How Does A Non-Monogamous Marriage Work? | Caleb Jones

1. 0:00 – 1:00

   Setting rules early: honest ground rules before commitment

   1. CJCaleb Jones0:00

      ... then the second level is you sit down and you discuss the ground rules, again, before you get too serious. Once you're already moved in and married and now you're gonna discuss ground rules, that's too late. So my wife and I had a very long, detailed discussion, this was several years ago, and I laid out all the negatives of being married to me.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:17

      (laughs)

   3. CJCaleb Jones0:18

      And non-monogamy's one of them.

   4. CWChris Williamson0:19

      (laughs)

   5. CJCaleb Jones0:20

      And, and that actually wasn't the one she was pissed off.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:22

      (laughs)

   7. CJCaleb Jones0:22

      Uh, there was, like, four or five of them, and that was just one. Matter of fact, the one she was scared about was that I work a lot, I work every day.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:27

      Yeah.

   9. CJCaleb Jones0:27

      She's like, well... She didn't care about the non-monogamy 'cause I'd already been doing it the whole time she met me, so she was used to it at that point. It was more like, "Well, you're gonna work a lot and you're never gonna spend time with me." It was more that kind of stuff. But you lay all that stuff out, and then you lay out the ground rules, and you're very specific about the ro- ground rules based on what you're capable of and what you think you're not capable of emotionally. You just don't go hog wild before she's my wife. Hey girlfriend, we're thinking about getting serious. We're gonna be non-monogamous. Here are the parameters. But here's what you can't do. You can't bring guys over and fuck 'em on my couch. That, I'll throw up. Y- y- you gotta be honest about that stuff.

2. 1:00 – 3:13

   Cold open banter: tankard, not drinking, and social pressure

   1. CWChris Williamson1:00

      (wind blowing) I am joined by Caleb Jones from all the way from the other side of the Atlantic. How are you today?

   2. CJCaleb Jones1:08

      I'm good. How are you?

   3. CWChris Williamson1:09

      Very good, man. Very good. Very glad to have you on. Lots of interesting stuff there to speak about. You have got the largest tankard that you're drinking out of that I have ever seen. What is that?

   4. CJCaleb Jones1:20

      You know, I drink a lot of water, and so I would have these little cups by my desk and it was never big enough. So I was like, I gotta get a fucking, you know, I gotta get a tankard or I gotta get something real.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:28

      What does that- that's like what, a liter and a half? Or you guys would call it like a gallon, I guess?

   6. CJCaleb Jones1:31

      Uh, uh, yeah probably a liter and a half. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that. It's just water. Be cool if it was vodka, but it's not.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:36

      Yeah, or like some mead. It's a bit Game of Thrones of you.

   8. CJCaleb Jones1:39

      Mead, yeah. I don't drink. I've never been drunk in my entire life, so I just, it just makes me look cool when I drink my water, I guess.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:45

      That's a interesting lifestyle choice. Why did you choose to do that?

   10. CJCaleb Jones1:49

       You know, I don't have an answer for that question. I wish I had an answer. I wish I had some kind of cool story like, "Well, my parents were alcoholics and..." No, my parents were normal and, um... Here's my guess. So when I was in seventh grade, seventh grade? So I was about, uh, yeah, about 12. I took one of the cans of beer out of my dad's refrigerator, and I took it on the side of the house, I took a little coffee cup and I filled it up, and I, I promised myself I'd drink the whole beer 'cause I wanted to get drunk, 'cause that's looks like a lot of fun.

   11. CWChris Williamson2:16

       Yeah.

   12. CJCaleb Jones2:16

       And I went... (retching) And I made myself drink the whole beer and went, "Oh, this is terrible." And I waited, "I can't wait till I get drunk." I kept drinking and drinking and then nothing happened, I just felt dizzy for a few minutes, and I think maybe that was it. I don't... Maybe, I'm guessing.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:30

       Yeah.

   14. CJCaleb Jones2:30

       I'm also an INTJ for a Myers-Briggs, those Myers-Briggs personality types.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:35

       Okay, yep.

