13 Semi-Controversial Truths About Men & Women - Adam Lane Smith

1. 0:00 – 7:25

   What Choosing the Wrong Woman Looks Like

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Episode five. You are getting into the upper stratosphere of repeat guests now.

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith0:05

      I love that. Next one, we'll have to do in person. I'll buy you a beer.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:08

      Ah, I'm down. I'm down. All right. Young men, if you choose the wrong woman, you are sacrificing your goals for a life spent managing her problems that she refuses to fix. The right woman will augment your life goals. She'll be a jet engine strapped to your back that pushes you ahead even faster.

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith0:26

      I've been teaching men this lately. I got a co- new course out about marriage. You are supposed to be the CEO in a relationship, life, family that you're building. You need to pick a woman who's an appropriate COO, operations officer who's gonna work with you, a co-executive. You don't need a woman that's lagging behind, that's dragging at you, that you can't get to the office to work, and you also don't want to have her take the lead over you 'cause she'll resent you. You need to work together like co-executives. And when you do, there is nothing on this planet that will drive you faster to success than that good woman.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:57

      What does choosing the wrong woman look like? You're sacrificing your goals for a life spent managing her problems that she refuses to fix.

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08

      A lot of guys lately... And I know, Chris, you've heard this. A lot of guys complain that women have no accountability. I say that women who are living in a state of chronic terror and their sympathetic nervous system is activated and they're alone, they're in a heightened survival state, they're designed to try to push off responsibility for survival. That's a woman who's in a very insecurely attached state. When a woman's in a calm, securely attached state, she focuses instead on her long-term life goals and her ethics and principles to get her there. These are the women that we record through history of having been incredible drivers of love, success, growth, everything. A securely attached woman is what a man needs to be looking for. Nothing less.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:48

      That sounds a lot like a bidirectional problem, that the woman doesn't feel safe because she's not being made to feel safe. So in some ways, it's not just choosing... I, I suppose choosing the wrong woman sounds like there is something wrong with them. But I guess in, built into this is if you choose an incompatible woman, she becomes the wrong woman. Is that a fair way to frame it?

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith2:13

      It is. It is. The man does have responsibility. The masculine, our job is to provide four levels of safety, if you want to get into that, for women. We need to provide safety at four levels, but the woman needs to be able to receive safety. And in our world right now, we're not training women to receive safety at all. They stay feeling unsafe, even if the man is adequately providing those levels of safety for her.

   9. CWChris Williamson2:33

      Dig into that safety thing for me.

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith2:36

       Yeah, absolutely. Uh, a man provides safety in four degrees. Okay? One is physical safety. Yes, safety from our ancestors, saber-toothed tigers, rival tribes, even safety from yourself. Be physically safe. Two is resource safety. Okay? Ancestors, hunter-gatherers, that means food, meat. Today, it could mean finances. She might be contributing, but if a problem arises, he's going to spearhead that and tackle it first. Number three is emotional safety. She knows that if she shares a problem with him, like an operations officer should, that he's going to receive it graciously, listen respectfully, ask questions, and then solve the problem. She doesn't have to tiptoe on eggshells. He's not gonna blow up. So he's emotionally disciplined. Most men with attachment issues, they fail this third degree right here 'cause they're afraid of commitment, they're afraid of getting scammed, they're afraid of whatever, so they never really lean into a relationship, and they always leave her hanging. And the fourth is bonding safety. He has to be biochemically bonded to her and be displaying the right signs of being biochemically bonded through oxytocin and vasopressin. This is why women are tracking for romance, affection, warmth, emotional connection, to know that you're not gonna leave her in the middle of the desert. She needs to know that you're with her. Those are the four levels of safety we must provide. Now, a lot of women can't trust any of those four levels of safety 'cause we've got four generations of women now taught, "Don't trust men. They fail you. They let you down. They check out. They hurt you." So that's part of the problem. Men need to be providing, but women need to be able to receive.

   11. CWChris Williamson4:02

       Mm. Yeah, and I guess that that is choosing the right woman, and for women as well, choosing the right man, that you can have, uh, a pairing which, in a different relationship with a different partner, would be secure, would feel safe, would be regulated, but this particular oil and water mixture just doesn't want to go together.

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith4:24

       No. A- and we are seeing that among Gen Z. 65% of them now are insecurely attached, leaving only about 35% securely attached. And the rate of personality disorders, part of that, has risen from 10% to about 20%. So we're definitely going in the wrong direction. Men and women are not connecting because they can't form a human bond to each other. Instead, they're forming an emotion-focused bond of, "How do I feel?" instead of, "What are we achieving? What are we building? What are we growing? How do we, how do we operate as co-executives in a co-created life together?" It's, "How do I feel right now at this moment and what do I need to do to feel better in five seconds?" That's a lot of the relationships we're seeing.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:02

       It seems like that's a lot more short term.

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith5:05

       It is. They're, they're focused on the short-term survival. It's a sympathetic nervous system activation that's really causing the issue, and it's, it's a chronic trauma from infancy. And that's really, when we talk about attachment issues, what it is. You were traumatized as an infant. You don't recognize it because it's not what you would consider trauma now, but your trauma is focused around relationships, and that activates your prefrontal cortex differently. People with avoidant attachment style, it overgrows to squash their emotional expression and bonding. In anxiously attached people, it underdevelops and so they never learn that they can actually self-regulate. They demand that other people self-regulate for them, but they believe that they're operating at a deficit 'cause no one will ever love them, so then they over-perform in relationships, expecting co-regulation as payment. So that's what we've got running around right now and that's why when you get on the dating apps, the avoidantly attached people who look the best are the ones ruling the dating apps and everybody else is left in the lurch because they're all playing this insecurely attached, feelings-based game. The securely attached people are self-segregated out into a completely different cluster.

   15. CWChris Williamson6:06

       Mm.

   16. ASAdam Lane Smith6:06

       And they're dating and, and marrying successfully and having children successfully, but their pool is dwindling as society is continuing to break down.

   17. CWChris Williamson6:13

       Yeah. You had a...Fucking slamming take on this. Modern dating is what happens when the estimated 35% of securely attached people get married young and leave the pool, and the other 65% of insecurely attached people try to figure out how to manipulate each other into s- shared stimulation.

   18. ASAdam Lane Smith6:29

       (laughs) That's the problem, h- honestly, that's the problem. That's what I've dedicated my life to fixing, is doing that. So when I got a coaching client that comes in, he goes, "Adam, I'm 45. I've never been able to marry successfully. I don't know what I'm doing. What's the purpose in my life?" Right, he's hitting, he's hitting the second mountain state, as David Brooks would call it, and he doesn't know what to do with his life. He's got all this money, he's succeeding everywhere except romance. I show him, okay, what is a human relationship supposed to be? What does it do for you biochemically? A lot of them freak out when they start hearing about how high-performing men are dying young losing their testosterone, and losing everything that they've built, because they don't know how to build relationships 'cause their receptors are actually blocked for the oxytocin. So we can get into that if you ever want to, but that's, that's, that's what's killing a lot of the highest performing men today, is, is not being able to receive the oxytocin bonding that they need from their partner. So then they say, "What does a woman even bring to the table?" Because we no longer have a concept of soft, intimate connection.

2. 7:25 – 11:16

   What is Happening with Oxytocin in Modern Men?

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith7:25

   2. CWChris Williamson7:25

      Yeah. What's happening with oxytocin and modern man?

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith7:28

      Oh. Um, most modern men don't get physical contact after the age of 12. If, if they even get it up to the age of 12. So they only get it through sexual intimacy with a partner. Now, avoidantly attached men make up the bulk of attachment issues. Okay? Avoidant attachment says, "I don't trust other humans to be fair or reasonable to me. They're going to hurt me." It comes from overwhelming arbitrary expectations in childhood, critical parents, divorce, blah, blah, blah. So these avoidant men activate into a sympathetic nervous system and never come out. They can't go to their parasympathetic rest and digest mode. They can't have a peace mode. They are always in war s- in war and stress mode. So they're always conquering, but you see them thrive. And this is a biological adaptation for our species to thrive in bad, dangerous environments. These men activate, they start building things. Everyone else joins under their umbrella. They're the employers. They're the, the, the leaders. They grow society, but the cost is that their oxytocin receptors block. They get closed off because of that sympathetic nervous system activation. Now, as this happens, they cannot form sentimental, warm, affectionate bonds with people, and they can't receive that. Now, oxytocin is crucial because you have to use it to synthesize GABA, which suppresses cortisol release. So GABA shuts down your cortisol and says, "I'm loved. I'm cared for. I'm in a tribe of brothers." When we look at Iceland, they have a great saying on this, "Bare is the back of a brotherless man." This is a man whose back is always bare, so he's always watching his front and his back and can never relax. So he is never, ever, ever able to come out of stress mode. He is always active. But that means that he can't use GABA to synthesize melatonin to sleep at night. Okay? His oxytocin doesn't allow that 'cause it's so low. He has chronic pain. He doesn't sleep well at night, so he's not generating serotonin, so his mood is low. He's in a, a depressed state that he doesn't recognize. He's not only redlining, but probably blacklining m- much of the time, and stressed out. His testosterone about 30 to 35 begins to diminish. He has erectile dysfunction about 30 to 35. He is only able to form relationships romantically and sexually based on novelty dopamine, which dies five to seven months into a relationship, and then it just becomes relentless duty without pleasure or payoff. And then about 40, 45, he begins having high risk of cancer, heart attack, and stroke. But he has formed an immense business. He's fed other people's families. He's taking care of people. But when he goes home at night, all he does is drink alcohol and wish that he had somebody there to take care of him and be with him. So this is the highest performing men in across society on every continent.

