date. And then, oh, that's such a compassionate thing, loving thing for him to do. Now, boom, all of a sudden I'm in love with him right now. It doesn't work that way unfortunately or no, I'm okay.
Charles:Let me say, fortunately it doesn't work that way. Well, I think it the way that it works. Let's see it and you understand it. It's like no, that the way it actually works is better than the way that no, but, but a lot of times but, but.
Dan:but growing up as a, you know, a teenage boy, in that, oh, you could do one thing and like stand outside her, her, her house, with the radio over your head and and all of a sudden it's going to change everything and that's. That's a fantasy or a dream that we were basically programmed. Same thing with, I think, a lot of the Disney princess lives and stuff like that for girls, and that's why I say it's unfortunate, because it's oh. I've been spending my time, wasting my time thinking that this is what the world is like Exactly and this is how the world operates, and now, holy shit, I've got to figure something else out. Yeah, oh, my God, I've been wrong for how many years. Yeah, oh that's scary.
Charles:The surest path to success with dating is you being open and honest about your intentions and what you want and getting to rejection as quickly as you can. That's the way that it works. Let's see the. Those are the. That's the last of the myths. But the last part of this chapter is something you and I repeat all the time Icing, not cake. A good woman in your life should be the icing on the cake and not the cake itself. Yeah, and I have found the most attention I've gotten from women in my life has been once I got to the age where I decided to focus on myself, my career, my interests, my hobbies, the traveling I like to do the hiking, I like to do the podcast you and I have. The more time I spend investing in the things that I need to make my life what I want it to be, the more I get attention from women who look in that guy's got some stuff going on. That's pretty exciting. I'd like to be around that, or a part of that, or a part of that.
Dan:Yeah, because then you've got inherent value to give, and then it's not the fluffy icing piece that is created based on the relationship that hasn't even been built yet. So yeah, bake that cake.
Charles:And the opposite should be true too. You should look for a partner who's got their own cake, right, guys? You guys provide icing for each other. That is complimentary. And settle down. Dan, you provide icing, your icing tastes good on her cake and her icing tastes good on your cake. I love me some frosting. I usually like if work's having a birthday party, I always pick the pieces with the least amount of. Oh really, I see, yeah, I don't. I like the.
Dan:I'm more of a cake guy depends on the cake and depends on the icing. So if it's a cream cheese icing I'll look on a carrot cake. Yeah, load that up.
Charles:I like that, but just like a plain vanilla icing whatever with a foamy kind of icing that you did on like there's your store sheet cakes. I don't like that. I'll take a piece from the middle that has, okay, not all that much icing, but yeah, like the big, like candy flowered, icing, like they put on the corners of.
Dan:Like that I'm not.
Charles:Yeah, I like that, yeah all right, I think we are good to stop there, dan. Our next chapter is going to be reasons not to pursue hot women. I don't like the title of this chapter either, because once you get into the chapter, he's not talking about what most people I would say call hot women. He's talking about vain women. Reasons not to pursue vain women Correct, and that I agree with. A million percent. Hot women, again, as we conventionally discuss the term hot, I like. I date hot girls and I like it. It's vain women that I have no time for.
Dan:And I think people you know remember one person's opinion of what is hot is different than another's.
Charles:There are some, there's some, I think, legitimately objective of ways that we all match up on it, but some ways we don't Sure but right, absolutely.
Dan:Keep that in mind too. Just, you're not going to be attractive to every woman, you're not going to find every woman attractive to the same thing, or to what degree.
Charles:Yeah, and I've talked about, I think, on the show before. I don't really buy into the concept of leagues oh, she's out of my league, I'm out of her league. There are no leagues, there are. People have preferences. They have things like I don't believe that any woman is too good or too attractive for me to date. She just might have preferences that don't match up with who I am, and that's fine. But the idea of oh, she's too hot to date me, I don't buy it, I don't look into it.
Dan:Our brain likes to make shortcuts to save energy, and just be aware of that and try to avoid making those shortcuts.
Charles:Yeah, that's great advice. All right, we'll stop there for today and we'll do chapters eight and nine when I see you next week. Sounds good, sir. Thanks, Dan. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the entire episode. We appreciate it. Again, please check out our website mindfullymasculinecom for full audio and video episodes, as well as anything else that we decide to put there. Thanks, and talk to you next time.
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