Build a Life So Good That She Wants In

In this episode of Mindfully Masculine, Charles and Dan break down Dr. Robert Glover’s six essentials for creating a life that naturally attracts women—without chasing or people-pleasing. Drawing from Dating Essentials for Men, they reflect on how men can lead more purposeful, fulfilling lives by focusing on passion, friendship, challenge, and service.

Whether you're single, dating, or in a long-term relationship, this conversation will help you cultivate habits and practices that boost confidence, deepen connection, and strengthen your sense of masculine purpose.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why “happy wife, happy life” is a trap—and what to focus on instead
• How to prioritize your passion without guilt or resentment
• The often-overlooked importance of strong male friendships
• How daily challenges and physical exertion sharpen your mindset
• Easy ways to develop a meaningful spiritual or mindfulness practice
• What it really means to “give your gift to the world”—and how to start

Key Topics Covered:

• Life passion as your driving force
• Maintaining close friendships with other men
• Incorporating daily strenuous physical activity
• Leaning into discomfort and overcoming resistance
• Building a consistent spiritual or reflective practice
• Creating value for others through contribution and service

Mentioned in this Episode:

• Dating Essentials for Men by Dr. Robert Glover
• The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
• Andrew Huberman on movement, vision, and creativity

Quotable Moments:

“Build a life that you enjoy during the downtime as well as the uptime—and the alone time as well as the partner time.”
 —Charles

Chapters

• 0:00 Your Life Passion, Not Her Happiness
• 2:44 Six Pillars of an Attractive Life
• 8:33 Maintaining Male Friendships in Relationships
• 13:57 Daily Exercise and Overcoming Resistance
• 21:54 Spiritual Practice and Giving Back
• 26:59 Practical Tips for Daily Living

Transcript

Charles: 0:00

You have to make your life passion your number one priority, and that life passion that is your number one priority cannot and should not be making your girlfriend or your wife happy with you, because I mean your girlfriend, your wife, should be happy and she should be happy with you, with you. But if, if you make the thing that you put your time, effort and the thing that drives you to get up every morning, making her happy with you, that is just not a recipe for success. It's not going to, you're not going to be happy and she's not going to be happy either. Welcome back to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast. This is Charles All right.

Charles: 0:43

In this week's episode, dan and I will continue discussing dating essentials for men by Dr Robert Glover, part one. We're on chapter nine this week and we're going to discuss the six pillars of a exciting, meaningful life that you'll enjoy and people will be attracted to, and those are a life anchored in passion, male friendship and social health, physical health and daily discipline, embracing challenge and overcoming resistance, spiritual and reflective practices and contribution and service to the world. Please check out our website, mindfullymasculinecom, where you'll find our audio episodes, our video episodes and anything else we find worth sharing. Thanks and enjoy.

Dan: 1:32

Hey, Charles, good morning.

Charles: 1:37

Hello again, dan. How are you doing? I am doing well, okay, great. All right, we are going to dive right in. This will probably be a short episode, unless we go off on some jags and get caught up ranting on one of these points.

Charles: 1:52

But in the middle of chapter nine, titled create a lifestyle that attracts women, naturally, in dating essentials for men, there is a list of six things that you have to have for the great cake of a life, as he calls it, that will attract other people to want to be involved in what you got going on, and so I'm just going to go down the list of what these six things are, and then we can each talk about how we have tried or failed, tried and then succeeded or failed in having these components in our own lives. The first one is you have to make your life passion your number one priority. Two, you have to develop and maintain good guy friends. Three, you have to engage in strenuous exercise on a daily basis. Four, you have to lean into challenge on a daily basis. Five, you have to develop and maintain a spiritual practice. And six, you have to give your gift to the world. So we're going to hit each of those and talk a little bit about our own personal experience and also dive maybe a little bit more into what Glover says about each of these.