   16. CJCaleb Jones2:37

       So I'm an INTJ and I'm an extreme INTJ, so my little dot is in the far upper corner, and the INTJ is in the far upper corner of the 16 personality types.

   17. CWChris Williamson2:45

       Mm-hmm.

   18. CJCaleb Jones2:46

       So not only am I i- am I an INTJ, I'm an extreme version of an INTJ.

   19. CWChris Williamson2:49

       Mm-hmm.

   20. CJCaleb Jones2:50

       And so one of the aspects of most INTJs, not all of them, is that I'm a control freak over myself, but I don't want to control anybody else. So I'm thinking that sub- this isn't conscious.

   21. CWChris Williamson3:00

       Yeah.

   22. CJCaleb Jones3:00

       But maybe subconsciously, I don't want to lose control of myself by getting drunk.

   23. CWChris Williamson3:04

       Yeah, I understand. I think it's-

   24. CJCaleb Jones3:05

       Maybe? I don't know. That's a guess. I really don't know.

   25. CWChris Williamson3:07

       That's the same for my mom.

   26. CJCaleb Jones3:08

       I've never... I'm gonna have to do it at some point.

   27. CWChris Williamson3:10

       Yeah.

   28. CJCaleb Jones3:10

       People are like, "You got to get drunk once." All right, I'll get drunk once. It's fine.

3. 3:13 – 7:50

   Sobriety, nightlife, and why people assume abstinence means a problem

   1. CWChris Williamson3:13

      (sighs) It's a... So I'm nine months into 18 months sober, right? I'm a club promoter by trade.

   2. CJCaleb Jones3:18

      Wow.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:18

      So I've run, I've run nightclubs for, uh, 12 years, and that's been my trade.

   4. CJCaleb Jones3:23

      You're in How many... You're nine months in?

   5. CWChris Williamson3:24

      Nine months sober, yeah, but this is the, uh, I've done six months twice and I'm doing nine months now just to see if I can.

   6. CJCaleb Jones3:31

      Okay.

   7. CWChris Williamson3:31

      Um, my argument is that I work in the nightlife industry. I've worked around about 1,000 nights in my career across the last decade and a bit, um, so if, if I can do it, other people can.

   8. CJCaleb Jones3:42

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:43

      And on top of that as well-

   10. CJCaleb Jones3:46

       Do you, wait, do you consider yourself an alcoholic or no?

   11. CWChris Williamson3:48

       No, no. So-

   12. CJCaleb Jones3:49

       No.

   13. CWChris Williamson3:50

       Ed Latimore, have you heard of Ed?

   14. CJCaleb Jones3:51

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson3:52

       Yeah. So I'd pod- podcasted with Ed and he, uh, synopsized alcohol and people's views of sobriety better than anyone I've ever heard before, and it's this sentence. Alcohol is the only drug where if you don't do it, people assume you have a problem.

   16. CJCaleb Jones4:09

       Yes. Exactly.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:09

       No one's saying to you, "Why are you not shooting up with heroin today?"

   18. CJCaleb Jones4:13

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson4:13

       "Why have you not got a massive line of cocaine on your desk behind you?" But alcohol's so ingrained into our society that people just-

   20. CJCaleb Jones4:19

       Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson4:19

       ... say, "You're not drinking. You must have a problem with alcohol."

   22. CJCaleb Jones4:24

       Right.

   23. CWChris Williamson4:24

       That's the only reason that anyone would choose to go sober. Whereas for me, I, I ha- I was a typical sort- social drinker. Go out maybe once every fortnight, but I'm a club promoter drinker, right? So when you go out, you go hard.

   24. CJCaleb Jones4:37

       Right.

   25. CWChris Williamson4:37

       Like you go, it's straight arm in spirits into your mouth in a nightclub, et cetera, et cetera.

