15 Harsh Psychology Truths - Adam Lane Smith | Modern Wisdom Podcast 310

1. 0:00 – 4:06

   Intro

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith0:00

      Men would rather lift weights than go to therapy. Well, yeah, 'cause that makes them feel powerful. Uh, one of the number things when men are depressed that I, I encourage them to do is start lifting weights, 'cause you can see the physical changes in your body and you feel powerful again. You say, "I can make this change happen. Well, then I can go make that change happen."

   2. CWChris Williamson0:20

      (wind blowing) What makes you a voice of authority on harsh psychology truths?

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith0:25

      Well, I've spent a lot of time around people who are messed up. Um, no, actually, I am a licensed psychotherapist here in the United States.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:31

      (laughs)

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith0:32

      Nothing I'm gonna say is gonna be any healthcare advice, but I've been practicing for years and years. I've worked in correctional settings. I've worked with inmates in for the death penalty for severe crimes. I've worked in low-income, uh, clinics, treating families that no one else is going to treat. I got a lot of the most severe cases put on my plate. My specialty is post-traumatic stress disorder and attachment theory, and especially the way those two things intercede. So when I talk about psychology truths, that's what I'm speaking to, is my personal experience.

   6. CWChris Williamson1:02

      It just happens to be that lots of the truths you've learned are also harsh.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07

      Unfortunately, yes. Yeah. The truth can be harsh when you hear it. It's good to use it, but it can be harsh to burst people's bubble.

   8. CWChris Williamson1:16

      You are going to use the word attachment a lot. So, uh, b- the way that this came about, you've posted a fantastic Twitter thread, which will be linked in the show notes below, and everyone can go and see 10 times the amount of harsh truths than we're gonna get through in this episode. Um, but one of the words that's gonna come up a lot is attachment. Can we define our terms before we get started? What is attachment?

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith1:37

      Absolutely. That was a question I got a lot during that thread. Attachment is the way that two human beings securely connect to other, to each other. Um, it's the belief that someone will care for you, that someone will put up with you, that someone genuinely wants to help you, and that if you make a mistake, the other person's going to give you an opportunity to correct that mistake. It's the belief that your relationships are secure enough that they can't be just blown up by accident, and that other people aren't trying to exploit you. Healthy attachment is built on love, it's buil- built on mutual sharing, and it's built on understanding. So if I hurt you, you're gonna give me an opportunity to say, "Adam, that really hurt me. You know, I, this is what I need from you going forward so we can continue that relationship." Um, and we're not trying to exploit each other and get everything out of each other that we can, we're, we're trying to go forward so that both of us are benefiting mutually. Even if we over-give to the other person, it's fine, 'cause we trust they'll do the same for us. Someone with an attachment issue, the fundamental belief underlying that is that they are not worthy of love, that there is something deeply wrong with them deep down on the inside, and that everyone else can see it, but they have no idea what it is. So they can never let that out. They can never share anything inside of them with other people, and they're just going to be stuck in a series of trying to earn love from other people, earn approval from other people, and earn so much that that other person will read their mind, figure out what they need, and then do it out of gratitude, without ever learning who you really are on the inside. That's detachment. That's what I call detachment. Um, it's not something that's very well studied. There's very few experts doing it. I'm one of the few people in the United States really covering this topic. Another one is Dr. Robert Glover. He's a genius, surpassing my work. Um, but it's, it's, it's something that needs to be studied, because this attachment underlies so much of mental health. And we treat mental health from the disease model more than we do from a symptomatology model. So instead of looking at depression and saying, "This person has depression. That's a disease. We need to fix the disease," I would look at depression and say, "What, what is that growing out of? What purpose does that serve? And what's the underlying issue?" In my case, it's almost always attachment.

   10. CWChris Williamson3:47

       Got you. That's interesting. Yes, we're going to go through attachment a lot. So let's get into it. We can do the first one. I've, uh, curated a list of m- some of my favorites from that tweet list, and we're gonna get through as many as we can. And like I say, if the, uh, listeners want to play along at home, they can go and check out the full tweet for the, uh, the DVD extras and the behind-the-scenes

2. 4:06 – 9:58

   Manipulating the Male Sex Drive

   1. CWChris Williamson4:06

      stuff.

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith4:06

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson4:06

      So the first one, "Most women are disgusted when they finally learn how the male sex drive works. Then they test to see if it's true, and when it is, they start to like the new power they hold."

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith4:19

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson4:20

      How does the male sex drive work? How do they test if it's true? What's the power?

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith4:24

      (inhales deeply) So the male sex drive works on stimulation. It works specifically on external stimulation. Um, you and I, we see an attractive woman, we often become aroused. We see her doing something... This is, right? This is how pornography works. You see an attractive woman you don't even know, and you become aroused. Now you are aroused, and you need to relieve that arousal. And then your brain starts checking off lists. "Okay, how can I relieve this arousal in a way that is least socially damaging?" So we go (laughs) through the checklist. You and I could see two rocks together and say, "Hey, that kinda looks like breasts."

   7. CWChris Williamson4:57

      (laughs)

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith4:57

      And then we start thinking about how, "Well, okay, when can I get back home to my wife to take care of this?" Um, that's how the male sex drive typically works. It's a little more nuanced than that, but, but typically, we see something or hear something. We become aroused. We need to relieve it. We find a way to relieve it. Kinda like monkeys. Um, the female sex drive typically does not work that way. Now, you've got hormonal differences throughout the month, but just looking at an, at a general overview, the way the female sex drive tends to work is built on emotional intimacy. So a female sex drive, a, a woman will become attached to a man, or, or woman, or whatever it may be. Um, they become attached to a person, and then they experience sexual feelings toward that person. From an evolutionary standpoint, this makes sense, because we, 10,000 years ago, hunting mammoths in the Neolithic age, we're gonna g- try to populate our seed to as many women as we can. Women need to be very selective, because having a child during that difficult time was going to... It's, it's a huge risk and a huge resource investment. So they're going to look for the best partner, who has the best qualities, who's going to stay and be securely attached, attachment, um...... and then their sex drive will activate toward that person, and they will want to engage in sexual relations with that person.

   9. CWChris Williamson6:11

      So that's not just the cultural phenomenon or even kind of the front brain phenomenon that we, as modern humans, understand that women have, the, the, um, the way that they're able to step into their own programming and say, "Well, I, I can't sleep with him on the first date. I'm not a slut." Uh, all of the, all of the cognitive reasons.

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith6:32

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson6:32

       But what you're saying-

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith6:32

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson6:32

       ... is that there's actually a more source code, a baser level of this, which actually is, uh, acts as a gatekeeper to arousal for women that doesn't permit them to be aroused until some man has crossed this threshold. It's so fascinating how a lot of the cultural artifacts and the behavioral, um, uh, ways that we operate are just weird projections of what the genes wanted us to do in any case. Isn't that am- isn't that amazing?

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith7:04

       It's wonderful. So I, I practice evolutionary psychology, it's where I get a lot of my basis from, and it, it blows people's minds when you share these things with them and say, "Okay, 10,000..." Our brains aren't meant for modern day cubicle world and therapy world, our brains are meant for 10,000 years ago, Neolithic age, were barely discovering that if you eat corn and poop it out, new gor- new corn will grow next year.

   15. CWChris Williamson7:24

       (laughs)

   16. ASAdam Lane Smith7:25

       Barely figuring that out. That's what our brains are meant for. They're not meant for this modern day, "Okay, I have a condom." That's not really how it works. And the female sex drive is built to keep them and their children in the species alive. They really are the sex gatekeepers in that regard. Um, now that tracks down to what the woman believes she is worth. So if she has attachment issues and believes she's worth dirt, she might have sex on that first date with multiple partners, just desperately trying to get the men, earn their approval, earn their attention. Um, so if you have a cultural-

   17. CWChris Williamson7:56

       S- sex is then used as a tool, it's used as a bait.

   18. ASAdam Lane Smith8:00

       Right. So if you have a whole culture of women with attachment issues and they're driving the value of sex down through the floor, well, I'll leave that to your imagination.

   19. CWChris Williamson8:08

       Yeah. Okay. So they learn how the male sex drives works, they're dischi- wha- uh, are, are women disgusted-

   20. ASAdam Lane Smith8:14

       (sighs)

   21. CWChris Williamson8:14

       ... when they find out that men are, are so kind of shallowly turned on?