Charles: 3:04

But the first one is you have to make your life passion your number one priority. And that life passion that is your number one priority cannot and should not be making your girlfriend or your wife happy with you, because I mean your girlfriend, your wife, should be happy and she should be happy with you. But if, if you make the thing that you put your time, effort and the thing that drives you to get up every morning making her happy with you, that is just not a recipe for success. It's not going to, you're not going to be happy and she's not going to be happy either.

Charles: 3:44

There has to be something else in your life that the, that the pursuit of, is something you find meaningful and fulfilling, and that could be your career, that could be your physical fitness, that could be a hobby that you put a lot of effort into. It could be volunteering. It could be a hobby that you put a lot of effort into. It could be volunteering. It could be some kind of activism. It's got to be something that really fires you up and gets you excited and your pursuit of that in a disciplined, effective way is going to be the thing that attracts and continues to attract the woman that is in your life where, yeah, just just seeking to please her and make her happy with you so that she sticks around.

Dan: 4:36

It can't be that because, yeah, counterintuitively that that never works and and the reason why it doesn't work is because then you're basically putting all of the onus of your own happiness on her happiness, meaning, if she's not happy, right, if your whole focus is making her happy, and what that means then is, if she's not happy, then you're not happy, and and you're conveying that you don't have an ability to become happy and and the the kind of person where you can overflow that, that energy and that positivity and that happiness from something else besides her. And so, in an indirect way, you're really kind of saying you are responsible for my happiness and and you being happy is what's making me happy, and that's that's a recipe for disaster.

Charles: 5:28

Yeah, I think one of the worst things, that one of the worst ideas that men have adopted and specifically I noticed this from conservative Christian men the adoption of the phrase happy wife, happy life. That is that is not the way that it works. It's not happy wife, happy life, it's happy life. Happy wife, happy life. That is. That is not the way that it works. It's not happy wife, happy life, it's happy life, happy wife. If you have, if you work on building your own happy life for yourself, one of the great side effects of that will be having a happy wife.

Dan: 6:00

But it doesn't. It doesn't mean you don't, you don't do things that that make her happy, but, like you said, it's not the reason why you're on the planet.

Charles: 6:11

Yeah, yeah, where. If serving your purpose, your mission, your passion in life, if that is your purpose, if that's, if that's what you wake up every day to do and you do it in a way that is reaching out to the future and effective, and disciplined, then just by having that kind of a drive in your life, that will have positive impact on all of your relationships, including the relationship, your primary romantic partner in your life. You're the person that you spend your life with. If she can watch you pursuing a worthy goal, that will make her excited to be with you.

Dan: 6:48

And part of the other thing here that I've I've thought about as you're talking was that a lot of times we're not necessarily always going to be in sync in terms of our moods, right, so sometimes we're going to be a little bit upset. The other person might be happy, and vice versa, and if your happiness or your sadness is really so tied closely to that other person, then you're kind of missing out on some potential benefits of being in that relationship where that other person might be able to assist you and kind of get you out of that funk a little bit right, or kind of maybe bring you back down to reality if you're flying a little too high too long.

Dan: 7:31

So I think that also is something that you are going to be losing out on if you are really making your world dependent upon the other person's happiness.

Charles: 7:42

Yeah, and it is a little counterintuitive where you think, oh, if I, if I want to be happy, I'll just keep all the people around me happy and then I'll be happy too. It really it works the opposite way. It's like if you focus on not just what makes you happy, because happiness can be somewhat fleeting, like you said you could. Happiness can be a little bit dependent on what's your current mood. But if you're finding meaning, contentment, joy and fulfillment in the things that you do on a daily, on a daily basis, then you will naturally surround yourself with other people that are doing the same kind of thing and and getting a lot out of out of their pursuits as well. So that is is great advice.