   4. CWChris Williamson9:59

      (laughs) These are the ones that everybody looks up to.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith10:02

      Yes, and, and we should. They have great traits. But the problem is not that they're jerks. We, we give 'em these bad things, but they're actually usually wonderful people. The problem is that they don't understand that they're missing oxytocin, that s- that warm, sentimental connection. They don't know that they're missing it. So they, they, they're going around looking for this thing that they know must be there. This peace, this connection. They tell women, "I just want peace." But they can never find it 'cause they can't click out of that mode into parasympathetic. So when we show them that, it changes everything for them, and suddenly it's like the end of, uh, Christmas Carol when Scrooge, like, learns what love is, and then he just returns an abundance of love to other people. The research is, is, is wonderful on this. A, a group that connects to an avoidant man successfully and he connects to them, they both benefit because he continues to be hyp- be- very vigilant and watch over them. But now he is owning that and caring for them and protective, so they gain from his sensors, and they gain from his awareness and, and carefulness. And he gains that love and intimacy and extends his lifespan by about five to fif- uh, about 10 to 15 years. And then his quality of life improves for his entire lifespan. So if we can get these men reintegrated, we all benefit. That's, that's the purpose here.

3. 11:16 – 17:05

   Why Successful Men are Failing in Relationships

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith11:16

   2. CWChris Williamson11:16

      I wonder how much of this is... It's very difficult, especially in an atomized world where most people spend most of their time on their own, or their communication with other people is mediated through the internet or through more shallow, more formal conversations, stuff that happens at work. I wonder whether the kinds of guys who are constructed to be able to be hyper-successful, hyper-vigilant, insecure overachievers, they get rewarded from the world by being successful in the only way that anybody else can detect, which is outwardly.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith11:51

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson11:51

      Inner peace is unfortunately not something that you can flex very well on an Instagram post, and you can't cash it in to go on holiday to the Bahamas with it, and it doesn't look very good on a resume, and your friends are usually not all that impressed by it unless you've got super awesome friends. And I get the sense that meritocracy, capitalism... I'm as fucking capitalistic and ruthless as you can find, but it does...... creates some pretty perverse incentives because it causes people to prioritize things that are, that are instrumental goods, not, not ultimate goods, right? Like an instrumental good of achieving money or gaining status or whatever is only useful in as much as it makes your life better, in as much as it makes you happier. And a lot of guys are choosing to live a worse life in order to make money when they already live a sufficiently good lifestyle, and what they're missing is something that can't be purchased with more money. So it's this sort of vicious cycle of advertising. It's kind of like, I don't know, the emperor, the emperor's new clothes but everybody is the emperor, and nobody's telling them, "Hey man, I think that you'd actually probably be better off if you just chilled out a bit and, and went to try and find some friends that you could hang out with or, or got some hobbies that weren't just working or, or found a partner that wasn't only six months, like, into a relationship with you and then you cycle her out."

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith13:19

      I fully agree with you. Um, that's what all of them are looking for. They have a sense that something's wrong. They know something's missing but they've never really experienced it 'cause their oxytocin receptors have been blocked since childhood, since the, before the formation of emotion and feeling. And their brain over-develops to prevent that emotional expression so they can't really experience it. When, when you sit down with one of these guys and you talk to them about their personal experiences, they over-intellectualize everything...

   6. CWChris Williamson13:44

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith13:44

      ... as a barrier against their emotions and they don't know they're doing it, so you have to really go at them and they have to really be convinced that something's wrong so they'll sit with the emotion for a while. When someone else comes to them with emotions or when a girlfriend or a lover says, "Hey, I really care about you and I don't understand why we're so distant now. It's seven months. We should be closer," and she's crying, his mirroring neurons activate in his brain and he feels her exp- her emotions, but without context and not knowing how to regulate them 'cause he's not used to feeling emotions. So it overwhelms him and he starts backing off, which she perceives as abandonment, so she chases and he gets m- more scared and more wary 'cause he says, "I'm getting nothing from this relationship and your expectations have gone up. I'm about to get trapped," so he pulls away further and that creates that cycle. The, it's not that these men don't want connection. They do, more than anything on the planet. They don't know how to get it in a way that they won't feel exploited or endangered, and they don't know what it feels like. So i- it's, it's this idea. That's why they keep chasing six months, six months, six months. They have all these women in their life but they never really connect with them 'cause it's just never clicking. They're waiting for the day it will somehow click, so they, they go to seminars, they go to retreats, they study chemistry, they study game, they study everything to try to learn how to activate this feeling they should have. They start to think, "Well, maybe I'm a sociopath." It's all that survival mechanism that's clicked on. Until they, until they learn how to regulate their nervous system and come down, until they learn that there even is a second mode that they could click into, and then they have to not be afraid to click into it 'cause they're afraid of getting killed if they click out of survival mode 'cause it's kept them safe, they click into peace mode. They feel it with somebody. It has to be a safe human being who's secure enough that they won't backstab him or, or ruin his life with emotions, and then they feel it and immerse with it, then something amazing happens 'cause the male and female systems, our nervous systems, are actually meant to integrate symbiotically. The female nervous system needs safety to maintain a high levels of fertility, bonding, peace, generation of, of all the nutrients a child will need, care, and then as she receives oxytocin, it becomes contagious. She, she's compelled to give a- f- affection and kindness to those around her. That's that feminine mode on the TikTok parlance as being in my feminine. But for her to activate that, a man has to be providing those four levels of safety and he has to integrate with her. Then the male goes out into stress mode, hunts, fights, kills, gets resources, comes back, and as he does, he, he lets go of stress mode and integrates with her calm nervous system. As he does, she integrates with him and she pulls him into his parasympathetic nervous system, that rest and digest mode. Guys like us, we have to practice martial arts in a cave for 20 years to learn how to get there on our own, or we could just let a woman who loves us help us pull into that and as we do, if our oxytocin receptors open, she floods us with it. Oxytocin goes up, GABA goes up, serotonin goes up, testosterone goes up, human growth hormone goes up, everything massively improves. And this is why all across the earth, all the cultures say feminine is healing. It's because she's literally healing your body through your biochemical makeup, but only when you can integrate successfully, only when you can be receptive to her. She has to be receptive to you, you're receptive to her. We build this together. So I'll leave that there. You go ahead.

4. 17:05 – 30:40

   How Masculinity is Changing

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith17:05

   2. CWChris Williamson17:05

      Most dating advice you find on the internet encourages anxiously attached men to act avoidantly attached instead so they can prey upon anxiously attached women and use their insecurities against them to harvest sex from them. This is called red pill dating.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith17:20

      What do you think of that one first? I want to hear your thoughts on that one.

   4. CWChris Williamson17:23

      Uh, I think it's interesting that I certainly see among some of the most charismatic and highest bravado guys that talk about dating a very strong, anxious, uh, foundation that this stuff is growing out of. Um, and it does seem, uh, y- you couldn't even put your finger on it. Where is that coming from? What is it that you're seeing? I don't know. I just get the sense that this isn't sat on a secure foundation, that it's not sort of a firm, securely attached person who is emotionally regulated. Uh, but it's not always some classic avoidant attachment guy who just doesn't want to get any sense of care or belonging or validation from other people, the world at large, and specifically women, because if that was the case, I don't think they would be spending so much time trying to decode what the fuck women want.Um, so yeah, i- i- there's this odd longing masked with a kind of brittle fragility of a stern exterior. And i- kind of all of this gets- gets wrapped up together. Obviously, there's- there's great dating advice people like, uh, yourself, Tucker Max was fucking fantastic, Jeffrey Miller I think is wonderful. Um, fuck, Mark Manson wrote a book on dating. That was his first ever book before he did the Subtle Art. Um, and there's lo- there's lots of guys that are new that are coming up too but, uh, there is definitely an archetype and I think you, um, you hit the nail on the head by saying it, the internet encourages anxiously attached men to act avoidantly attached instead.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith19:03

      Well, yeah. I fully agree with that. One thing I see is a lot of those guys, I- I've- I've known a lot of those guys or I know people who are close people to them. Many of them unfortunately grew up with a mother who had personality disorder, usually borderline personality disorder, and their first girlfriend was a borderline personality disorder, or their wife was and just gutted him. Now when you grow up with a mother who has a personality disorder, you usually don't just get anxious attachment or avoidant, usually you get the blend of the two, the disorganized style where you are anxious and crave connection but you also hate and fear it at the same time so you control other people through manipulation tactics. So those guys usually go out there and they're craving to learn what women want to please them, but also am- as a mechanism to stay safe and get control. So then what they do is they go out and they teach guys who are anxiously attached and nervous and terrified how to pretend to be more in control so that then all they can do is pull in very anxiously attached women who crave validation, women who don't feel safe but want to and will do anything, jump through any hoop on the planet just to please him, and that's what those guys learn, but then the guys feel bad about it. Once my clients come in and say, "Adam, I was a red pill for a while," all right, let's untrain you from that. They- they feel bad later for the way they've ex- executed relationships and they actually want a healthier bond. So it's borderline personality disorder mothers crafting disorganized sons who go out and proselytize about controlling women 'cause women are just horrible animals that will hurt you, 'cause that's what they understand, and then the guys who are anxiously attached who can't get any woman to pay attention to them using that material to try to get attention. That's the large portion of what red pill is doing and it's- it's building a lot more pain and a lot more agony for both sides. It's not just women that are suffering, it's men and women.