   22. ASAdam Lane Smith8:18

       They don't... Typically, when I work with them, they don't believe that. Um, so I worked with a lot of couples and I would explain this to the female partner and she'd say, "No, there's no way. A man... Two rocks? A man couldn't see two rocks and be attre- No." And then she'd look at him and he's sitting there like... (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson8:33

       (laughs)

   24. ASAdam Lane Smith8:33

       And, and she starts to realize, "Okay, wow, this actually may be true." And then they'll go home for a week, and then they come back the next week and she's like, she'll say, "Oh my gosh, uh, you were so right. Like, yeah, that is how he works, I'm realizing it." And then they start to realize, "Wait a minute, that's how he works. I can just like that. All I gotta do is flash a little skin at him and I have al-" And then they start picking that up. A lot of women who go into sex work, um, go into strip clubs and whatnot, they fee- they report feeling tremendously empowered. Part of that is because they learn very quickly how the male sex drive works and they can just boom like that. If they want, they want an- that guy to drop 10 grand, well, they can do it, um, and they can make those men approve of them, get that approval. For them, it's an instant win button. They just hit the bu- they flash a little skin, they hit the button, he, he comes over to her. Women perceive male sexual atten- attention as love and affection, 'cause again, that's what they would be doing. If they were giving you sex, it would be giving you love and attention and saying, "You are a good partner. I want you." When a man gives sexual attention, it's like, "Hey, I need something right now. You're the best," you know. Um. (laughs) That's how they perceive it. So they're perceiving it as that love and affection. So, uh, it leads to all kinds of problems. But yeah, it, it gives women tre- a tremendous sense of control. When they can push a button, anytime they need affection and validation, they know how to push that button. And that, I've seen that improve marriages tenfold.

3. 9:58 – 15:15

   Why Women Divorce Men

   1. CWChris Williamson9:58

      70% of divorces are initiated by women. But as a couple's therapist, I've never seen even one divorce where the husband didn't have attachment issues.

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith10:08

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson10:08

      How do those manifest?

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith10:09

      Yeah. So the 70% statistic, you can pull that off online. Um, roughly 70% of divorces are initiated by women.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:16

      Actually, why do you think that is?

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith10:19

      Uh... (sighs) You know, it's interesting. Um, men with attachment issues, they tend to just stick around until they can find something better. Um, but a lot of men don't. A lot of men just sit and just coast or sit and stew, and they think, "This is the best I'll ever get." Um, women, as they have children, a lot of women typically, if both partners come in with attachment issues, neither one believes that they're worthy of love and they think that they have to keep everything secret and locked away, and then just earn love. When the woman has a child, she starts to crave for the husband to be attached to that child. And when she finds that he's not able to, she sees the child growing up, being anxious, being stressed, saying, "I wish daddy spent more time with me." And she starts pushing him to do that. But they, they joined when they both couldn't do that. So it shifts her attachment a little bit, and it starts to make her resent the husband and resent how he treats her. She puts more pressure on him, he starts feeling attacked, he puts more pressure back on her and attacks without understanding what she's doing or why. Um, oftentimes, I treat with a lot of partners where the women are in their late 30s, early 40s, and the marriage just detonates 'cause the children hit, you know, 13, 14 years old, and she figures it's, uh, they're old enough, they could survive a divorce. "I can't do this anymore. He's hurting the kids. I'm emotionally hurting them by not being attached to them. He's yelling at me. I'm out of here." And the guy's like, "Whoa. What are you doing? Hey, we were fine. Uh, nothing has changed. I'm the same person I was at the beginning." That's usually what I see is, is the woman tries and tries. I've written a book, um, I'll plug that, called Exhausted Wives, Bewildered Husbands, where the woman has tried everything she can to make him change, and he is completely bewildered about why she's upset. Um, that, that's the most common dynamic and, and divorce dynamic and attachment dynamic that I've seen is where the woman just tries and runs herself to death, and he will not change 'cause he doesn't understand what she's trying to do. Um-

   7. CWChris Williamson12:07

      What's the way around that? How can men be more perceptive and women be more effective?

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith12:12

      It's not even that. Um-... again, going back to 10,000 years ago, men tend to be active creatures. We act upon our environment. Um, we go out and we hu- we f- see a problem, we go out and we hunt. We, you know, everyone's hungry, "I'm gonna go hunt a mammoth." We see a problem, we find the solution. That tends to be what we do. Women tend to be reactive creatures, um, they, they see, they see something here and they react to it. They s- they see us going out and acting, they react to us and figure out ways to, to embrace that and utilize that. They react to their environment, um, just typically, as a general overview. Um, women can almost never change men in that regard. You pressuring him can almost, will almost never change him, and saying, "I need to feel this," um, it just doesn't work. That's why a lot of men, once the divorce is initiated, suddenly he panics and he says, "Okay, now I need to change." He sees a problem and now he's trying to figure out a solution.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:06

      There's something to face.

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith13:06

       Right, there's something to face. He doesn't get it when it's like, "Well, you sh- just talk to the kids more." He's like, "Why? Why would I do that?"

   11. CWChris Williamson13:13

       (laughs)

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith13:13

       "That's not what we do in this family." He doesn't act until his environment changes and he sees a problem and it forces him to act. So a lot of the work is educate... When I did couples counseling, a lot of it was educating the men on why what they're doing is a problem, why there is a problem, and then how to solve that problem. That was a lot of what it was. It, it... And then the female partner typically, once he changes, she begins to respond to his new changes, as he's providing more emotional intimacy, 'cause the attachment piece, um, the female sex drive works on emotional intimacy, so when you see a partner get, a couple get together and they have all this sex at the beginning, and then the sex tapers off to zero and they have it once a month or every other year kind of thing, that's because the female sex drive has now dried up, because hers is built on long-term emotional intimacy after the initial short burst. So that, that, she, she responds to him. So the way to fix that... When I said I've, I've never seen any couple with where the man didn't have an attachment, I might've been exaggerating a little bit there for Twitter, um, but the vast, vast majority of couples I have ev- ever worked with, the man has an attachment issue. The female often does too, but I've never seen a woman, even a, even a really broken woman, I have never seen her divorce a healthy man. I've never seen that in all my couples counseling years. I don't know if that's because women just innately recognize that value, so they'll continue to respond to him until they change. Um, I have seen it where the man had sort of attachment issues and had autistic features, um, and wasn't fully equipped to engage with those emotional aspects. I have seen that, but even then, it wasn't divorce. It was just, she was, th- the female partner would rage out of control with these emotions and he would just not know what to do, but there was actually no talk of divorce. So-

   13. CWChris Williamson15:01

       Mm-hmm.

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith15:02

       Yeah, that's, that's typically where that comes in. If the man is incapable of forming those emotional connections and feeding that emotional intimacy, eventually the female partner gets exhausted and she calls it quits, and he has no idea why, 'cause it seemed like it was working just fine.

4. 15:15 – 17:50

   Female Sex Drive

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith15:15

   2. CWChris Williamson15:15

      And that brings me onto the next one, which is husbands who complain about having zero sex have no idea how the female sex drive actually works.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith15:23

      Correct.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:23

      I'm gonna guess that this is actually interlinked.

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith15:25

      Yes, it is, exactly. So, I've worked with a lotta couples where they have sex once a year, um, which is horrifying to contemplate. But it's, it's often because the husband, number one, doesn't ask. He's, he's waiting for his wife to jump on him like a jungle predator, and so he d- he tries to figure out how to just entice her by giving her things or, you know, flashing her or whatever, but he's not recognizing that by diminishing the emotional intimacy, he's actually killing her sex drive. It's not that she just has no sex drive. He's actually sending the wrong signals when you don't talk to her about issues, when you don't talk to her about some feelings. I'm not saying sobbing uncontrollably o- in her lap, but when you don't open up and express who you are on the inside, the message you're sending is that you don't trust her, you don't value her as an advisor, as a partner, um, and that you aren't intending to stick around for very long. So on a longer scale, the message you're sending is, "I'm going to find the next 19-year-old blonde girl who wanders by, and I'm gonna go follow her instead of you," so sh- the woman starts to disconnect from you.

   6. CWChris Williamson16:27

      Mm. That is interesting. I think so many of the points that you bring up today are to do with the fact that, uh, uh, the ones to do with, um, couples at least, uh, to do with the fact that men presume that women operate on men's programming and women presume that men operate on women's programming.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith16:47

      Bingo.