Charles: 8:23

As I see it is make. Make your your passion, your mission, your purpose, your number one priority, and and work to move the ball forward on that, and your personal relationships will also benefit greatly from that. The second point is you have to develop and maintain good guy friends and, what's funny, I noticed in myself that I focus on that much more when I'm not in a relationship than when I am, and I've been dating my girlfriend now for about nine months and, yeah, I am spending a lot less time socializing with my male friends than I have a lot less time socializing with my male friends than I have before her and I got together, and that is something that I had better get get worked out, and I plan to take some steps to do that here in the next couple of months where I'll I'll be more available to give and receive good friendship from my, my buddies, because I've I've not been doing it great lately.

Dan: 9:26

I'm. I'm exactly in the same boat. I know that I I've spent a lot more time with with guy friends before I got into a relationship. Absolutely Same thing and it and it's my pattern, that's. That's what I've done. Mine too, yeah, I haven't completely ignored people and so. But unfortunately it was usually the times that I am getting together with guy friends it's for big, big occasions. Most of the time, once in a while it's it's what's, it's a night out here and there, but that's far less than when I was single. Now I don't expect to go back to that same level. It's just I don't have that many hours in the day to be able to do that. But I do also feel like I need to take a look at and reprioritize and, if nothing else, at least reach out more often over text or phone or whatever, and check in with some of the guy friends I haven't talked to in a while.

Charles: 10:19

So at a minimum, even if it's not like a night out or whatever it is- yeah, I would, uh, I would encourage guys to think about trying to do one night a week with their guy friends, if possible. Yeah, I mean, if that's good. If you're already not even able to pull off one night a week out with your girlfriend, then one night a week out with your guy friends is going to be is going to be difficult. But most of us are able to get one date night a week with our girlfriend. We should also get one date night a week with our guy friends too, and uh, and maintain those relationships so that they'll we'll, they'll feel like we're around when they need us and we'll feel like they're around when we need them.

Charles: 11:00

Because if you, if you, haven't seen a guy in a year because of your new girlfriend, and then he either hits a rough patch or you hit a rough patch, whether that's with your job or your relationship or whatever, it's going to be a lot harder for either of you to reach out If you don't have that that normal, regular, ongoing contact with each other. So, yeah, and I'm guilty of dropping the ball, for sure, with few people. Yeah, so yeah, and I'm guilty of dropping the ball, for sure, with few people, yeah, as as am I. So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to work on picking that up here it's.

Charles: 11:31

It is difficult, though, because in the pursuit of that passion, that mission, that purpose, it's, a lot of us have a full-time job. Then we've got the thing that we work on when we're not at the full-time and then, in addition to that, we've got to find time to do the other things on this list that we're we're covering, and it's tough, it's tough, it really is. It really is to focus on any of them. You have to say no to maintaining a certain level of comfort in your life that you well, that you feel comfortable with, like I. You have to say, okay, I've got to say no to laying in bed watching my favorite TV show in order to have a night out with the guys, focus on doing strenuous physical activity or you know, whatever it is. You've got to say no to the things that you usually use to recharge yourself sometimes, and that's really hard, I mean for me too.

Charles: 12:44

When you're, when you're stressed, when you're busy, when you're trying to keep multiple irons in the fire, it's's like man. You know just an hour of that of severance or reacher or whatever show that you're currently into just while you're laying on your back and it's playing on your tablet, your phone, your TV, like man, sometimes nothing feels better than that. But that's true in the short term. But in the longterm there's probably better ways that you could be spending your time.

Dan: 13:11

I know for me, I'm guilty of doing those things, but doing them excessively, like too much, too many episodes of a show that I've just had Netflix continue to to keep showing me right, instead of calling it off after an hour of it or 15 minutes over, whatever it is, and that's that's my, that's my downfall. There is not being disciplined enough to say, okay, look, I've got, I had my, my break, my enjoyment, and now it's time to do something that I am going to enjoy, but it's just not as an immediate reward, as sitting here munching on this popcorn, watching my my netflix show.