   6. CWChris Williamson20:42

      It's an interesting one, man. The assurance of protection privately by the removal of risk publicly?

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith20:52

      Mm-hmm.

   8. CWChris Williamson20:52

      If that makes sense. You know, this sort of retreat into yourself, this lack of openness that everybody's felt before. There is a moment in everyone's relationship where you need to kind of make the decision, okay, am I actually going to open my heart to this person? And that it's a funny analogy, I guess, to use because it kind of does feel like that. It kind of feels like spreading your chest open and allowing- allowing this person to have access to a softer part of you. And if you've got fear around doing that naturally or if it's been something that you tried before and you've ended up being burned, I understand why people don't want to do it, both men and women, you know? And- and this is the MGTOW or kind of the femcel, going their own way crowd and I- I- I fully understand it. I- I can completely get why someone that's been emotionally damaged from doing what they thought was the right thing would take the lesson from this, not that I chose the wrong person or that that was just bad luck, but that the world is unsafe and if I do that again, it's going to hurt me and it's maybe going to destroy me this time. Uh, so I get it, but yeah, th- there's- there's a particular like category of advice giver on the internet that I think is- is really misguided. It's one thing to kind of swear off being emotionally attuned and open. It's quite another thing to do that yourself and then convince others to do the same as well. And yeah, I, uh, I don't know. I- I really hope- I really hope that those people can kind of be fixed or saved in- in some way because, fuck, it would- it would make life a lot easier I think for everybody else too if the people that were giving advice were happy and securely attached and positive sum and abundance-minded with regards to this stuff.

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith23:00

      I think we are growing past it. Can I- can I share something that's not even really... I mean, it's- it's to this topic but it's- it's probably a little different than the tweets I was- you were reading.

   10. CWChris Williamson23:09

       Yeah, fire away. Yeah, yeah, come on.

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith23:10

       Yeah, okay. Um, I think that we're in a change of masculinity. I think that World War I, World War II, uh, over here in America, the Dust Bowl, The Great Depression, I think all the wars that we've thrown men into, I think we lost so many men and it's documented. We've lost generations of men. I think a lot of men checked out. I think that masculinity actually died in the West, America, Western Europe, I think it died. And I think men were running. I'm thinking of like The Glass Menagerie, uh, as a play, uh, that- that was written. Um, it shows men like checking out and then other men checking out on top of that because it's just too overwhelming. I'm thinking of Ernest Hemingway and all of those- those lost men. Masculinity died, women had to step forward and become the men for quite a while. Generations of women are carrying down that information of don't trust men 'cause they'll let you down. I think masculine...... was reborn like a phoenix. But it was a baby little hatchling, and women t- protected it, nurtured it, but they did the only thing they know how, which is to smother it with love and affection, hoping it will grow up into the person they want it to be. But women can't train men. Now I think we've got generations of men raised in fledgling masculinity who didn't know how to be men, not really, and then I think around the '90s to maybe the first 2000s, we saw a blip of masculinity emerging into the teenage years. Now over the last, let's say, 10, 15 years, we've been in a very juvenile masculine phase. The 15-year-old, "I'll do whatever I want. Look at my guns. I got nine Bugattis. You know, I got all these hot girls. I can sleep with anyone I want," and we're seeing this angry, you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do sort of masculinity.

   12. CWChris Williamson24:46

       Mm.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith24:46

       And I think that's where red pill has fit in, is a bunch of men trying to reclaim from inf- from childhood, trying to claim territory as juveniles, but not knowing what masculinity is supposed to be. Masculinity is the embracing of responsibility, but only after you've crafted full personal sovereignty. So I think that was them trying to get full personal sovereignty, pushing off mom, so to speak, the nanny state of, of women, and, and clearing space to be men. And now that we've known that we can, a lot of men are tired of it. You and I both are tired of it 'cause we've been in it for 10, 15 years. We've seen them doing it. I think we're emerging into a mature masculine. Like you list, there's a bunch of men giving real dating advice, real marriage advice, family advice now. A- and there is a rising crop of that. I think we're seeing a rebirth of mature masculine in the West. That's my theory that I'm working with so p- so far. What do you think?

   14. CWChris Williamson25:37

       Yeah, I, I... it's a multipolar problem, mate, because the internet's such a big place that for every culture, there's a counterculture and a subculture within that one, and then there's a splinter faction that's taken off on one side and they actually completely recant all of the things that this other group said. Um, I don't think that we've reached critical mass or escape velocity, m- masculinity escape velocity, um, for giving good advice to men. But if you know where to look and if you're sufficiently discerning, I think it's pretty easy to find good advice. Uh, and by good advice, I mean well-balanced, well-meaning, things that make both your life and the world around you a better place when you leave it. Th- that seems to be like a, a n- a rough rubric for that.

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith26:22

       I like that.

   16. CWChris Williamson26:22

       Mm-hmm. One other element, I guess, is there's a lot of elements of male behavior that are pretty scary, especially to women. Um, i- d- and this is behavior from boys and behavior from men as well. Uh, aggression, uh, dominance, desire for conquer, mastery, drive, all of these things, and I wonder whether one of the solutions was put forward... I certainly know that this is in a lot of therapy speak and a lot of sort of online conversation, is if only you acted less like a man and acted more like a woman, all of your problems would be fixed. Your main problem, male, in front of me, is that you're being mascul- you're being too ma-... If only you were opening up about your emotions more, if only you were more sensitive, if only you were less concerned with dominance and competition and prestige and status and, and improvement and, and conquer, and, and stuff like that, you'd be fine. All of your problems would go away. And it's not going to land particularly well when you basically say, "Your main issue is your nature." Y- d- like y- y- y- your in-built, innate source code is a problem, and if you can get rid of that and behave more like the group that has had a really phenomenal run... I mean, fuck, if you were, if you were going to invest into a penny stock, the entire female sex in sort of the 1960s, 1970s was like buying Bitcoin at five cent. Fucking phenomenal investment, right? Socioeconomically crushing it, uh, eh, by pretty much every single metric. Just huge boon. The same thing hadn't happened for guys and I wonder whether part of the increasingly single female household raiser of young boys would say, "Well, like, the girls are doing all right. Maybe, maybe try and be more like them. Maybe behave in the manner that the stock that had the real good bull run for five decades behaved, and you too will be liberated from whatever challenges you're facing."

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith28:30

       I love this and I, I agree with a lot of it. Um, I will counter with this. This is very interesting. The research is clear now in America that the women are not actually doing w- very well. One quarter of American women are now on some sort of psych med. Uh, they're reporting massive depression rates. They're reporting increasingly crushing anxiety every single day. The loneliness rates for women has actually gone up to two thirds of all women report incredibly overwhelming anxiety and loneliness-

   18. CWChris Williamson28:58

       Mm.

   19. ASAdam Lane Smith28:58

       ... every single day. So they are crushing it interestingly like households. Women own more households than men do. But what's fascinating and I- I've had my ear to the ground on this. I'm sure you have had too. TikTok, Instagram, you're seeing this flooding movement of women now starting to become resentful of having to be masculine, and they're actually begging for a resurgence of masculinity. They don't quite know what that means and they kinda want it on their terms, but a lot of them are moving toward, who is supposed to be doing this? Why am I doing this? Right? We see books like, um, Marry Him and Be Submissive is an, is a really famous book that I think should, like, try to ban in Spain if I remember right. We see the rise of women like Margarita Nazarenko, uh, a creator who's talking about how women can be more feminine. She's teaching from an Eastern European standpoint. We're seeing a lot of women trying to be feminine and call men to be more masculine. Again, I, I agree with you. I think they're scared of what that means, but I think some of them are embracing it, and I'm curious going forward what that's going to look like, because manhood shines best when the world is scarier than the men who are protecting you from the world. So we need the world to be scary-... in a number of ways, and it is. It's artificially not scary right now. It's just a weird bubble we've crafted around women to make them feel safe. But when that- that bubble is starting to erode, and- and it's going to pop, I think, very soon, we need to have a crop of men ready, not to take one for the team, but to do what men are supposed to do so we can be fulfilled. And I believe by doing so that women will also step in and be fulfilled. I don't think all of them. I think many people are gonna go through a horrible meat grinder, male and female.