   8. CWChris Williamson16:48

      We try and extrapolate out the way that we feel-

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith16:52

      (laughs)

   10. CWChris Williamson16:53

       ... what I, what I would want, what I would do. Men want to come in s- solutions-oriented, women want to come in and make everybody food or whatever it might be, and neither of the people want that.

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith17:03

       Yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson17:03

       Um, so, and this is, I think, one of the reasons why I have so much love for the evolutionary psychology movement, and also for threads like the one that you wrote, because it doesn't actually take that much to just be able to see... It's like learning a cognitive bias.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith17:19

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson17:19

       As soon as you learn, as soon as you learn availability bias-

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith17:22

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson17:22

       ... or as, as soon as you learn, uh, the fundamental attribution error, you, you think, "That guy's not an arsehole."

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith17:31

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson17:31

       "Maybe he was just late for work."

   19. ASAdam Lane Smith17:33

       Yes. Correct.

   20. CWChris Williamson17:34

       Like, you know what I mean? When you get caught up in traffic, the classic example. So yeah, I think, um, that's why, that's why it's important, because only with the awareness can you actually start to progress through these things.

   21. ASAdam Lane Smith17:46

       Correct.

   22. CWChris Williamson17:47

       Um, this, this next one is, is one of my favorites. "If

5. 17:50 – 22:40

   Your Annoying Child is Your Fault

   1. CWChris Williamson17:50

      your child is an arsehole, it's your fault."

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith17:53

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson17:53

      "Even if it's the other parent's fault, it's your fault for picking them. Take some responsibility."

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith17:59

      Correct. So, I, I say that healthy people don't typically pick unhealthy partners. If your partner's unhealthy, something about you was either unhealthy or naive and not aware of what needed to happen. Uh, we see a lot of that generational issue here in the West. Um, I have a whole talk I give about how attachment has been breaking down and g- degenerating here in the West since-... um, 1918, since World War I. It's been a systematic just breakdown of attachment here in the West. I won't get into that today 'cause that'll take up the whole hour. But, yeah, that's, that right there, um ... Boy, my brain wandered off and down that path. (laughs) I was saying-

   5. CWChris Williamson18:41

      Why is, why is, why is your child's ... Like, why is the, the-

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith18:43

      Yeah. Why, why is it your fault? Um-

   7. CWChris Williamson18:44

      Uh, can you completely imprint as a parent?

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith18:47

      You can never undo the other half, because your child's brain, as they're growing up, when your, when your child is small, um, a little brain is, is looking at cause and effect, and it see- it sees itself as every cause, as the point o- the point of origin for everything that happens to it, 'cause it's learning about gravity, right? If I drop my sippy cup over the side of my high chair, it hits the ground and it splashes everywhere, I made that happen. The child is learning about cause and effect, so it also blames itself for everything. So when we put a child in daycare, um, we're abandoning the child for 12 hours a day, then when we're around it, we're exhausted, we don't have time to take care of it or engage with it emotionally. The child starts to, the child's brain says, "There must be something wrong with me that's causing that." Um, if we abuse a child, the child's brain says, "What am I doing that made this person hit me?" Things like that. The child's brain is thinking that. So, if you are a great parent, and the other parent is an asshole, um, the child's brain says, "50% of people are gonna treat me horribly, and that parent is the honest one, so maybe the o- the nice parent is just being nice to me. Maybe it's a 50/50 shot, or maybe I really don't deserve any love at all." So I see this a lot when I work with single moms who bring their children in, about 10 years old, suddenly all this, they have this massive outgrowth of anxiety and they're not sure where it's coming from. Um, they picked a partner who is going to hurt their children, emotionally at least, and now the child is grappling with these attachment issues under the surface. It is still that parent's fault for picking that partner. You don't have to feel bad, but you probably should own up to it. Don't sit there and yell at the kid and say, "Hey, what's wrong with you? I've been a good parent." I see that a lot, that defensiveness of, "I've been a great parent. Why are you this way? I should've made up for the other guy."

   9. CWChris Williamson20:29

      Yeah. You've been a good parent, one of two.

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith20:31

       Correct.

   11. CWChris Williamson20:31

       You've been 50% of a good family. That's another way to look at it.

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith20:35

       Correct. So I'm not trying to slap single moms with guilt there and say, you know, your deadbeat, the deadbeat dad is your fault. That's not what I'm aiming for. But you do need to take ownership of the fact that, one, you picked him, so you have, two, a responsibility to listen to that child's hurts. Let that child vent at you sometimes. Um, don't take it personally that you're not Super Mom. Don't take it personally that you're mo- not both mom and dad. Take some ownership of the bad relationship that you brought this child into. You don't have to saturate in guilt, but take some of that ownership and give the child permission to act out in a certain way as they solve their problems and their wounds. Otherwise, they won't solve their problems and their wounds. They'll come at you with these problems, you will reject them because you're being defensive, and that will create two bad parents that this child now has to overcome.

   13. CWChris Williamson21:21

       (inhales deeply) Man.

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith21:23

       Yeah. (laughs) Exactly.

   15. CWChris Williamson21:24

       Serious. It's, I mean, that, that, that, that is uncomfortable, obviously. We, these women who are raising two kids and working two jobs and doing all this sort of stuff, it does, it, from the surface, it can sound uncompassionate to say, "Well, you did choose the father," but the bottom line, like, that's, that is the truth. You did choose the father.

   16. ASAdam Lane Smith21:44

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson21:44

       And the, the ignorance of the fact or burying it under the rug isn't going to make it go away. The only way that you can account for whatever has occurred and the effects therein is by admitting, okay ... And I think this is, I had this conversation the other day. I think this is why the rationalist movement, this so of post-scientific utilitarian, learn all the cognitive biases, biohacking movement, I think that's why it's got so much, um, momentum at the moment, because it allows chaotic individuals who are very untransparent to themselves and don't really understand how the world works, surrounded by infinite complexity, it allows us to feel like we can just bring a tiny bit of that world under control again.

   18. ASAdam Lane Smith22:29

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson22:29

       I can just try and wrangle some of this chaos into order.

   20. ASAdam Lane Smith22:33

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson22:34

       And, um, yeah, again, this is, these are the, these are the, the, um, psychological cognitive biases. Okay, next one. Uh, "It's

6. 22:40 – 28:28

   Stop Using Diagnostic Terms

   1. CWChris Williamson22:40

      okay to be sad. That doesn't mean you're depressed. It's okay to be worried. That doesn't mean you're anxious. It's okay to experience trauma. That doesn't mean you have PTSD. Not everything is a diagnosable issue."

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith22:52

      Mm-hmm. So a diagnosis has to have multiple pieces. You have to fit the full criteria. And, and some people can fit the full criteria of a diagnosis, but it also has to impact that quality of life, especially in work function, occupation, um, school, relationships. It has to cause a detrimental effect that crosses a threshold. That's what gives you a diagnosis. So, you can experience a traumatic event and not have post-traumatic stress disorder. You can be sad for a lengthy period of time and not have full depression, especially if it's not impacting those qualities. Now, we tend to over-diagnose here in the United States and say, "I've been sad for three days. I have depression." But that's not the case. If you're fully functional, you don't have, you most likely do not have diagnosable depression. That has skewed a lot as, as we've jumped into, um, the effect of trying to treat things in advance before they get too bad. But again, we treat depression as a disease here in the United States, at least, so you're trying to treat a disease isolated from the rest of the individual and say, "It has nothing to do with your life. Let's just throw medication at you." So, there, there's kind of a d- a fine line you need to walk there. But, it's o- it is really okay to be sad. Um, the di- the, the DSM that we use here in the United States, Diagnostic Statistics Manual, um, gives at least two weeks of consistent sadness, um, for grief-... what we call bereavement.

   3. CWChris Williamson24:17

      The, the, it was the, with the grief exception, wasn't it?

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith24:20

      Yes, yeah, so we give two weeks in the United States. There is a minimum of two weeks.

   5. CWChris Williamson24:24

      That's how long you're allowed to be... (laughs) That's how long you're allowed to be sad when someone dies.