Charles: 13:54

Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I mean, a lot of the streaming services have gotten better about dropping new episodes once a week, but there's still occasionally times when a new season of a show that I'm into will release you forgot about, or or that you forgot about, and it's yeah, yeah and all of a sudden, the whole season's there exactly yeah, when squid game, season two, part one, came out, I I pretty much spent one day, the whole weekend, just watching that, every episode of that show.

Charles: 14:22

Yeah, and it was enjoyable. But then you look back at the weekend and you're like crap, it's. It's eight o'clock on monday. I'm driving to work. What did I get done this weekend? Well, I watched squid game.

Charles: 14:32

I mean that that's not a great feeling. So the next item in the list you have to engage in strenuous exercise on a daily basis, and that's another one that is very easy to make a low priority, even though you know you should be doing it. But my, my advice to guys is either travel great distances or lift heavy things, or, ideally, do both. So that means walking, running, biking something to to go a long way. And or, if you can't do both, pick one, lift, lift heavy things and put it back down and just taking on the voluntary hardship of making those foot or bike trips that you don't need to make. You're just doing it to get out there and put some steps on the board or put some miles on the board.

Charles: 15:21

That feels good after you've done it, when you're in the middle of it. There's things you can do to make it feel better. You and I talk about this on the podcast and our personal lives tons. I love just putting on a good book or a good podcast and just walk in for long distances and you should be doing something around that every day. Either walk and lift on alternating days, do it on the same day, just focus on one or the other, depending on what your goals are. But you gotta, you gotta be doing something that is uncomfortable with your body on a daily basis, because it just makes you into a better man.

Dan: 15:58

Yeah, yeah, and I mean also there's, there's lots of studies out now that show just that the changes in your hormones by the physical movement, the physical activity, it's better all around, not just for your physical health but your mental health as well.

Dan: 16:13

So it provides clarity, helps with creativity and I mean at a minimum, it just it gets blood flowing a little bit more quickly throughout your body and I know I've I've solved problems and and just not even thinking about them directly, like subconscious, come up with solutions just from going for a walk and looking at and also looking at big open spaces too.

Dan: 16:37

There's there's studies, and that human talks about that where the more, more space you have in your vision, the more it activates the creative part of your brain. So if you want to be creative, go to big open spaces or sit in big rooms. Whereas, if you want to be creative, go to big open spaces or sit in big rooms. Whereas if you want to really focus on individual data, like you're, you're crunching numbers and you'd be very specific with things, then kind of put the blinders on and kind of close down your, your peripheral vision so you can really focus. So it's, it's, it's, it's amazing, all the, the, the benefits that we have yet to even realize of just doing simple things like going for a walk outside.

Charles: 17:19

Yeah, that's a great insight. And, yeah, I like what Andrew Huberman comes up with. He doesn't just throw stuff off the cuff that he thinks might be a neat idea. He's got the data to back it up. When he makes suggestions like that, Yep, you have to lean into challenge on a neat idea, he's he's got the data to back it up when he when he makes suggestions like that, Yep, you have to lean into challenge on a daily basis. Yeah, that's that's very important.

Charles: 17:38

I I think we said in the last couple episodes that so many of us it's like the day we leave college or the day we leave the military, it's like we're done doing new things that we might fail at, where challenging yourself is about the taking on the responsibility of hey, I'm going to try this thing that I don't know if I'm going to succeed at or not, but I'm going to try it anyway. And being the person that does that on a daily basis not only builds a much better life for you, but it attracts people too, because it it displays your resilience Like I can try something that I might fail at, and even if I fail, I'll be okay and I'll try again.

Dan: 18:15

And it doesn't even have to be something where it's like a big pass fail. A book that I was recommended called the war of art from Steven Pressfield. He is a big advocate of overcoming resistance, and so there's things that our brains will spin up for us that will inhibit the things that we want to do for ourselves. The other part of our brain wants to be able to continue to work on that passion project, right, or asking for the extra shot of espresso that you didn't get right, going back and ask you for it. But there's a little resistance there, right, and so he kind of the book is really good about framing what resistance is in terms of our brain.