   20. CWChris Williamson30:32

       Mm.

   21. ASAdam Lane Smith30:32

       But I do believe that there is a positive outcome on the other side of this for those that want to learn how to actually form proper human connections between male and female.

5. 30:40 – 40:23

   Why Validation Makes Men Feel Shame

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith30:40

   2. CWChris Williamson30:40

      Validation is meaningless to men without accomplishment. Men crave validation, but getting it without earning it through hard work and success leads to a hollow sense of self-worth and deep insecurity. This sort of validation instead feels like pity to them.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith30:54

      Chris, if ... I mean, you're- you're an incredibly accomplished man. You've got, like, one of the biggest podcasts in the entire world. The other day, someone was asking me who I am, and I was listing some of the people I've talked to that are big names, and they're like, "Who?" And I said, "Oh, I was on Chris Williamson's podcast." "Oh, Chris. I love Chris." So, you- you're a very accomplished man.

   4. CWChris Williamson31:12

      Game recognizes game, as they say.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith31:14

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, let's pretend for a moment that you hadn't grown the way that you had, but people continued to treat you the way you- you are treated today. They continue to say, "Hey, well done, Chris. You know, you got three- three people listening to that podcast. You've been going for 10 years. It's going great, man. Three people, like woo-hoo." Your mom's, like, patting you on the head, like, "Good job, boy." You know, would- how would you feel if that was the case, if you knew you weren't thriving and people were still trying to cheer you on?

   6. CWChris Williamson31:42

      Yeah, it'd be very hollow. Very hollow.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith31:44

      It's- it's exhausting. It's empty. In fact, it's- it's a sh- it's shameful to us men. We actually experience p- pain in our brain, emotional pain, social pain, and personal pain. It- it- it- it burns us on the inside and releases cortisol, and it- it causes a- a response that says, "I'm not doing enough, and I'm angry." Our brain, actually, in the back, goes to the back to observe a problem and then forward to act upon it, and if we can't get there, we stop halfway, we grind, and we start getting depressed. So, then if someone comes along and says, "Hey, you're doing good. It's okay. Everything's good. You're gonna get there. You know, it's good, man. I'm proud of you already just 'cause you're still doing it," we start to get angry at ourself that we are failing, and we feel like a child. We feel like, back in our hunter-gatherer tribe, we feel like we are failing the tribe, and all we're doing is eating resources and contributing nothing, and that begins a cycle of shame for men. We don't want validation. We want answers. We want solutions. We want to be building. We need power. Power not to dominate other humans, but power to dominate circumstances. When we have that, we know we are contributing to tribe. We know that we are fulfilling purpose. That's where we thrive. Without that, validation is painful. It's not just meaningless, it's painful.

   8. CWChris Williamson32:57

      It's kind of like a proof of work or, um-

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith33:01

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson33:01

       ... a push for legitimacy, right? It'll, like ... It's the same justification, I think, for why people say that, um, (clears throat) participation trophies in schools don't work, that if everybody wins, then nobody wins, and it kinda derogates the- the concept of winning. Like, what- what- what does that even mean? What does it mean to win if everybody wins, and what does it mean to be validated and to be praised for your accomplishments if it happens regardless of what you accomplished and how well you did?

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith33:34

       It- it means nothing, even to children. What we've done is we've traded short-term dopamine releases to make people feel good for long-term serotonin releases and- and vasopressin releases from solving problems together. Dopamine for all the biochemicals we are supposed to be getting. I've got five kids, Chris, five kids. Two of them are sons, two of them are daughters.

   12. CWChris Williamson33:54

       You are pumping them out at the moment.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith33:55

       I'm- I'm trying, man. My wife and I are going. She's Irish, so it was bound to happen, but the- (sighs) the way I raise my kids is not, "Good job. You know, you tried," no, it's, "Hey, yes, good for putting in the effort. Next time, here's some things that you can do. I'm gonna show you how to do it, and you're gonna pump. You're gonna thrive. I'm proud of you for working hard. Let's keep going till you get it." And when they get it, the release for them is so much higher, and it's- it's a massive high five. "You did it. You got it. What's the next thing you wanna learn to conquer? What's the next skill you wanna grow?" And not just my sons are thriving with that, but my daughters. They are problem-solving. They don't get stuck like other kids do and say, "Oh, I don't know what to do. It's so hard." They look at it. They might get frustrated. I say, "Cool. How are we gonna solve this?" And they get right back into it 'cause they're trained for that. And then they thrive afterward. First thing they do is bring it to me and show me with the biggest smile on their face, and I, like, "I am so proud of you for continuing and striving and going." It's- that- that's how we need to raise our children. We're not- we're not- we're not raising perpetual children. We're mentoring adults, and we need to take that responsibility very seriously.

   14. CWChris Williamson35:04

       What's the, uh, validation feels like pity element?

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith35:10

       For my sons?

   16. CWChris Williamson35:11

       No, that if you get validation without earning it through hard work that men feel like the validation is pity rather than, uh, a- a genuine sense of sort of renown and recognition.

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith35:25

       If- if you are simply being rewarded for being there and showing up, but you have no accomplishments, and that's really the side of it. If you have no accomplishments, and if you're stuck, then the validation makes you feel like an imposter, or it makes you feel like you're being just fed by the tribe when you're not a- not p- p- providing anything. No-

   18. CWChris Williamson35:44

       No, you're not contributing. You're a charity case. We need to give you this-

   19. ASAdam Lane Smith35:47

       You're a charity case.

   20. CWChris Williamson35:47

       ... because you're not worthy of it. You can't stand on your own two feet. Therefore, we need to provide it for you.

   21. ASAdam Lane Smith35:53

       One of the biggest, biggest, biggest reasons that men commit suicide later on in life is when they feel like a charity case or a burden to the people around them. That's usually what pushes a lot of older men into taking their own life. It's because they don't want to be a burden. They would rather walk off into the forest and let wolves eat them than continue to drain the resources of the tribe. We men are very f- we're built for that. So, the empty validation with no accomplishments is one of the worst things for us on the planet. We feel like a child. We feel like a charity case. We feel like a burden.

   22. CWChris Williamson36:23

       Isn't that a vicious cycle though, right? Because th- for guys who don't have any...... and women too, but we're talking about men, who don't have any successes or contributions worthy of praise derived from accomplishment.

   23. ASAdam Lane Smith36:43

       Hmm.

   24. CWChris Williamson36:43

       They're in a bind, because if you try and lead them with the carrot first, it sounds like pity, and they feel like a charity case, and if you try and tell them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, it sounds like you're being insensitive to the challenges that they're facing, and, you know, this is kind of the vicious cycle of things going well or things going badly. Everybody knows what it's like to have a period where, I don't know, you just got this Midas touch. Everything you do just happens to be perfect and, and, and you're getting up on time and going to sleep and all of your projects are going great and your friendships are fantastic and your health's on point. And then everyone knows what it's like to have a six-month period where you just get repeatedly kicked in the nuts. You know, like, I, I, I honestly shouldn't drive a car because I feel like this thing is gonna fucking explode as well. Uh, e- everything that I do seems to turn to shit, and the turn-to-shit crowd, it can last for a long time and they can feel like sort of there's no help coming for them, and it's really hard. Like, wha- how do you ... What's the intervention for those people who are kind of down on their luck? You want to provide this positive ideal that they can reach for whilst not denying the challenges that they're facing and not making them feel this undue pressure to go and try and achieve something which right now, at this moment, they've never been less capable of achieving because they've j- their nuts are two-dimensional because of how many times they've been kicked over the last couple of months.

   25. ASAdam Lane Smith38:14

       I hear you. Um, I think that the solution is what our ancestors would have been doing, which is that no man is meant to operate solo. Men are not meant to operate that. We're meant to operate in clusters of men working together in a tribe. I'm, I'm thinking tribes, gangs, groups, whatever it is. I, I don't think that a man operating solo is the answer. In fact, I think that's our problem. We men have disconnected from the male network that's supposed to be thriving all around us. Think of it this way: male networks from past to present have been a constant stream of solutions, data, information and understanding that transcends time and space. Every man everywhere feeds information across the network to get solutions. It's the reason that you can wear a shirt that some other man invented. It's the reason you and I know calculus or, or g- or trigonometry. It's the reason I understand attachment theory from a guy who created it 80 years ago, way before I was born. It, it's, it's so many pieces that have fed across time and space to us. Now, the male network is shattered. There's so many men like data nodes just blinking alone in the darkness, disconnected from the network. Reintegrating that network is the answer, because when a man is stuck, what he needs to be able to do is go to other men who have done it, who have thrived, who have opportunities, who have resources, who have power, men who can integrate with him, not as a charity case but, but as a shared bonding structure to achieve our goals together in parallel b- or in tandem. So it's unifying the male network so that we can thrive together again. The answer to male loneliness, male depression and male stuckness is not feminine intervention; it's masculine intervention. We ourselves need to save us.