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith24:27

      Yes. That's, it has to be a minimum of two weeks of grief before you even qualify for a diagnosis. It can be longer. It can be complicated grief. Um, but two weeks of grieving is, is more or less what they have assumed is the average here in the United States, um, that, that doesn't cross a threshold. So yeah, you can... When someone dies, you're going to be sad. You are not instantly depressed the moment someone dies. Um, you're not instantly... Just because you're worried a little bit, you don't, h- y- you shouldn't really call it anxiety as much, um, because that, that is such a clinical term and say, "I am anxious, I'm being... I'm feeling anxiety right now." Y- you can. It's, it's a lot better just to use the words and say, you know, "I'm worried right now."

   7. CWChris Williamson25:10

      How long has it been? Everybody that's listening, how long has it been since you heard someone say that they were worried versus that they've said that they're anxious? "I'm anxious about this thing that's coming up." Well, are you or are you worried?

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith25:22

      Yes.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:22

      Because the specifics of that, I imagine from someone who understands the clinical side of this, are actually quite important, but the phenomenological way of how it feels-

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith25:34

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson25:34

       ... it's just someone using different words. It's just someone getting a synonym, uh, their thesaurus out and deciding to use a different word.

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith25:42

       And, and it might be okay to say clinically that you feel anxiety in that moment, you're not diagnosing yourself with generalized anxiety disorder. Um, but using clinical words in your self-talk and to discuss yourself, using those clinical words just hammers them home and makes them such a reality. "I, uh, I have anxiety right now." Well, okay, but let's back up a step before you go to that (laughs) extreme of a step and just say, uh, what are, what, what kind of anxiety is that? Are you just worrying? Are you nervous? Or all these other words we used to use, don't, don't, don't go the full diagnostic word on yourself if you can prevent it. (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson26:19

       Yeah, yeah.

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith26:20

       If you, if you don't have to say, "I experienced trauma," yeah, maybe that is, maybe that is a, a fairly scientific way, but maybe you just say, "You know what? I, I had a really difficult experience. There was a challenge that I faced, and there were some really bad pieces to it, but you know what? I'm doing better now." I, I think everyone needs to cool it on some of the diagnostic words that we use, e- even some of the, the scientific words that we use on ourselves. Are they effective? Are, are they, are they correct? Maybe so, but it doesn't do us any good to go around pathologizing everything that we feel either.

   15. CWChris Williamson26:54

       Correct. That's exactly what I had in my head. It feels like modern culture kind of up-regulates or up-scales the severity and, and, and this clinicalness, and I think, um, I think part of it stems from what I was talking about earlier on, people wanting to wrangle that chaos into order. If they can give it a label that sounds official and professional and medical and, like, there's a diagnostic for it-

   16. ASAdam Lane Smith27:18

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:18

       ... it's like, "Well, at least I know... I can't control this chaos, but at least it's got a name that can be understood in the medical community," as opposed to... And also, maybe part of it... I think this actually might be a big part of it. Maybe part of it is that people want to justify why they're so affected by negative emotions, and by giving it a grander-sounding name, a more cata- catastrophic-sounding name, it almost legitimates the fact that they're affected by it. I don't want to admit that I'm the sort of person that gets just worried and actually would be worried about something. I don't want to say that I'm the sort of person that would be sad about something or would experience trauma. No, no, no, no. It has to be depression or anxiety or PTSD, because it legitimates how affected I feel by giving it this gr- this grander term. The contrasting effect actually helps to relatively bring it down.

   18. ASAdam Lane Smith28:08

       Yeah, it also forces the other person involved in that conversation, hearing you describe yourself that way, it forces them to validate you and take you seriously and take that, because otherwise they're denying anxiety. They're denying these clinical terms. Um, I think we've weaponized a lot of those diagnostic criteria as well to try to force reactions out of other people.

7. 28:28 – 34:02

   Overcome Depression with Purpose

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith28:28

   2. CWChris Williamson28:28

      Most depressed men probably don't need medication. Even the ones who do need it more than... Uh, e- even the ones who do need it more than just medication. Depressed men need purpose, a mission, and the power to accomplish that mission. Give a man those three things and he can crawl over broken glass with a smile.

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith28:47

      Mm-hmm. So male depression, um, from my personal experience treating it, but also from everything I've read, from research that I've read, male depression is different from female depression in that male depression tends to focus on learned helplessness, powerlessness. Men need a mission in life, and they need to believe that they can go fulfill that mission. They need to be able to take steps. Um, there's a reason that impotence is such a big deal for men, not just, not just sexual impotence, but emotional impotence, life impotence. You need to be able to go out and do what you need to do. You have, have to have a purpose in life and be able to accomplish that purpose, and if you can do that, look at men in... I, I was, I was just reading, um, an old docu- uh, an old document lo- uh, from World War II. Actually, it was discussing the bombings in, in, um, in London and, uh, the, the psychological impact of that, of men who were hospitalized prior to the bombings, hospitalized for severe mental health problems, schizophrenia, um, major depression. Some of them were catatonic in ho- in mental hospitals prior to the bombings. Um, there were do- there was documents showing, um, that those men, some of them got up and started driving ambulances. They got out of their catatonic state and started driving ambulances through the street, helping with, with rebuilding, helping with, with keeping people safe. All of a sudden, these men came back to life because now they had a defensive war to fight, a clear, clear win state and a clear losing state, and they could do it. They had something in front of them that they could accomplish. This is why when m- men are crushingly depressed, we try to do anything we can to make us feel like we can accomplish something. So a man who is agonizingly worried about something in his life and feels like there's nothing he can do about it, will all of a sudden obsess over the smallest little project in his life that makes no sense to anyone else. It could be a video game. It could be miniature little painting, miniature soldiers. It could be anything, but that's what he can control.And he has to have that sense of control for him to have life purpose. Now, a lot of that purpose comes from our relationships with other people. We need to have, right, that, it- it can be that per- that protector and provider role of "I'm a man and I'm protecting and providing for my family." So when we lose a job, we can't provide for our family. Now, we feel like our mission is lost. There's no hope of providing for our family as our job search drags on and on and on. We're now useless. The depression starts to set in as we get what's called learned helplessness of "I will never get a job. It will never get better." That's- that's- that's really the piece. "There's nothing I... I have no mission and no purpose in life," starts the depression. And, or- or, "There's nothing I can do about it," that starts the depression. And then there's, "And it will never get better," that's what starts the suicidal depression, of suicidal thoughts of, "If I'm never gonna get better and it's never gonna stop, then what? Get... What else should I do? I just need to stop this pain." That's really what starts rolling in that male suicide. And providers typically treat male depression as they would treat female depression, which is more built on, um, women are... Men are problem-solvers. Women are relational, typically, in their thinking. Women, female depression typically comes from not feeling loved or feeling useless to the people that you love. That's what female depression tends to come from. They need to be loved and they need to feel useful to the people that they love. If they have those two pieces, women can overcome just about anything. There's cases of women overcoming... women experiencing sexual assault and having no PTSD whatsoever. Um, female POWs. I was reading a report on a female, American female POW over in Iraq who was captured and held hostage and- and raped numerous times. I think it was, I think it was Iraq. Um, and then released and they- they checked her for mental health symptoms and she said, "You know, yeah, it was bad, but the sexual assault, eh, it wasn't the biggest thing in my life." As she was flying home to her husband and chil- and she was just glad to go home. And they checked her and evaluated her numerous times. That's something that we, we think of, like, how could someone endure that without... No, they checked her multiple times. She said, "You know, I have a loving husband and children. I'm gonna go home and take care of them." Boom. She was useful to her family and she was loved by her family. Um, we treat male depression like female depression. We try to make men feel validated. We try... Therapists often try to make men feel validated. We try to make men feel like people care about them. We try to make men feel the way women want to feel. And when men don't respond to that, we shame them for not going to therapy. We tell them, "Men are just stubborn. Men just don't..." Men would... I saw a post on Twitter not long ago, "Men would rather lift weights than go to therapy." Well, yeah, 'cause that makes them feel powerful. The one, or the number one things when men are depressed that I- I encourage them to do is start lifting weights. 'Cause you can see the physical changes in your body and you feel powerful again. You say, "I can make this change happen. Well, then I can go make that change happen." That's the number one way to get men back in and start focusing on their body. So (blows) that's that one. Yeah. Male depression is 100% different.

   4. CWChris Williamson34:01

      I love that.

8. 34:02 – 46:30

   Psychology of Sex & Assault

   1. CWChris Williamson34:02

      "I have never met a young woman with sexual trauma who didn't believe it was somehow her fault. Part of this is the need to believe she can prevent it in future. Admitting it's beyond her power is worse than feeling guilty."