Dan: 19:04

Just having this, this level of of of resistance and and, and really his measure of whether the day was a win or a fail was whether he overcame some sort of resistance or that day, and I feel like that's kind of a, an easier version of what glover is talking about here, where you know it's not like a, a win or a fail, what did you fail at?

Dan: 19:27

It's more like did you overcome that low level of resistance that your brain is is normally pushing on you where you would ordinarily kind of back away and say, all right, it's not going to, I'm not going to try, I'm not going to bother, because I feel a little bit weird about doing this Right, or I feel like, ugh, no, and you use it to procrastinate and doom something, and it's literally. You could sit there and he's a writer. So for him it was overcoming resistance to sit at the typewriter and create some new information. And what he said was, even if it was garbage, even if it wasn't totally polished and ready for a print, he would consider the day was a win if he actually sat at his typewriter and then wrote out, even if it was the garbage, the worst thing ever. So that's, I've been kind of exploring that myself and a lot of times when you do that, you, you you just like, oh wow, this wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was.

Dan: 20:22

And then, inertia takes over and you end up doing a lot more than you initially kind of guaranteed that you would do. So I'm just going to, I'm going to work on this project for five minutes. I'm going to clean this. I'm going to clean my office for five minutes or clean up one bill off my off the desk here, and then, before you know, it's just like 10, 15 minutes later I've gotten a lot more done. So I, I, I. That's kind of something that I've been looking at.

Charles: 20:45

War of Arv and Pressfield has a couple can open it not to just I'm going to do something I'm not sure I can succeed at, but even just I'm not going to. I'm going to do something I'm not sure I feel like doing.

Dan: 21:04

Exactly Right.

Charles: 21:06

And way summarizing what I'd scrambled about no-transcript, and you know when, when you live with a partner, when you live with kids, obviously you're going to have things that come up where you're like. Okay, I, we're talking to I think we're both talking about mainly do things that you don't know if you can do or that you don't know if you feel like doing for yourself. That's, that's the kind that will help you build up to be this person with the kind of life that you, that you can appreciate and other people will will be really hyped to be around. Yeah, you have to develop and maintain a spiritual practice. This is a. This is a tough one.

Charles: 21:58

The extent of my spiritual practice these days is generally mindfulness, meditation, and I'm not even doing that as reliably and as often as I wish that I was. I would like to make that a. I guess you could put my journaling in there too. But yeah, I'm, I'm doing this when I feel like I have the time and when I feel like I have the motivation is what I'm doing it, which is no, that that's no solution.

Dan: 22:25

Yeah, and I'm. I'm in the same boat. I've been slacking on my meditations for a while, but I've also come to feel like if I spend just a minute or two and try to think of something that I'm grateful for or appreciate, I feel like that's, that's kind of for me anyway, it feels a little spiritual. It's in that. It's in that realm.

Charles: 22:48

Gratitude practice is definitely spiritual. You and I talked on a recent episode about doing it and I've been really you you've been much better at it than I have last last week or so that we started where I've, yeah, I've, I've let my uh, my focus and my just sort of this manic hunt for a new car really override everything else the last few days and, yeah, I, I, I didn't do a good job of responding to your, your gratitude yeah, all right, that's all right, no worries.

Dan: 23:19

And the other thing that has helped me is reframing it in terms of what, what's made me happy lately, and sometimes that's easier for me to then the thing of, yeah, think of something that I appreciate or I'm grateful for. It's just another way of orienting my brain yeah.