   26. CWChris Williamson39:54

       Mm-hmm.

   27. ASAdam Lane Smith39:54

       And you don't bootstrap him, and you don't pat him on the back and say, "You're a good boy," and you don't say, "Go get your job done, son. You're failing." You say, "Let's find you a man who has solved this. Let's integrate you with him. He'll mentor you, will guide you. We do expect you to put in the effort. You will go through a training period. Here's where you're at. By the end of it, you will be strong. It is on you to find the drive, but we're not gonna let you quit." And then you push him and he eventually, he pushes himself. That's how men get through those portions. It's other men, and, and we don't have that right now.

6. 40:23 – 46:27

   Masculine Role Models are a Double-Edged Sword

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith40:23

   2. CWChris Williamson40:23

      Yeah. I, I think, you know, a big part of probably the internet space that I inhabit and the Rogans, Petersens, Hubermans, Jocko Willinks of the world, I think, you know, at least for me toward the end of my 20s, that very much was the surrogate patriarch that I needed to s- oh, okay, well, maybe you should tell the truth a little bit more and maybe you should stop sleeping around and maybe it is good for you to actually consider whether or not you're making the world a better place, and maybe you need to think about other people as opposed to just yourself, and perhaps money and status aren't the only things that are worthwhile pursuits. And you go, "Oh, my God." I- i- in retrospect, you think, how fucking retarded did you need to be that that was a genius insight, that that was a world-changing insight? And I, I get it, right? Okay, I was a, a late bloomer mentally. My prefrontal cortex was particularly slow. It was on satellite delay. But arriving there at least at some point is pretty good, but yeah, I, I get the sense that for a lot of people, the podcasts and Reddit threads and Substack blogs and authors and, uh, thinkers on X that they follow are in many ways giving them some version of a, a role model. But obviously, that's a double-edged sword because there is a vacuum for role models and they can suck in all variety of both good and bad and positive and negative influences. And, uh, from the outside especially, as we said before, if the only way that you're operating is okay, objective metrics of success, outward shows of, um, easily displayable, uh, accomplishments of what people are able to advertise most easily, well, that means that all of the shit that you probably care about the most, which is ... Uh, ultimately, everything comes back to your emotional state in any case because you want the status so you feel good, you want the money so you feel good, you want the girl so you feel good. Like, s- okay, we're focusing on feeling good, but if you sacrifice feeling good in order to try and achieve this thing or you make yourself...... Ill, or you damage your se- sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Or you've lied so much that you don't know who you are anymore, or you don't have any friends because you've fucked everybody over. Or you've spent so much time focusing on yourself that you've been too selfish to cultivate a network and now you don't know how to relate to anybody. All of these things. Yeah, well, you've sacrificed the thing you wanted, which was feeling good, for the thing which was supposed to get it, which was success. And yeah, this sort of roundabout vacuum of male role models means that a simple answer that is easily advertiseable is always going to be, uh, more sexy. It's gonna be more seductive. And, um, that is a branding and advertising problem. That is a, a, you know, a messaging issue because the slightly more complex, slightly more hard... And not hard as in you just need to work hard, but hard as in you need to open yourself up and you need to be able to face difficult emotions and you need to be able to regulate yourself and you're gonna have to take responsibility for things. That's really fucking ugly. It's way uglier than, "Find a high paying job and just go until your eyes bleed. You'll be fine, bro." Uh, that's like a much easier, that's a much easier solution, uh, but one that I think ultimately is going to lead guys to, like, beyond a place that they want to get to. They'll get to a place they want to get to and then they'll continue to just smash straight through it and end up on the other side.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith43:58

      I agree with that. I do. Um, I think that men also, though, crave the intimacy of other male brotherhood. You know, the reason that we have buddy cop movies, right, where they hate each other and they grow to love each other. The reason that military movies about forces m- move special forces teams and stuff working together. The way we see band of brothers and, and video games are teaching you to connect with other men and form that military group. The, the reason for that is male connection is vital to our wellbeing biochemically, reproductively, everything. We need other men to thrive and work and, and live. When my male cli- exactly like you explained, my male clients come in feeling like that. "I'm at the top of my game and I've never been more miserable. What do I do? I'll just keep working." Right? "I'll work twice as many hours. Instead of 90 hours, I'll figure out how to work 180 hours." A- and they just overwork to death 'cause it's all that's ever worked. But when we sit 'em down and say, "Okay, we're gonna build you male friendships that actually matter and we're gonna put women aside for a while, build male connections, even just friends, true trusted male brothers," that changes everything for them. So again, I think the answer here first is men. Men need to connect to men and remember how to be men together. What did... Okay, when they built Rome, they got together all the outcast men who were thriving e- in the- on their own alone, but pulled in the exiles, the unwanted avoidantly attached men. They built a society. Then they formed brotherhood and agreement and identity, and only then were they ready to integrate and bring women into their group because they said, "We need women in our group for, for society, but also to build something meaningful." Otherwise, it's a bunch of dudes just like sitting here and squatting in buildings. So let's bring the feminine in now that we've created safety and structure. I think that's what society is doing right now is we are building a new Rome, but digitally, globally. Men are connecting from outcasts and we are forming a new identity and society. But it has to be a meet to meet, shake hands, punch each other in the shoulder, maybe you fight a little bit and then you become buddies. But it has to be that integrated male brotherhood again to build masculine connection so that we can then provide it for ourselves, but also for the women. And that's what women are waiting for, I believe. The healthier women are waiting for that. We men need to build it for ourselves. Not for them, but so that we can be thriving and that requires secure attachment. It requires being able to understand that men even want that from you. Most men don't think other men want them as a friend. But meanwhile, most men are dying for a friend. So building that, I think it's gonna be everything going forward, Chris. I really

7. 46:27 – 52:18

   Why Do Women Choose Jerks Over Nice Guys?

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith46:27

      do.

   2. CWChris Williamson46:27

      The bad boy archetype persists because women are drawn to men who don't easily submit or bend to their will. In the modern age, these men are almost entirely avoidantly attached, meaning the masculine men available to women are also emotionally closed off.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith46:42

      More of what I'm talking about right there. Uh, masculine men have that juvenile, juvenile masculinity. So when the securely attached men wander off with securely attached women, what's left is anxiously attached men who women friend zone immediately 'cause his testosterone was way too low and he's gonna give in to raiders or anybody and just sell her off immediately so he doesn't get hurt, and avoidantly attached men who have the appearance of masculinity but ultimately fail emotional discipline because he doesn't emotionally bond with others and he's collapsing into his fear of relationships, that trauma that he hasn't actually healed. There's good reasons for men to not trust modern relationship structures. I get that. But not knowing how to correctly integrate with a woman and not thinking you're getting anything from a male-female bonding, that's a problem. So those men have not built themselves appropriately. Instead, they keep everyone at arm's length and then women are just aiming at them 'cause he's the most masculine man she's ever seen. They're seeking safety and stability from the masculine. That's, it's just proof of what we're talking about here today. As much as women may say that they are feminists, they are seeking masculine stability. And the more that we can provide that for them, the healthier we're gonna see them become on their side and that's good for us. We will be thriving.

   4. CWChris Williamson47:53

      Well, there's the opposite side as well, right? So you've got this other take. Men who constantly seek validation or approval are seen as weak and unattractive. This is why nice guys with anxious attachment style are instantly friend zoned by any woman they meet. The friend zone is almost exclusively caused by an anxious attachment style in a man. Women pity these men, look down on them as children, and also fear their secret expectations and emotional instability. That's a recipe for biological rejection.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith48:20

      And it is. Uh, a woman doesn't want to be the man in the relationship while you play the role of the supplicating woman who's hoping that you get validated. Women don't want a man who is less masculine than they are, because it means she has to go into a non-optimized state. Women can temporarily enter a masculine state, but it shreds their fertility, destroys their brain, destroys their organs, destroys everything in their body, and they die much earlier. And we're seeing a rise of cancer for women being in that group. Their stress levels are not meant to go out and stress, and then come home. Go out and stress, and live in constant stress, and take care of you. They build resentment. Previously, they were, they were willing to take that on. Now, they're not. Increasingly, since COVID, really, it just obliterated that, "Sure, I'll just be endlessly stressed every single day." Now, it's, "Why isn't someone taking care of me? Why isn't someone protecting me? Who's not doing their job?" And we're seeing that call to action. Anxiously attached men do not do that job. They wait to be told what to do. They wait on the sidelines. They hope someone will make them feel safe. They're trying to get safe. It's very hard to respect a man who is begging everyone around him to help him feel safe instead of picking up his spear and going out into the wilderness and hunting, growing, building, and then providing safety for others. I've explained this to my wife when we were much, much younger, and I remember she thought about it. She took it in. She said, "Wow, it sucks to be the man."