   2. ASAdam Lane Smith34:16

      Mm-hmm. So this goes back to the male sex drive and women not understanding it. When a woman is raped, young woman typically, she says, "Why did he feel emotionally toward me in that way? What did I do to inspire his emotions toward me?" 'Cause again, female sex drive is driven by emotion. "How did I make him hate me so much and also does... and also feel close enough to me to rape me?" That's the female... Uh, it's often the female thinking. So their first thing is, "What did I do to encourage him? How did I encourage him?" It could be a guy that grabbed her and dragged her into an alley and she's never seen him before. And she will still say, "What was it about me that encouraged him to do that?" Um, empowering, and I- I- I hate the word empowering 'cause it's used so often now, but it really is. Empowering a- a female trauma victim by helping her understand how the male sex drive works. One of my other tweets in that thread that drew anger like a lightning rod was talking about, um, helping female sex trauma victims understand that rape is not personal. Um, and, uh, man, I got so many angry messages from- from female sex trauma victims.

   3. CWChris Williamson35:19

      Why do you think that was?

   4. ASAdam Lane Smith35:21

      Um, because it's shocking. Because it is personal to them. And female sex drive is incredibly personal.

   5. CWChris Williamson35:29

      Mm-hmm. Of course.

   6. ASAdam Lane Smith35:29

      Focused on the person.

   7. CWChris Williamson35:30

      Of course, but to the man, it could have been... If you'd replaced that person with somebody else, right place, right time, same-

   8. ASAdam Lane Smith35:36

      Even more-

   9. CWChris Williamson35:37

      ... same incident would have occurred.

   10. ASAdam Lane Smith35:38

       Even more than that. For a man to commit rape, he doesn't see the woman as a person. He sees her as an object to be used. So he, it is not personal to him any more than him shoving a chair with his foot was personal. The rape was not personal to him. It was just something that he just did to relieve that, um, and feel powerful, usually feel powerful himself. All those things, they- they boil over in bad, really bad ways. But yeah, the women are... When I say, "You know what? You need to recognize that rape was not personal and- and it had nothing... It actually had nothing to do with you. You were just the most convenient victim in that moment that he was able to grab and use. He was able to groom you. He was able to get ahold of you, but it had nothing to do with you." And when they recognize that, th- they, they fight it tooth and nail most of the time 'cause that doesn't make sense to their way of thinking. Like, "He- he had forceful sex with me. Why would he do that if there was no emotion attached to it?" Um, another piece of it is the female body experiencing sexual assault often will orgasm, um, not because she's enjoying it, but the- the orgasm, um, forces the, um, the cervix to dip down into the vagina, in the bottom of the vagina and they drink up, um, essentially drink up the semen that is there and pull it up into the uterus. So an orgasm actually in- pulls that- that semen into the uterus at a greater level. Um, that stimulates that birth. So the female sex drive, again, 10,000 years ago... Um, not sex drive. The- the female sexual, um, reproduction. Um, 10,000 years ago, if she's going to be sexually assaulted, her body will say...I'm at least going to get something good out of this and make a child with this because if this guy has power enough to do this, then my child will have some sort of power. It's a weird w- line to walk. Um, but if she's able to do that, her body will then take the horrible thing that is happening and create this life from it, and dr- and draw some-

   11. CWChris Williamson37:35

       That is...

   12. ASAdam Lane Smith37:35

       ... good out of it.

   13. CWChris Williamson37:36

       ... crazy. I know-

   14. ASAdam Lane Smith37:37

       That is the female body drawing good out of this horror that is happening to her. Um, but we c-

   15. CWChris Williamson37:42

       And that's one of the posited explanations for why some sexual assault victims will orgasm during.

   16. ASAdam Lane Smith37:48

       Yes. That's often why, is because it's their body forcing them to. They don't enjoy it, and they feel so deeply ashamed afterwards. So when I would work with female sex crime victims, I would say, I would get them to a point where they were comfortable, and I'd say, "Okay. Did you..." I, and I would explain, uh, "Most women experience an orgasm against their will, not because they enjoy it, be- because the body is designed to do that, and they feel a lot of shame around that as if they secretly liked it somehow. Did you, did you have that experience?" And most of them will, will b- they'll start crying, and they can't speak, and then they'll say, "Yes, I did." And then I walk them through like, "That is okay." (laughs) "That does not mean you enjoyed it. Your body was designed to have that orgasm so that you could pull something good from that horrible thing that was happening. This is why it happened, and then once you have that orgasm, you get a flood of oxytocin, um, which bonds you to the person that is sexually assaulting you at that time." So that's, then they ge- develop complicated feelings toward that person. If that person was someone they knew before, they, they feel attached to them and they say, "Well, I really hate him, but I- I don't know. Like, we had that moment." Um, their brain forcibly bonds them to that person, and this is Stockholm syndrome, because if a woman 10,000 years ago was captured from her tribe and then raped by a guy, her brain would start bonding her to that guy and would have a child, and then she could survive in this new tribe and raise that child if she had to. Um, it's not pretty. (laughs) It's not pretty, and it's not justification for anything, but that, that is the mechanism from an evolutionary perspective. That, that's why that's happening. And that, that infuriates female sex crime victims when you talk to them the first time because they can't wrap their brain around how th- how he could be acting upon her like a chair and how her body could be doing that, um-

   17. CWChris Williamson39:36

       Betray her so much.

   18. ASAdam Lane Smith39:37

       Correct. Her body betrayed her, and he betrayed her. Um, but once they come out of that, and they realize those things, and they, they accept them, oh, there is so much healing. That's, I can, I can get, uh, women who cannot have sex after sex, uh, after rape, they cannot have sex with their male partners without all these flashbacks, I can get them to the point where they can initiate sex and have a, a fruitful, wonderful sex life with their new partner with s- virtually zero flashbacks or issues and use those things to actually develop more intimacy with their partner in the future.

   19. CWChris Williamson40:13

       (laughs)

   20. ASAdam Lane Smith40:13

       As long as they accept those earlier components. Those are the pieces that are missing. They have to understand those two pieces, why their body did what it did, and why that person did what they did. If they can understand those, there is so much healing in those.

   21. CWChris Williamson40:27

       How much do you think that, um, natural predilection for the body to respond in that way to aggressive sex leads into rough sex being a, uh, desire for certain women consensually?

   22. ASAdam Lane Smith40:43

       Yeah, um, it isn't necessarily that the rough sex is activating the orgasms. Rough sex, a lot of the rough sex, what it does is it ... How do I want to express this? It, it expresses to the, the female partner how strong and ready the male partner is and, and dominant.

   23. CWChris Williamson41:00

       So it's more psych- it's more psychological, then?

   24. ASAdam Lane Smith41:03

       I, I would say so. Um, it's dominance. You're displaying dominance, which means you're the kind of person who has dominant features, which means your children will probably have dominant features, and, and that emotional dominance to survive in a Neolithic age 10,000 years ago. So multiple orgasms to try to get as much of that, that semen up into the uterus as possible at that point.

   25. CWChris Williamson41:23

       Don't you... There's some people-

   26. ASAdam Lane Smith41:24

       Um-

   27. CWChris Williamson41:24

       There will be some people, the, well, uh, they won't because everyone that listens to this podcast is clever.

   28. ASAdam Lane Smith41:28

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson41:28

       But there might be some people who stumbled upon this podcast, and they're going, "What are they talking about? Like, rough sex is just rough sex, and, like, what do you mean?" And it's like, no, no, no, no, no. What you think is happening and why you like the things you like aren't the reason that you like them.

   30. ASAdam Lane Smith41:41

       Yeah.
9. 46:30 – 54:51

   Discussing Attraction

   1. ASAdam Lane Smith46:30

      yeah, it's real, man.

   2. CWChris Williamson46:31

      "Women don't trust an unstable or unreliable man. It's not the whining, flaking, lying, sneaking, or excuses that specifically erode her trust. These are symptoms of a deeper instability that rings all her alarm bells. "

   3. ASAdam Lane Smith46:46

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson46:46

      "She can forgive specific behaviors, but not the underlying issue."

   5. ASAdam Lane Smith46:50

      Mm-hmm. Because it goes back to 10,000 years ago. What is going to keep her child alive? A man who has integrity, tells the truth, does what he says he's going to do, um, solves-

   6. CWChris Williamson47:02

      Conscientious.