   26. CJCaleb Jones4:41

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson4:42

       All that sort of stuff. Yeah, exactly. Um, and I just, about two and a bit years ago, I wanted to do more with my life. I wanted to have a lot of experiences, I wanted to travel more, I wanted to start this podcast. I wanted to push my business and my fitness and my, I wanted to develop a reading habit and a meditation habit and all these other things, and I looked at my time as if it was a set of accounts and saw that there was this big day and a half cost getting chopped out of my-

   28. CJCaleb Jones5:13

       Hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson5:14

       ... fortnight, fortnight period. One day hungover and then a half a day at maybe 50% capacity and then you finally get back onto it. So I honestly think it, it doesn't surprise me that you have a lot of irons in the fire considering you've never been knocked off with a hangover. Like, the only time that you'll be like that's if you're ill.

   30. CJCaleb Jones5:32

       Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've wondered about if I was a typical drinker or even a heavy drinker, 'cause I've got some of those guys in my family, where I would be today as opposed to where I am now, and also how I would look, how my skin... I'm 47, so how my skin would look now. You look fantastic for 47. 'Cause I've got buddies... Well, I moisturize. That's an old Doctor Who line.
4. 7:50 – 13:30

   Weed normalization, prescription culture, and emotional escape

   1. CJCaleb Jones7:50

      That's changing. You know, in some parts of the world, especially in mine, I don't know about, I don't know about England, probably not. But in my part of the world, so the Pacific Northwest United States, weed is becoming like that now. "Oh, you don't smoke weed?"

   2. CWChris Williamson8:02

      Okay.

   3. CJCaleb Jones8:02

      People are kind of, they're starting to get surprised now 'cause it's become so prevalent.

   4. CWChris Williamson8:05

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CJCaleb Jones8:06

      And it's be- and it's legal in most parts of the United States now. Maybe not most. A lot.

   6. CWChris Williamson8:09

      Yes.

   7. CJCaleb Jones8:10

      So weed, marijuana is starting to move in that zone of alcohol where people, they're, they don't think something's wrong with you if you don't smoke weed, but they are... I've had people be surprised that I don't smoke.

   8. CWChris Williamson8:19

      That you don't.

   9. CJCaleb Jones8:19

      In this region.

   10. CWChris Williamson8:20

       Do you think that that's partly because you're a, a blogger, an author, writer, you're one of those creative-y types kind of pushing-

   11. CJCaleb Jones8:27

       Probably.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:27

       ... pushing the boundaries. You maybe sound like the sort of person that has that personality.

   13. CJCaleb Jones8:31

       Probably. Yeah, probably. Another is, another aspect is that I'm a libertarian, so they just expect that that's part of the deal. Another one is people who know my lifestyle sexually, they go, "Well, really? I'm shocked you don't smoke weed." So maybe it's a lot of factors. That's a good point, me making that up, maybe.

   14. CWChris Williamson8:45

       But if you, if you're sleeping with, with multiple women and not holding down monogamous relationships, making a stand, uh, presuming, people presuming that you may be making a moral stand or some sort of virtue stand with regards to the alcohol or the weed, which it doesn't seem-

   15. CJCaleb Jones9:01

       Oh, I get that a lot.

   16. CWChris Williamson9:02

       Yeah, it doesn't seem as the case. It's just a lifestyle choice. The same way as some people-

   17. CJCaleb Jones9:06

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson9:06

       ... don't like to wear blue or some people don't like to drive stick.

   19. CJCaleb Jones9:10

       Yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson9:10

       Like, this is just a lifestyle choice.

   21. CJCaleb Jones9:12

       Yeah. Oh, I've gotten that a lot. People assume that I'm Christian or, or, or Mormon or something like that. "Oh, you must be really religious. You don't, you don't drink?" "No, no, I'm agnostic."

   22. CWChris Williamson9:21

       (laughs)

   23. CJCaleb Jones9:21

       The opposite of religious. It's societal programming. No.

   24. CWChris Williamson9:23

       Oh, yeah.

   25. CJCaleb Jones9:24

       I believe in God, but I'm not religious. So, no.

   26. CWChris Williamson9:26

       Interesting.