   6. CWChris Williamson49:40

      (laughs)

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith49:40

      And I said, "Well..." And I said, "Well, yeah, in some ways, it sucks to be the man." It's her. It's scary. Nobody's coming to rescue you. Maybe your brothers, if you form a connection. But yes, it does, and there's a tremendous payoff for us when we see our family thriving. We grow our legacy. We're loved and cared for. The, the paycheck we receive is love, care, intimacy, nurturing, and, and, and all of that, you know, "You have taken care of us, thank you." But them growing, them boosting, seeing them rise above you, that's our paycheck. Right? It's a very thankless job for us, and, and it's supposed to be, biochemically. But what we get in return usually is the love and caring, nurturing from a devoted woman. That's one thing that is missing in modern day as well.

   8. CWChris Williamson50:24

      "Despite modern culture pushing for softer, more emotionally expressive men, women overwhelmingly choose masculine men who exhibit, exhibit strength and assertiveness. A woman will take a masculine jerk over a nice guy every time."

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith50:37

      Right there. I mean, I, I, I said it myself right there. And, and that's it. Women... All of us are living in a collapsed society that we feel. It's just that our machines are keep... And our systems are keeping us running. We are already collapsed socially, and we are adapted to that. Until we fix that, we're not gonna get better.

   10. CWChris Williamson50:54

       Mm. Yeah, I... You had this other take, just a little bit of a pivot away from masculinity for a second, and I think this is so fucking true. I must have sent this to like five people earlier on today. "Your life does not need to be made easier. It needs to be simpler. Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge, but not complication." Fuck. Dude, that is so on the money. That's so correct. It's very similar to a take that me and Alex had a couple of years ago, which is, "There's no such thing as being overworked, only under rested." And the same here, that there's no such thing as a life which is too hard, only one which is too complex. And, uh, yeah, "Your life does not need to be made easier, it needs to be made simpler," is fucking great.

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith51:35

       Thank you. But it's... But... And, and it's true. We are very simple creatures with very simple needs. Now, we're trying to meet our needs in the wrong way. When we just go back, we understand what our needs are, we take care of them, suddenly we thrive. I love... You're not overworked, you're under rested.

   12. CWChris Williamson51:49

       Yeah.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith51:49

       That's absolutely 100%. Men are designed to face terror and pain and agony every day. Our ancestors faced so much worse than we could even comprehend right now. It's just that our lives are so complicated, it feels unlivable. When you streamline and simplify and you have a, a tribe, a c- a cluster, a securely attached group of friends, family, and, and partner who's doing that with you and everybody's simplifying, everything gets so much easier. So much easier.

8. 52:18 – 1:01:34

   Men are Trying to Protect Knowledge on Masculinity

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith52:18

   2. CWChris Williamson52:18

      What, what do you think are the areas of complication that are kind of hiding in people's lives that they could quite easily try to ratchet down a little bit?

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith52:31

      Mostly, it's just the places where we don't know. Something's missing. The knowledge gaps, right? "How... What do women want from me?" And then you make it endlessly complicated and none of it's right. For women, it's, "What do men want from me?" Endlessly complicated, miserable, and you're guessing. The biggest problem for humans is the times we spend guessing, and then throwing useless energy down the drain. It's getting... Again, the male solution network. It's getting the answers, and then applying them properly. That right there is 90% of the work. The other 10% is just kind of weeding out the time vampires, that you're not supposed to be doing things that are inefficient. But if you can understand how systems work, suddenly everything becomes very streamlined. You can say, "Oh, I'll just do that," and click, done.

   4. CWChris Williamson53:13

      Mm.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith53:13

      If you understand what a woman wants, you can do it, and all of a sudden you have your pick of partners. For women, same thing. You understand what men, men actually want from you and you provide it, m- men are lining up to marry you at that point. It's... Dating gets simple when you understand the system. Life gets simple when you understand all the systems. It's just systems within systems. That's all it is.

   6. CWChris Williamson53:35

      Yeah, I think you can kind of see this in, uh, doctor's visits, that the number one thing a patient doesn't want to hear from a doctor is, "We don't know what's wrong with you." And kind of the equivalent issue that you have here is, "There is a problem and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to get myself out of this challenge." So, it really is a skill issue in many ways, or I guess a knowledge issue that you then develop and, and turn into a skill issue. But yeah, the... There's, there's definitely an insight around human happiness is only really only able to emerge in the absence of uncertainty or in the presence of certainty. If you're uncertain about what's gonna happen, about how your actions are going to affect your environment and your future, if you don't know what tomorrow holds, if things seem...... chaotic and, and, and changeable and out of your control, I, I think it's almost impossible to feel happy because, well, how do you know that tomorrow is going to be worthy of happiness? Whereas if you feel like, "Okay, I'm capable, I'm competent. The challenges that life throw at me, I'm able to deal with," well, (sighs) even if tomorrow is a little bit more chaotic, I've probably got the answer to it. And again, it comes back to this spiral down and spiral up, that competence begets more competence and fragility begets more fragility, because each time you get kicked in the nuts and it hurts, you think, "Oh, fuck. Like, that re- I really hope that doesn't happen again." As opposed to if you manage to dodge it a couple of times or you learn how to avoid it, think, "Ah. Actually, I think I can probably deal with that." And you get better at commanding your environment.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith55:12

      Yes. I, I was talking to, um, Mo, Mo Gawdat recently. He's the former CEO of Google X. And he has a book out called Solve For Happy: The Equation Of Actual Human Happiness. And in it, he says that your re- reality has to align with your expectations, or your expectations need to be a little bit lower, even, than reality so then you're fully happy 'cause your expectations are exceeded. Now, to do that, you have to have a reality that actually is livable to you, and many men are living in a reality that feels unlivable because they don't know what to do to, to achieve a, a livable, sustainable reality. For example, they don't know how to find a, a partner and date successfully. Most men want one wife, two kids, little house, and a steady job. That's mostly what they're looking for, and that's denied to many men nowadays. Or they don't know how to reach it. But their expectations, even that, reality is below the minimal human expectations. So, they have to be empowered, and I hate that word but it's, it's useful here today. They have to at least be empowered by the men in their life to build the skills and knowledge they need to reach reasonable expectations, and then reality's a little bit better than that because they keep growing. Then they're happy. So men need skills, and they need answers. And those are two things that are handed down by other men through time and space. It's the reason you and I don't have to reinvent the internet or reinvent fire or reinvent the wheel. It's because it's been handed down to us from other men through all of time and space. You, Chris, are a, a collector of all the human knowledge that's been missed and lost, and you're pulling it in like this to one podcast, where all the men in the world, and women, can come and gather that knowledge from your podcast. That's why you have one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Because you're collecting the most useful information. Some that's new and some that's old but lost. And then, people are taking that information and applying it in their life, but they're not just saying, they're not just doing it, they're teaching it to their kids, they're teaching it to their friends, they're teaching it to their family. That knowledge is being restored. The male network from people like you is now being restored. So that's the growth that we're seeing. That's the enhancement.

   8. CWChris Williamson57:16

      It's crazy, man, the ripples that happen, um, you know, I think about the stuff that I listened to in my 20s, the, a- and the impact that it had on me, and I can even remember the drives that I was taking, the, the service stations that I would be at en route to some modeling job or some club night that I was running or, or wherever I was going, and I'd be listening to some podcast episode and there'd be some insight that would come up. And I, that's still with me now, you know, these very formative experiences. And in some ways it's beautiful because you think, "Wow, we've democratized, as you said, sort of lost insights that people didn't know and they didn't even know existed." And then on the other side you think, "Fuck, like, how, how sad an indictment of the modern world that we've needed to do this individually, that this isn't the sort of information that was taught to us when we were kids, that we didn't get from some broader community, some pan-generational, uh, homestead that everybody would've been living in." I know that you have a theory that, uh, separate houses for grandparents, parents, and kids, is a, like a PSYOP, uh, meant to keep fucking mortgage rates high and, uh, like everybody under the boot of property companies. I, I don't fully disagree with you either. Um, but, you know, it, there is a little bit of me that thinks, like, "Shit, should it, should it have really been on me to have learned that at 29? Is that really kind of how it should have come about?" Um, so yeah. It, it's, it is great that we've got this democratized world of, of really insightful content that hopefully helps people make their lives better and then they can teach other people and it makes the world better and so on and so forth. But, uh, yeah, it is a, a little bit of a sad comment, I think, on how bereft and, and, uh, vacant a lot of this advice is for most people.