   7. ASAdam Lane Smith47:02

      ... actually solves problems, conscientious, honest, um, capable of emotional intimacy and connection without being pathetic and sobbing on the floor. Um, all of those features tie back into, "Okay, he will keep me and my children alive." 'Cause 10,000 years ago, if you're pregnant, uh, as a pregnant woman, you're not gonna waddle with a spear, pick up a spear and go waddling out to fight an- a mammoth. Um, picture, picture a group of 10 pregnant women with spears trying to fight a mammoth. There's something very wrong-

   8. CWChris Williamson47:29

      The least scary thing ever, yeah.

   9. ASAdam Lane Smith47:31

      Well, there's something very wrong with that picture 'cause every one of them that dies, now there's two lives being lost.

   10. CWChris Williamson47:36

       Yes.

   11. ASAdam Lane Smith47:36

       You don't want that 10,000 years (laughs) ago. You don't want that now. Um, which is why we don't have pregnant... Typically, we don't have pregnant women on the front lines in a battlefield. That's, that's a failure of a society, is if your pregnant women are on the battlefield. So, yeah, women are looking for that stability. Women are looking for that in a f- in a male partner. And if you don't provide that long term, her body just says, "I can't have children with this, this guy," so it shuts down the sex drive, and then she starts sort of distancing from you because you are so unstable she can't trust that in you. So...

   12. CWChris Williamson48:12

       This is the thing that young guys don't understand about going to the gym. So the signal of going to the gym, they think that it's to do with, "Right, I'm gonna... I'm going to look good," and the aesthetic, the- what it is, the feeling of my body is what's going to attract her.

   13. ASAdam Lane Smith48:31

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson48:31

       What I've come to realize, or at least believe, is that it is far more the signal of, "What sort of a person am I to be the sort of person who can build this sort of physique?"

   15. ASAdam Lane Smith48:42

       Mm-hmm.

   16. CWChris Williamson48:42

       "I'm conscientious. I'm reliable. I'm consistent. I'm able to-"

   17. ASAdam Lane Smith48:46

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CWChris Williamson48:46

       "... have self, uh, self-reliance. I'm able to, um, make goals and achieve them. I'm healthy. I have surplus calories."

   19. ASAdam Lane Smith48:54

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CWChris Williamson48:54

       "I have surplus strength. I have surplus testosterone."

   21. ASAdam Lane Smith48:58

       Mm-hmm.

   22. CWChris Williamson48:58

       "If you find me sexy, by the culturally defined this is what a good body should look like, plus V-taper that's already embedded, blah, blah, the sexy son hypothesis suggests that we are going to have children who will also look like me, that other women will also want to have sex with, which will continue our genetic lineage more quickly, blah, blah, blah." So-

   23. ASAdam Lane Smith49:17

       Correct.

   24. CWChris Williamson49:18

       ... it's much easier to say to guys, like, "Get big ar- like, big arms equals lots of women." But-

   25. ASAdam Lane Smith49:23

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson49:23

       ... it's, it's a little bit more second ordery and third ordery than that.

   27. ASAdam Lane Smith49:27

       Yeah. Absolutely. You know, a healthy woman is not gonna see an attractive stranger and try to have sex with them in a bathroom. So the women you're going to attract by being handsome like that who will have sex with you on the spot are not gonna be the healthy women you wanna have a relationship with. But women are, women are visually attracted to men. They are. There's a component there. But they're not just gonna have sex with you 'cause you're hot. That, that sort of...... opens the door, but you're a hundred percent right, the messages you send to women are much more important than how you look. That's why we see a lot of very attractive women with very ugly men, who happen to have good other features, usually money, um, but good other features. You're bringing a lot of other value.

   28. CWChris Williamson50:04

       Yeah. Think about the, here's a good... The one that, the thing that I always use is think about the funny guy friend that you've got. He's never single.

   29. ASAdam Lane Smith50:10

       Yeah.

   30. CWChris Williamson50:10

       If you've got that one person that can always crush a conversation, really, really funny-
10. 54:51 – 1:00:45

    Impact of Identity Obsession

    1. CWChris Williamson54:51

       Um, "We've done away with teaching children to build character. Now we instruct them to assemble an identity from things they hope will make them interesting enough to earn love."

    2. ASAdam Lane Smith55:01

       Yes. So this goes back to attachment, um, and it goes back to my, you know... Attachment has been systematically broken and dismantled worse and worse with each generation over the last 100 years here in the West. We've reached a point now where people don't believe they are worthy of love as an innate human being. We don't have an innate human dignity much anymore. Now it's built on what are y- what were you born as? What skin color were you? Um, what experiences have you endured? Things that have happened to you. Innate features is what we look at, and we define ourself now by innate features and by, and by things that have happened to us. Um, in the old days, (laughs) 100 years ago, people used to define themselves based on their experiences that they had set out and created for themselves. You were, you know, you were the vanquisher of, of whatever it might be. You, you were, you were a baker, you had set out and made this career, but you were also the type of character you were, your, your moral character defined who you were. And it was based on your actions, and not only the m- not only the good things you did, but also the mistakes you made and how you made up for them...... honor is, is a system not only of perfect behavior, an honor system, but it's also built on how you respond to challenges to your honor and how you respond yourself when you make a mistake. A person, a man's honor is not just he's perfect. A man's honor is he, uh, usually does the right thing, and if he doesn't, he makes it right, and he makes amends, and it comes out better than it was before. We call that man honorable. That's a lot of work, and that requires people to put forth a lot of effort. And it's hard, and it's not fun, and bleh. So we encourage people, and we say, "You're not a good person." The belief is, "We're not a good person anyway, so I won't, I won't, I won't stand up when things go right. I don't have courage. I won't do the right thing. That's not who I am. I'm not a good person." So this is the belief, "I'm innately flawed, so I'm always going to prove that I'm worthless. So instead, I will pick things that make me interesting, and I will tell people that I am interesting because of those things, and I will get attention." And that is what, that's a lot of the system that you see nowadays with a lot of identity politics. The reason people def- distill themselves down to a f- feature about them, "This is the genitals I have. These are the genitals I like. This is the color I am." That's not who they are as a person, but it's who they make themself, because they're afraid on the inside, usually, that they don't have any more moral fiber than that. So if they pretend to have more moral fiber that en- engage in a moral, "This is my character," they're going to lose, um, and because they have that innate insecurity about morality on the inside, they can point out the sins of other people against the identity code-

    3. CWChris Williamson57:49

       (laughs)

    4. ASAdam Lane Smith57:49

       ... and say, "You are a sinner because you don't respect other people's identities. That makes you a bad person. And by pointing it out, I am pointing out what a good person I am because I know the rules so well that I can enforce them on you." That's how that is built. That's exactly how that is built, and it comes down to attachment once again.

    5. CWChris Williamson58:10

       Dude, that, that strikes on something that I learned in, uh, Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, and he says, "The reason that people love scandal and to see the downfall of others is it allows them to feel the indignation, the moral emotion of indignation, whilst having to do nothing moral to earn it."

    6. ASAdam Lane Smith58:34

       Yes.

    7. CWChris Williamson58:34

       Holy shit, if that's not the truth. I, I, like sto- I just put the book down when I read that. I was like, scandal allows us to feel moral emotion whilst having done nothing moral to earn it. Like, that is just such an amazing insight, and I, I r- I really think that what you've just said about, um, people who perhaps internally don't have a massively developed sense of self-worth-

    8. ASAdam Lane Smith59:01

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson59:02

       ... identifying with group characteristics and pointing out the flaws of others to be able to identify with their group characteristics, this is the signal increasingly that I am seeing, this sort of subtext, tacit signal that I'm seeing. When I s- encounter people, mostly online, um, because I, I live somewhere where there's rational people-

    10. ASAdam Lane Smith59:23

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson59:24

        ... uh, when I see them online, the first thing that I think now is, "I wonder what that person's hiding." I don't trust that person's moral fiber because I don't know people who genuinely are honorable and virtuous and have integrity who act in that sort of a way, who speak in that sort of a way.

    12. ASAdam Lane Smith59:42

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson59:42

        And the first thing that it makes me think is like, "You, you probably don't like yourself all that much."

    14. ASAdam Lane Smith59:48

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson59:48

        "You probably have abandonment issues, attachment issues. You are probably inside ruthlessly unconfident that you are to be liked or loved or competent, uh, uh, that you have any merit to be able to achieve something in this world." Perhaps there's the learned helplessness that we said earlier on, the fact that, look, I can't compete. I mean, this is, i- is this not the, the craziest thing that most people who complain about status hierarchies use complaining about status hierarchies to gain status by being outside of them?