Charles: 23:33

So yeah, we're talking on the secular side. There's things like meditation, journaling, gratitude practices and then, obviously, if you're a religious person, then it's very easy to go to whoever is in charge of what location you go to for your, your formalized worship on a weekly basis and say, hey, look, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in a in a daily practice. What would you recommend? And I'm sure that person will have a, a book or a ritual or something that they can recommend to you, that they say, okay, here's, here's what people who want to do things on a daily basis often find value in. So that's, that's pretty easy. If you're, if you're in a, in a more formalized religious situation like that, just go to the people in charge of it and say, hey, I want a little something to do every day. What do you recommend? I guarantee they'll be happy for your question and they'll give you some info for it.

Charles: 24:42

He meant by this. I think what he means is your gift to the world is sharing with people your time, your effort, and I think if you can tie it into whatever your, your passion or your purpose is all the better. Right, if you can say, all right, I'm going to pursue whatever this thing is and I'm going to share it with other people. That's going to make you feel very good, and it could be. I mean, your gift could just be time. It could be volunteering, taking taking dogs for a walk at the dog pound or volunteering your time in something else. But you gotta, you gotta build a practice where you're you're giving something to people with no expectation of of a return, and if not only does it feel good, but it's, it's a good way to make the world a better place, maybe the best way.

Dan: 25:26

Yeah, yep, yeah, I think I agree it's. It's a lot easier if the thing that is getting you excited and that your passion also is something that you can help spread and give to the world. It makes it a very enjoyable process and sometimes can definitely help fuel that passion. Keep it going when you don't feel like overcoming that resistance.

Charles: 25:52

Yeah. So that's the list. Again, I'll summarize make your life passion your number one priority. Develop and maintain good guy friendships. Engage in strenuous exercise on a daily basis, lean into challenge on a daily basis, develop and maintain a spiritual practice and give your gift to the world. And then, a little bit further down, he gives us a nice little cheat sheet of okay, here are some very specific actions you can take that will move you towards some of these bigger goals Get organized.

Charles: 26:19

Keep your car and your house clean. Pay attention to your personal grooming. Create a beautiful space around you, meaning a home or an office that you enjoy being in. Learn to dance. Have regular hobbies. Meditate. Do it now, whatever it is, do it now.

Charles: 26:35

Don't don't put it on a list. Don't procrastinate. If something comes to your attention and you can do it quickly, just do it. Get out of debt, save money every day, make your bed, do your dishes, hang up your clothes, keep your bathroom picked up. Limit your television and your internet surfing and take some classes. So those are some things that are all the kind of building blocks into these bigger picture practices that we we covered in this list.

Charles: 27:00

Yeah, and I think that was. Those were the takeaways from chapter nine, which again was titled create a lifestyle that attracts women. Naturally, and it really. Again, you don't do it for the purpose of attracting the women, you do it for the purpose of having a decent life, because I mean, even if you, even if you live with a woman because she's your girlfriend, your wife, whatever, I guarantee you don't live with her as often as you live with yourself. And so build, build a life that you know you can enjoy during the downtime as well as the uptime, and the alone time as well as the partnered time, and this is a way that you can do that. All right, anything else to offer, dan?

Dan: 27:41

None on this one.

Charles: 27:42

All right, told you it was going to be a quick one, guys. So there we go. We will talk with you next time in chapter 10, which is called Activate Women's Basic Biological Urges. Let me see how far are we from part two of this book. I want to see how many chapters we've got left in in section one or part one. Let's see here. Yeah, 10 is the last one actually.

Charles: 28:07

So the part one is titled mastering your mind, where it's all about understanding and and getting the things that you need to understand and get to put yourself in a headspace where you could be a good partner or could be a good dater. And then part two, perfecting your practice, is actually going out there and taking action that will bring the kind of women into your life that you're looking for. So, yeah, chapter 10 will be our last one for part one. Then you and I are going to take a break and talk about doing a different book, and then we'll come back and do part two at some point in the future. So one one episode left to go. Thanks, dan, I appreciate it. We'll talk to you soon.

Dan: 28:45

All right.

Charles: 28:45

Bye-bye, bye. Thank you so much for listening to the entire episode, dan, and I certainly appreciate it. No-transcript.