   27. CJCaleb Jones9:26

       So yeah, I've definitely gotten that. Yeah. That's just part of, it's part of the culture I've learned to accept. You have to learn to accept the oddness of your culture or else you're going to be pissed off all the time. And I want to be happy, so I can't do that.

   28. CWChris Williamson9:36

       The mari- the marijuana thing's bizarre because we're seeing, we're seeing a substance go from being heavily controlled to legalized for medical use to, like, fragmented legalization across, uh, uh, the states. In certain areas, it is still illegal. Some, it's legal for medicine. Some, it's totally legal recreationally. And we're observing the, uh, social conditioning change-

   29. CJCaleb Jones10:03

       Mm-hmm.

   30. CWChris Williamson10:03

       ... in front of our eyes.
5. 13:30 – 18:23

   Emotional control and depression: lifestyle basics vs quick-fix pills

   1. CWChris Williamson13:30

      Yeah. How, um, so I, I totally understand the people's desire to escape feeling. Feeling feelings is hard, right?

   2. CJCaleb Jones13:40

      Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:40

      Like, like some, some feelings really suck.

   4. CJCaleb Jones13:43

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson13:43

      But, but I think it shows-

   6. CJCaleb Jones13:45

      That's why you have to learn to manage your emotional states. That's why you have to learn emotional control. I'm telling guys this all the time.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:52

      What sort of-

   8. CJCaleb Jones13:52

      Because if you don't, you're fucked. Especially living today, you're gonna be, you're gonna be screwed with the internet, just with the internet alone. Very hard to be happy if you can't manage your own emotions 'cause every day you'll be pissed off about something.

   9. CWChris Williamson14:04

      You are constantly being triggered, you're right. It's interesting to see the difference between how, and again, this may be localized within my area or my social group in the UK, but certainly for me, if you were to say, "Tell me one person that you know that is on a mood altering drug," I would actually struggle to be able to find someone that I-

   10. CJCaleb Jones14:23

       Really?

   11. CWChris Williamson14:23

       ... someone that I know. And I think what that shows-

   12. CJCaleb Jones14:26

       Huh.

   13. CWChris Williamson14:26

       ... what that shows is, um, the natural way to deal with bad emotions can be dictated by what, firstly, soc- uh, societal conditioning in your local peer group or the people around you in the US, uh, may be, oh, you feel bad. There's a Vi- Vicodin, or you should just go see a doctor or whatever it might be, um-

   14. CJCaleb Jones14:45

       Right.

   15. CWChris Williamson14:46

       ... but on top of that as well, obviously, it's top down. It's being, uh, broadcast at you. Like, you have a problem-

   16. CJCaleb Jones14:53

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson14:53

       ... the solution is, the solution is in a pill or a cream or a da, da, da, da, da.

   18. CJCaleb Jones14:59

       As you said that, I just thought through in my own head how many people I personally know on something. I came up with six names.

   19. CWChris Williamson15:04

       Oh, wow.

   20. CJCaleb Jones15:04

       I know a lot of people though.

   21. CWChris Williamson15:05

       Yeah.

   22. CJCaleb Jones15:06

       So maybe I'm not a good example. But I, I, as I'm thinking, I'm thinking of more, or seven people, uh, the number of people I personally know on something, even if it's a prescription something, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson15:14

       (sighs) I, so-

   24. CJCaleb Jones15:16

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson15:17

       ... my point is that I, I think, I, I wonder w- how many people who really need medication slip through the net in the UK by not having this awareness about the fact that prescription drugs could help. And how many people in the US are being oversold on things that they don't need because of this societal conditioning and because of this stuff here.

   26. CJCaleb Jones15:38

       Sure. Well, that last aspect is most people who take these drugs. If you just did basic things like get eight hours of sleep, drink a lot more water, monitor your hormones, get your hormone tests done, meditate a little bit, focus on something you like, have more sex, you just do those basic things, all of a sudden, a lot of these symptoms, not all of them-

   27. CWChris Williamson15:59

       Yeah.