    16. ASAdam Lane Smith1:00:24

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:00:24

        Like that I'm not going to play your, I'm not gonna play your capitalist meritocracy game. What I'm going to do is I'm gonna take one step out and play my own capitalist meritocracy game, but in a new set-

    18. ASAdam Lane Smith1:00:34

        Correct.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:00:34

        ... of rules where I just do criticism. And again, it comes back-

    20. ASAdam Lane Smith1:00:37

        Correct.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:00:37

        ... to feeling moral whilst having done moral, nothing moral to, uh, to deserve it.

    22. ASAdam Lane Smith1:00:41

        Correct. Ex- Absolutely.

11. 1:00:45 – 1:04:29

    You’re Better Than Your Last Mistake

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:45

       Uh, you are better than your worst mistake that you still measure yourself by. The fact that you're still bothered by it proves that you're better than you were then.

    2. ASAdam Lane Smith1:00:54

       (laughs) This is a lesson for all of us, not just with attachment issues, but a lot of people are haunted by a mistake that they made in the past. And the fact is, if you are haunted by that mistake, you now recognize what a deeply terrible mistake that was, and if you were faced with it again, there's almost no likelihood that you would do it now. Um, but we still measure ourself by it. We still remember it. We still think, "Man, if people found out about that, they would laugh at me. They'd be mad at me." We are, we are crushed by it. And what I tell people is, "When you make a mistake and then you feel bad about that mistake and you learn from it, the person you were is now dead, and you have grown out of that new person much like a, a butterfly out of a cocoon. You are a new person because you've reached a new moral threshold. You've identified a new line in the sand you will never cross again." That's really where that comes down to. Um, it's a hard thing to accept. It's, it's, it is the core of forgiving one's self of, "I've learned from that. Here's what I've done about it." And that's what I tell people who are haunted by a mistake is to say, "What have you done about it? What would you tell the people if, if the people you hurt back then came back and said, 'You did this to me?' What," not, not how would you excuse it, but, "what would you say to tell them and show them...... I made it mean something. Make that mistake mean something by changing who you are fundamentally in how you approach other people, not just reactively but proactively. Make it mean something, and that definitively proves that you are a different person now. That's-

    3. CWChris Williamson1:02:27

       Isn't-

    4. ASAdam Lane Smith1:02:27

       ... really where it comes down to.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:02:28

       Isn't that why we love the zero to hero stories or the bounce back stories?

    6. ASAdam Lane Smith1:02:34

       Yes, it is. 'Cause it, uh, it, it makes their early life mean something, and it shows that we can do it too.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:02:42

       The dying artist or the, the failing comedian or the, the sort of, um, homeless musician, you know, this sort of, these tropes that we have of the people who have the talent, and maybe they did something bad in their past, but then they come back to do something else. There's something so romantic about it. Rob Henderson, um, my buddy who does a lot of evolutionary psychology and sociology, he tweeted something the other day saying that the most popular narrative on the planet is... It's got a name and I can't remember it, but it's basically, um, from high to low, back to high.

    8. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:15

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:03:15

       So you can, um, the, um... I was gonna say Wolf of Wall Street, but he didn't bounce back to high.

    10. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:21

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:03:22

        Um-

    12. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:22

        I know which, I know which one.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:03:22

        Actually, he was, he was always high. Um, so... (laughs) But that's a different, a different sort, but yes.

    14. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:28

        Hercules. Hercules would be a great example of that.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:03:30

        Correct. Someone that is, then isn't, and then is again.

    16. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:33

        Mm-hmm.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:03:34

        And, um, yeah, I think it, it, it's setting an example for us. This is another one of the reasons why I think that people love TV shows that have romance in them. Even if the TV show has nothing to do with romance, it's a doctor's surgery-

    18. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:50

        (laughs)

    19. CWChris Williamson1:03:50

        ... it's a, it's a comedy about nerds-

    20. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:52

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:03:52

        ... doing nerd shit at, at-

    22. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:54

        (laughs)

    23. CWChris Williamson1:03:54

        ... a university and researching stuff and things like that. There always has to be a love interest. Now, why-

    24. ASAdam Lane Smith1:03:59

        Yeah.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:03:59

        ... does there have to be a love interest? Because falling in love is so fundamental to our understanding of the world-

    26. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:07

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:04:07

        ... that it gives us hope that even if these useless, flawed creatures that I see on TV, and I feel like are real people, if they can do it, then there's hope for me as well.

    28. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:16

        Yeah, most definitely. And we love... Healthy people love to see other people triumph. And even unhealthy people, part of them loves to see other people triumph, people like them.

12. 1:04:29 – 1:09:19

    Sex for Approval Over Intimacy

    1. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:29

    2. CWChris Williamson1:04:30

       "If you're geared 100% toward earning approval from others out of constant fear of abandonment, then sex becomes a performance based on fear of doing it wrong and the other person abandoning you. Orgasm can be almost impossible under those conditions." And there's a, a second one to this, "Female arousal is based on emotional intimacy," which we went through earlier on, "and perceived security, which attachment-

    3. ASAdam Lane Smith1:04:54

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:04:54

       "... issues undermine. And if all of her sex is a performance, there's no focus on her own body. It's on maximizing approval earned by boosting her partner's pleasure."

    5. ASAdam Lane Smith1:05:04

       Mm-hmm. I worked with a lot of young women who had never experienced an orgasm. And, uh, when I say young women, I mean mid, women in their late 20s, um, early 20s and late 20s, who had never experienced an orgasm, who had been with the same partners for, sometimes for years and years. Sometimes they were married and had never experienced an orgasm. Um, 'cause for a lot of them, sex was a way to earn that love and approval and feel like he really loved her. That was, that was her way of saying, "He wouldn't have sex with me if he didn't love me, because my sex drive is built on love and, and, and care, so he must love me if he's having sex with me." Um, and they were so focused on doing it right and making him happy, and that was her way of earning his love and approval, that they had never experienced an orgasm. 'Cause most women have to not, like, work at it, that's like it's a chore, but, I mean, there's, there's a process of having an orgasm for a female typically, um, and if you're not engaged in that process, odds are good you may not have an orgasm at all. So, it was by teaching them to step back from sex as a performance art and step into emotional intimacy with a partner, um, and recognize that, you know, men, men typically like it once in a while when their female partner has an orgasm. (laughs) Most men care. Um, teaching them to engage with that process as an intimate moment and give some of that validation back to their male partner by allowing him to give you an orgasm instead of making it f- make i- believing... Many women do. Believing feeling, um, as if, as if having an orgasm and working toward one is a chore for him that he's not gonna wanna do so that he will be turned off by you and not wanna have sex with you anymore 'cause you're forcing him to help you have an orgasm. Man, that's a terrible chore to do, um, but a lot of women have that feeling internally. When they, when they finally verbalize it out loud, they realize that that's really silly, but that's, for a lot of, for any women listening to this who have never had an orgasm, (laughs) really think about that. Really think about that, how much emotional intimacy you actually have in your sexual encounters if you are having no orgasms. Doesn't mean you have to have one every time, but if you have zero, probably not a lot of emotional intimacy there.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:07:19

       Think as well, it, it... Everybody has done something, an activity where they should have been focused on the present, on the visceral, on what is occurring-

    7. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07:29

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:07:29

       ... but haven't been able to get themselves out of their own head.

    9. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07:32

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:07:32

        They've been in a work meet- a really important work meeting or a job interview, or anything, and they should be concentrating on what the other person is doing or saying-

    11. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07:41

        (laughs)

    12. CWChris Williamson1:07:41

        ... and they can't stop thinking about why they're thinking, and then they think, "Oh, I'm the sort of person that thinks about why they're thinking while I'm supposed to be doing, and duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh," and it just starts getting louder and louder and it spirals up and up and up and up.

    13. ASAdam Lane Smith1:07:54

        Yes.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:07:54

        And I imagine that during sex, that's probably what a lot of women that are doing this sort of performa- performative, um-

    15. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:01

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:08:01

        ... sexual act are thinking. They're thinking like, "Am I... I should do this," and then it's been, maybe it's been 30 seconds and then it's been this.