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith59:10

      It's not fair.

   10. CWChris Williamson59:12

       Me and you shouldn't have a job. That's a way to put it.

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith59:14

       Yeah. No, we shouldn't.

   12. CWChris Williamson59:14

       Me and you should not have a job.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith59:17

       We shouldn't, and that's true. Um, I think of the burning of the Library of Alexandria and how much knowledge was lost there. I think of the sack of Rome and how much knowledge was lost there. I think of all throughout history how knowledge is lost again and again and again. Tribes wiped out, elders killed before they could pass on information. I think there has always been a warrior class and there's always been a sage class or a shaman class to pass on knowledge and make sure it's correctly s- passed on. I think you and I are in that second class. You and I are not warrior class going out and dominating and killing. We are the, we are the vehicles by which information is passed on to make sure it doesn't die. That's your job and my job. You br- gathering information through your podcast and out dispersing it. Me having coaching clients come in and training them one-on-one and then sending them with their families so he's a better father, better husband. And then that knowledge gets passed down for multiple generations so that future generations don't have that problem. Right now, we've got AI coming in. Maybe that will help us integrate this knowledge and make sure fewer knowledge pieces are lost. We need to protect our knowledge better, but men like you and I, that's why we exist. We shouldn't have to, but it's chaos. It's destruction. I- i- it's societal decay. It's whatever you wanna call it. We need to exist for that reason, but it's not fair. Men and women shouldn't have to be relearning the basics of how to pair bond, the basics of how to get food to eat, the basics of how to even find or build a family. We shouldn't be bereft of our families. We shouldn't have been ripped away and orphans. We are, all of us, now orphans, Chris, and we shouldn't be endless waves of generations of orphans. We should be families and we should be integrated groups. I believe we will be again. People like you and I have to keep pushing for that. And everybody's who's listening to this right now, they have a place to part, uh, uh, a play a part in this.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:00:57

       Sell your house. Buy a farm.

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith1:01:00

       Yeah, but-

   16. CWChris Williamson1:01:00

       Put everybody on it.

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith1:01:02

       ... give your buddy a hug. Give your buddy a hug and say something real, pass on some information. "Hey, man, I've been in a rough place, but this information helped me, maybe it will help you someday too." "Have you learned anything recently that was really helpful to you that I would need to know?" Passing information and knowledge instead of talking about sports or the weather, or some hot girl, or some porn star. Okay, "What knowledge have you learned lately and what was useful about it? Here's what I've learned. Let's continue building knowledge together, you and me, and be men against this world." That's what men out there listening right now can do, and women too.

9. 1:01:34 – 1:09:25

   Why are Men Running From Themselves?

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith1:01:34

   2. CWChris Williamson1:01:34

      We are comforting men to death. The modern world's obsession with comfort and safety softens men and strips them of their drive to overcome hardship and prove their worth. To reduce male suicide rates, we need to give them challenges they can achieve and goals to reach.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith1:01:48

      Do you want to hear something really horrifying? Like, really horrifying? You're gonna throw up. (laughs)

   4. CWChris Williamson1:01:53

      Okay. I'll try not to.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith1:01:55

      In America, and this is at the start of COVID, it's worse now, in America, the average American man spends eight years of his life in escapist entertainment, running away from his actual life. Eight years of his life, of, w- worth of hours, spread across his life, is spent on escaping from his pain. We are comforting men to death and they don't want it, but it's all they think that they have. So all the porn, all the video games, everything... I'm not against, like, video games and fun, but men are running away 'cause they don't know how to escape from their pain. And when we don't show them how to build a life that's meaningful, right? You and I talked about this, I think it was four years ago, our first ever podcast together.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:02:35

      Mm-hmm.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith1:02:35

      Right? If you give a man a purpose and the ability to reach it, he will crawl over broken glass with a smile, right?

   8. CWChris Williamson1:02:42

      Mm-hmm.

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith1:02:43

      I said it then and I say it again today, if men have a purpose, and solutions, and strength, they will endure anything, but he has to have that. And giving him sedation and numbing, and doping him up, and just comforting him right now, kills him. It doesn't give him value.

   10. CWChris Williamson1:03:01

       Have I done my male sedation hypothesis thing? Have I told you about that?

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:05

       No. Please, please.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:03:06

       Okay. That's an interesting one. Um, so there's a effect called young male syndrome, which is when you have a high volume of unmatched men in a society. They tend to become disruptive, they push over granny and they set shit on fire, and th- they're not really all that good for, for, uh, societal cohesion and, and, and peace and stuff like that. Uh, Portugal, in the 1800s, uh, I don't know why, but there was a sex ratio imbalance. And the way that they fixed it was the first son of every household was allowed to marry, and all subsequent sons were put onto, uh, galleon ships, "You can go and explore the, the new world. Go, go forth, like, what a wonderful opportunity. Also, don't fuck shit up at home because if w- we left you here, we know that you would be pretty disgruntled and unhappy." So throughout history, if you've got a high number of unmatched m- men, especially young men, they tend to be poorly domesticated. You know this data, testosterone drops when you get into a relationship, it drops again when you have kids, risk-taking goes down, aggression goes down, et cetera, et cetera. Being an aggressive guy is not good for trying to raise a child.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:19

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson1:04:19

       And in that way, you could see women as domesticating men. You could m- m- maybe look at them in a roundabout way as, like, doing, at least hormonally, they kind of domesticate men.

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:28

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson1:04:29

       Um, so there's a question to be asked which is, if we're seeing some of the highest rates of sexlessness that we ever have in high population density areas, why is there not more antisocial behavior? Why are we not seeing more young male syndrome? Uh, you know, for all that adolescents that show on Netflix sort of tried to lay at the feet of, um, rebuffed, uh, unhappy, bitter males, boy in that show, um, the evidence just isn't there. And there's a, a couple of papers out, uh, one of which is where is all the in-cell violence at, um, which i- i- and it's a great question. This isn't me calling for it, but I'm, you know, you have to ask, if this is the sort of thing that kind of makes sense just philosophically, cognitively, like most people can think, "Yeah, if guys didn't really have much to be peaceful for, they'd stop being peaceful." Um, and on top of that, you've got a ton of historical evidence of when this happens over and over again, uh, uh, throughout history, why are we not seeing it? And it's my belief that men are kind of being sedated out of their status seeking and reproductive behavior with video games and porn. And this male sedation hypothesis basically squares the circle of high levels of male loneliness and sexlessness with young male syndrome. Like, how do these two things coexist? And it's because men are kind of being anesthetized out of this more action and aggression based behavior. Now, to bring it back to what we were talking about before, um, yes, men do need to have hardship, they need to have challenge, they need to have goals and the ability to achieve them, um, but one of the interesting questions is, is a useless but safe man better than a dangerous and aggressive man? And this is a, a value trade that we've kind of made at the moment in the world. And I would say, maybe a tiny bit on average, I would, like, 51/49, I would rather have useless men that aren't blowing everything up. But, fuck me, that's a bad trade. If the choice is between useless and dangerous, then that's not really a trade that I wanna make, and the only reason that this works, the only reason that I can even make that value judgment is that we're largely in a time of peace. Because as soon as something happened where you'd need to galvanize these men into being remotely useful in a-... Partially kinetic way, you're fucked, because you got the- I mean, you've seen these on street interviews. "Would you fight for your country? Would you fight for your- Someone's invade- would you fight for your- would you, would you go to war?" "Oh, no. I, you know, my gluten intolerance could not, I could not stand ... Oh, no. I'm not fighting. The man keeps me down." Wha- whatever version of this, and many of the anti-war fucking sentiments are pretty accurate, but useless men versus aggressive men, young male syndrome being sedated by porn, video games and screens, um, I think is, uh, I think it's worthy of further investigation.

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07:42

       I 100% agree with you. Um, I think coupled with that is men being raised to be good boys by a generation of women, four generations that have nannied them to death, so they're trained to be afraid of stepping out and even being boys at all. I grew up in the California public school system where we were told by the authority figures that we were worthless for being boys, and like you said earlier here today, only girls are good, be more like the girls. We were told that nakedly. So we've got a programming of that. Men are also more separated and isolated from each other than they've ever been, as we've talked about here today. So the, the young male problem gets different when every man feels like he's utterly alone, and if he steps one foot out of line, the nanny state will squash him, and he has no brothers, no friends, no nothing. So then yes, 100% he's gonna, he's gonna numb himself into oblivion and the corporations are happy and governments are happy to provide that. But you're right. Pacifism like that, or sedation or neutering only works if you neuter every single man on the entire planet, because we've seen that what happens in cultures when one man with group of men sedate and collapse, other men come in and the other women welcome them in and say, "Oh, good. Finally, men are here." And it just swarms in and then you crush that population of men. I think that we're in an artificial bubble of fake peace right now. I don't think that it's real peace at all.

   18. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

       Mm.

   19. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:59

       And I think that we're, I think it's about to pop. I think we're going to wake up fairly soon. I think we've got maybe a decade, maybe two maximum before things are unsustainable and just the number of, of things that are getting ready to explode in our faces. But there's a lot of things happening right now that men are going to be very, very needed, and I think that the ones who can get out of sedation need to, and the ones who can't are probably going to become casualties, unfortunately.

10. 1:09:25 – 1:15:03

    Why Marriages Need a Purpose

    1. ASAdam Lane Smith1:09:25

    2. CWChris Williamson1:09:25

       We've all heard the US divorce rate is 50%. This number is hammered into us over and over until we're afraid to get married. Why even try if it's just a coin toss? It's not a coin toss. That 50% stat is a lie.

    3. ASAdam Lane Smith1:09:38

       It is. Uh, so the 50% stat is based on all marriages, including people who've gone through seven marriages, and every marriage is counted into that 50%, by the way. So you're actually looking at perhaps about 65 to 70% of first marriages succeeding, and 30 to 35% failing. Now, that's still a big number, but we can't pretend that there's no variables there. For example, a couple who prays together every single day reports a less than 1% risk by the stats from what we've seen of having a divorce. They also report incredible raised happiness. We also see when you have arranged marriages, again, you take the arranged marriages, you pull the people apart and interview them separately, they both report massively increased happiness and massively decreased risks of divorce. So there are many variables to pla- at play here. Secure attachment is a big one, 'cause you can only build a healthy, thriving marriage in secure attachment. I've had to show people that. I've got a new course out for that. But if you don't know how marriages work, you go into it blindly, you can't talk about problems, everyone's alone, they're suspicious, they're scared, he checks out, she's angry and resentful, it's a recipe for divorce. We are building divorces right now. We're not building marriages. We're building flawed families that are desti- des- destined and designed to explode in people's faces.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:10:53

       Mm-hmm.

    5. ASAdam Lane Smith1:10:54

       It's awful. When you know what to do, your risks of divorce drop below 1%.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:10:59

       Now, presumably-

    7. ASAdam Lane Smith1:11:00

       So people out there who think it's 50%, nah.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:11:02

       Presumably, the people who pray together, it's not the act of praying together. Surely you can't bifurcate people who prayed together from, "I am of faith, therefore I go to church on Sunday, therefore I have a particular demeanor, therefore I have these cultural artifacts that I'm following, therefore I've got the pressure of the people around me. None of my friends are getting divorced because divorce would be looked down on in the wider community as well, and we know that if a woman's friend gets divorced, her likelihood of divorce goes up," et cetera, et cetera. So I'm trying to split out, and the same thing goes for the arranged marriage, I don't know whether arranged marriage is the solution or whether it's the sort of culture that engenders arranged marriage, the sort of culture that engenders a couple that would pray together on an evening time. Have you got any idea about how a, a secular person who doesn't want to move to Delhi or currently isn't of faith, uh-... what's the sort of broader lesson that they're supposed to take from that?

    9. ASAdam Lane Smith1:11:59

       Yes, absolutely. Um, let's pick that apart, 'cause you're right, people who are praying every day are probably gonna be more religious. But people who are praying together as a couple every single day, the vast majority of people who only pay lip service to whatever their religion is, well if they're paying lip service, they're not doing their prayers consistently, and they're not doing them every day. In fact, what you see when you talk to most individuals is one person's highly religious, the other refuses to participate. They're not praying together as a couple. So if they're praying together as a couple, actually that's taking their religion seriously, which means they have a built-in mission that they can unite toward as a couple, so a built-in purpose. I- I- I talk to people about the five different purposes that a couple can and should have. There's many things that we need to focus on, but marriage should have a purpose. You don't get married to give each other good feelings till one of you dies. You get married so that you can fulfill a purpose together in a uniform fashion. You build together and it matters. And we have biochemistry that backs that up with vasopressin bonding. If it's your kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, crafting, there's so many things you can do. But having a unitive purpose, and then you- an agreed set of right and wrong, so principles, mission and principles united, and then you're- you're sharing together and opening and being personal together about your desires, your needs, and your sadness, and your prayers, and you're actually having that experience and sharing it together, that's the unifying purpose. So it's not religion itself that brings you the 1%. It's all of those factors: purpose, connection, shared culture, shared right and wrong, and then being open and transparent with each other about your hurts, your sadness, your fears, and your hopes and dreams as well. And doing that is what secular people can and should be doing. What is the purpose of your relationship that you'll be working toward lifelong? What is the culture, the agreed right and wrong values that you will share and operate under? What is your marriage contract that you're actually signing? How will you act toward each other? Not a prenup of how we'll get divorced, I agree with those actually, but a larger marriage conduct, uh, contract of how we will conduct ourselves. How will we live? What will we do? What are we achieving? And then from that springs, how will we speak to each other? Will we be personal? When will- will we share information freely? Will we exchange our joys, our hopes, our sorrows, our fears? I just watched a good friend get married recently. He's an Orthodox, Russian Orthodox. I'm Catholic, so we, like, we fight like cats and dogs but we love each other. And the priest handed him a cup of wine and said, "You will drink this wine together because it symbolizes the joy of life but also the sorrow, the pain, and the agony, and you will drink it together for the purpose of achieving what God has set you to do." And they drank it together to symbolize that. We're setting people up for, "Marriage will be a joyful, hedonistic experience, and if it's not, find another person. Just dust 'em off, toss 'em out the window, find another one on Tinder." What is the purpose? What are your values? What are you achieving together? And are you being truly honest and naked in front of each other? That's secure attachment, by the way, and if you can build that, even if you're not securely attached, build the connection, that's what sec- secular people can be doing to get that 1%.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:15:00

        Mm. Very good. Very good. Yeah, it's, um ...

11. 1:15:03 – 1:21:44

    We Need to Be More Serious and Earnest

    1. CWChris Williamson1:15:03

       I've got this, I'm on this flex at the moment thinking a lot about seriousness. Seriousness and, and earnestness as well. Uh, you could say, um, the bravery to take your emotions seriously w- m- not a bad definition for earnest. Uh, kind of, um, truthful vulnerability, uh, would be maybe another way to do it. There's a lot tied up in honesty and stuff as well. Um, increasingly I'm seeing people who are very unserious about stuff. And I realized this (laughs) at a, a bachelor party a few years ago, and, um, (laughs) we were playing shuffleboard, uh, on the sand-covered thing, and there was two groups. There was one group of guys on the right-hand side, and they were, uh, mostly the dudes that I wasn't familiar with, so familiar with at, at the bachelor party, and they were having a great time, and they were, uh, you know, tossing it around and playing and, like, moving the little pucks about and stuff when people weren't looking, and they were- they were having a wonderful time. Then if you looked at our table, we'd separated into two separate groups, we were whispering into each other's ears, talking about what strategies we wanted to do. We were discussing the best way to hold the puck and push it and stuff like that. Now, look, of the two tables, I was on the one that was most fitting for me. I'm the sort of person that wants to, that takes things, like pursuits like that seriously, and there's no real sort of better or worse way to do it. Certainly not when it comes to shuffleboard at a fucking bachelor party. But when it comes to your relationship, I feel like that's something that you should be on my table and not on the other table about. Uh, because there's a sort of, like, flippantness to that. It- it- it- you're not taking the care and attention, um, it kind of smacks of one foot being out of the door a lot of the time, that, "Ah, you know, if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't, I'm not trying to transcend myself too much here. This isn't really all that important to me. And it's kind of important to me, but it's, you know, there's other stuff that I've got that's going on," or whatever. And maybe that's just a, uh, m- maybe that's an entire cohort of people who can all get into relationships together and their relative relationship is the third most important thing that they have in their life, but I would guess that for a lot of people that listen to this show, and certainly for me, I- I fully intend on my future marriage being, like, the most important thing that I have. I want it to make everything that I've done before that pale into insignificance and look like a shallow, desperate need for recognition from people who f- uh, are 1/1000 as important as the one that's asleep above us in the bed and the person that's next to me. Like, that- that kind of speaks to me, and again, maybe this is simply because I haven't yet been married and encountered the- the challenges therein, um, but that to me seems like a very uncommon...... Type of approach to having a relationship that, in popular culture, a lot of it is sort of confluence. You know, i- i- it's, uh, for as long as you can benefit me, for as long as this is fun. Like, is this fun? This relationship's not fun anymore. Uh, it's not, y- you know, well, fuck me, there's a lot of different contributing factors to wellbeing and satisfaction and flourishing than moment-to-moment fun. And, yeah, I mean, relationships can and almost certainly do break up because they're insufficiently fun, but like, is that really the m- highest point of contribution that you and your partner have got for each other? I don't know. I just, I, there's something around this, the lack of seriousness with which people sort of take to relationships, easy i- easy come, easy go, transactional, transient, that whole world is just, it's kind of becoming old. I'm kind of getting bored by that.

Episode duration: 1:22:34