    17. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:08

        Yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:08:08

        And you're like, all of these bizarre, um-... uh, narratives that we tell ourselves-

    19. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:17

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:08:18

        Um, and I imagine that that must be super, super common, especially if they maybe have done-

    21. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:22

        Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:08:22

        ... don't have a ton of body confidence or just generally-

    23. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:26

        Big time.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:08:26

        ... have got themselves into this habit.

    25. ASAdam Lane Smith1:08:28

        Big time. One time... One thing that I ask, uh, women, um, who have not had an orgasm or who almost never, almost never have orgasms, one thing I ask them that ruins sex for them is, "What are you getting instead? What is it you're going into sex looking for instead of an orgasm?" Uh, and plenty of women, plenty of healthy women will say, "Well, sometimes I just go into it looking to care for my partner. I'm getting emotional intimacy out of it, but not every single time." (laughs) Not to the point where they never have any sexual pleasure and orgasm themself. If you are foregoing sexual pleasure, what are you trying to get instead? And that usually ruins sex for a lot of insecure women right there, so. 'Cause then they st- that, that narrative starts running in the back of their head while they're having sex. They start thinking, "What am I getting out of this? Oh, no, why am I own- so insecure?" So sorry for that. (laughs)

    26. CWChris Williamson1:09:17

        The last one.

13. 1:09:19 – 1:18:48

    Adam’s Top Relationship Advice

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:19

       Insecure men spend so much time trying to please their wife the way they pleased their own mother that they force-

    2. ASAdam Lane Smith1:09:26

       (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

       ... their wife into a mother role. Then they wonder why she doesn't initiate sex anymore.

    4. ASAdam Lane Smith1:09:31

       So attachment, like I've said, comes f- i- it starts when you're born. It starts the moment you're born. Um, babies know their mother's smell, they know her s- her taste, they know her voice, they know everything about her. So if you, uh, are adopted out at birth, your brain starts telling you, "Hey, something's not right here." Um, and it starts forming, "Okay, why did, why was I abandoned? Why was I lost? Why didn't my mom keep me?" So I've see- I've seen a lot of men with birth attach- birth, um, adoptions straight into loving parents that have horrible attachment problems and never n- quite know why. Um, but a lot of men are raised by single moms, depressed moms, detached moms, anxious moms, traumatized moms. And the, the child, because that shapes how Mom s- acts and responds and the energy she has for the child, and the words she says, and the lessons she teaches, it, it shapes that young man typically to have attachment issues himself. 'Cause he says, "Why is she acting this way? Well, it must be my fault," and so he pleases her by being a good boy. He pleases her by never putting too many demands on her, never being messy, always doing his schoolwork, always doing what he's told. Um, he pleases her that way, and that's how he earns her approval. When he goes into marriage, that's all he knows how to do is to be a good boy. So he goes into marriage and tries really hard to be a good boy, and that's not what women are looking for in a male sexual partner. They want a man who is confident, a little bit dominant without being domineering. Um, that's why a lot of women are looking for a dominant male partner. Fe- feminists, some of the feminists I've treated have, have been some of the most obsessed with finding men who will just crush them with dominance, especially during sex, because they're really looking for it and they don't think they're worth much often. Um, that's neither here nor there. But that's, that's what women are looking for. Again, 10,000 years ago, are they gonna want a good boy or do they want a strong, confident man who takes charge during problems, who, um, uh, proactively sol- uh, finds and then solves problems, who doesn't fall apart if she gives him criticism, who does more than just go out and earn a paycheck? No, they're, they're looking for that. They're, they're looking not for a good boy, but for a strong man. So they go forward and they try to Good Boy their way into sex. They try to Good Boy their way into everything that they want, but they're afraid to ask for sex, so they have to do 10 nice things for her. And they are so sure that she will be so overwhelmed by the ni- the Good Boy things he does that he will earn sex with Good Boy points and she will initiate the Good Boy sex. Not h- they don't even have to. She'll just jump on me. And when that doesn't happen, they get res- regret, uh, resentful toward their wife, and she has no idea what he's doing and he, he just seems really unconfident. And so she's not super turned on by him, but she'll, she'll have sex with him if he asks. But he never asks. He just punishes her for not having sex with him. So it just erodes the core of that relationship. And over a long enough period, he goes from being a good boy to being a really resentful mean boy who treats her like crap 'cause he thinks that she has betrayed him by not doing what... uh, by not rewarding him like a good boy like his mom would. So those men, often they stay emotionally monogamous to her- their moms their whole life, 'cause, "At least with Mom I can win love by spending my Good Boy points. I can't earn love from my wife with Good Boy points." So the wife and the mom are often in a constant battle too, so.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:59

       Emotionally monogamous. I really like that.

    6. ASAdam Lane Smith1:13:01

       I think I stole that from, um, Dr. Robert Glover, if I remember right.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:13:06

       That's really cool. Just to bookend, a lot of the conversations we've had today have been around relationships.

    8. ASAdam Lane Smith1:13:13

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:13:14

       What are some of the main errors that you have seen clients of yours making when they've been setting out on relationships? What are the, the main-

    10. ASAdam Lane Smith1:13:29

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:13:29

        ... things to avoid doing?

    12. ASAdam Lane Smith1:13:31

        Not having deep conversations up front. I, I tell people, um... Like I, I have a video course that teaches young men how to have a first date with a woman that will set them up for a, having a wife basically. How to turn a, a first date into your wife. Um, it is all about doing the opposite of what detached people do. You don't hide everything, who you are on the inside and your goals and your points because you're not bad. You put it all out there. You say, "Here's who I am. Here's what I want. Here's my mission in life. Here's the kind of partner I'm looking for." On the first date, boom-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:14:06

        (laughs)

    14. ASAdam Lane Smith1:14:06

        ... you lay it on the table and say, "Here's everything about me that I have... Not all the bad things, but here's everything-"

    15. CWChris Williamson1:14:12

        (laughs)

    16. ASAdam Lane Smith1:14:12

        ... "about what I want. What do you want?" And you approach it like they did, you know, 100 years ago. They'd get to... Parents would get together and have a discussion about, "Okay, is... Are you right for our family? Should we..." li- And they'd arrange these matches. You have to do the same. You have to go out and, and courtship. Instead of dating, don't date. Dating is worthless. You are just spinning your wheels and having sex with people that you don't care about, and that they don't really care about you.... and it's not gonna work out because you're probably going to meet people who have attachment problems. People who have, uh, healthy attachments don't tend to date. They c- they do courtship instead, which is, "I'm really interested in you. You have good features, good enough that I'm romantically attracted to you and sexually attracted to you. Here's what I want in a relationship. Here's what I'm looking for in the long term. How do those match up with who you are and where you are?" And then you have that conversation. If the other person is able to fully open up and say, "Yep, this is who I am. These are the pieces of myself. This is what I'm looking for," they don't have to have a, a 50-year plan with every step perfect and notebooks filled with it, but if they're able to have those conversations fully open and share who they are in a confident manner, they probably don't have attachment issues either. So, you're vetting them for attachment issues at the same time. And if you're not able to have those conversations, you may have attachment issues also. If you're having those, you're displaying... I- if you're having the conversations, you're displaying that you have good attachment. So, yourself, from having a conversation with you, I don't know if you're single or married or what, um, but if, but you've come across as a very calm, confident, assertive person. You're not, you're not timidly waiting to see if I'm done talking, right? You're having these conversations. You're educated. You're fit. I can see the, the muscle outline in your skull, so you look pretty fit. Um, you probably would go on a date with a woman and lay out exactly what you're looking for. You'd probably say, "Hey, you know what? I don't really wanna waste a lot of time. Here's what I'm really looking for, is, you know, I just, I want someone who is gonna be a good mother for children. I'd like to have children down the line." It's good to have that discussion on the very first date so that you don't get to date, you know, 500 (laughs) six years in and say, "Hey, how do you feel about having kids?" and discover you're completely incompatible. Chase down those compatibilities on the very first date. F- do it. That's what dinner should be for. And then don't have sex on the first date, because if the other person is giving you sex on the first date, they probably don't have really good boundaries or a sense of self-worth, um, f- especially looking at, again, how the female sex drive works. If she's jumping into a risky relationship like that, then might not be the best option. Not saying every woman who has sex on the first date is a bad woman, but just the tendency is, is there. Just be aware of the trend. Um, myself, when I applied all that with my wife, I've been married, oh boy (laughs) , I think I've been married 12 years now, a little past 12 years. My wife and I, we were engaged to be married within two weeks of having met.

Episode duration: 1:27:32