   28. CJCaleb Jones15:59

       ... depends the person, would go away with no drugs, and these would actually enhance your life instead of causing side effects.

   29. CWChris Williamson16:06

       I agree.

   30. CJCaleb Jones16:06

       But what I just said, those things, those are hard. That takes work. People go, "I don't wanna, I don't wanna work." All right, take a drug then.
6. 18:23 – 23:46

   America’s decline, polarization, and cultural drivers of unhappiness

   1. CWChris Williamson18:23

      What do you think- what do you think the trajectory's got in store for you guys at the moment?

   2. CJCaleb Jones18:27

      For what?

   3. CWChris Williamson18:27

      Moving forward, with, with that particular, um, I guess, line of sight, for whether people are gonna continue, whether there's gonna be something that changed. Does there need to be a big intervention? Um...

   4. CJCaleb Jones18:38

      There needs to be, but there won't be.

   5. CWChris Williamson18:40

      Right.

   6. CJCaleb Jones18:41

      W- where Americans are now set on their path. We peaked ... I mean, I'm not a historian, but based on the stuff I've read, I've read a lot, America, as a nation, in relation to other nations, peaked somewhere around the mid- I believe the mid to late 1960s. And since then, we've been on kind of on the down slope, especially as you compare us to other nations.

   7. CWChris Williamson18:58

      Is that happiness?

   8. CJCaleb Jones18:59

      And that is? What's that?

   9. CWChris Williamson19:00

      Is that happiness?

   10. CJCaleb Jones19:02

       That is one.

   11. CWChris Williamson19:03

       Yeah.

   12. CJCaleb Jones19:03

       It's economics, economically positioned in the world, our currency, um, levels of happiness, so you- now you have depression, suicide has gone up, all, all this crazy stuff. That's all happened. In my lifetime, I was born in 1972, and so in my lifetime, I have seen my country, and most other countries in the western world too, I don't wanna just pick on my country, but I live here, so I see it.

   13. CWChris Williamson19:26

       Yeah.

   14. CJCaleb Jones19:26

       I have seen my country get worse in literally every aspect except for crime rates have gone way down and technology has improved. Other than those two things, by every other measurement you could find, my country is worse off when I was a k- from when I was a kid to now. And this is the first time Americans have experienced this. Historically, if you were a 47-year-old American, you would see your country, if you were born in the 1800s, 1700s, early 1900s, even mid-1900s, you would've seen your country grow and improve. Even with problems, we grew and improved in the 20th century, even though we had lots of problems. So you- but you would've seen a, a net growth in- so like, for example, wages, real wages for- as adjusted for inflation, have been stagnant since I was one year old, and I'm, I'm almost 50. So I've never seen wages increase in my country, as compared to inflation. So in the 1970s, my dad was a lower income worker. He made a low, l- he was a lower, lower middle class, maybe even upper lower class guy, and he, he barely made any money, but he was able to, in the '70s, he was able to support a family of seven.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:33

       Oh, my God. (laughs)

   16. CJCaleb Jones20:33

       He was able to support a stay-at-home mom, my wife- my wife, my mom, and us. I had five siblings, so the five of us.

   17. CWChris Williamson20:40

       Yeah.

   18. CJCaleb Jones20:40

       And, uh, that was in the late '70s, early '80s. Today, a guy- that's not even possible for a guy today in the United States. You couldn't even do that. You have to make a six-figure income or higher to maintain all that stuff. A low-income guy can barely even support himself. A low-income guy today would struggle to e- live on his own and have a car in the United States in most cities, in most regions. So that's- and that's the difference I've seen since I grew up, just in my lifetime. Yeah, it's not good.

   19. CWChris Williamson21:07

       I don't know, man. I don't know what the- I don't know what the future's got in store. I think, again, for the UK, we are a little bit less despondent because there's so much less turmoil. Like I look at America-

   20. CJCaleb Jones21:17

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson21:17

       ... especially American politics, and it- it looks like, um, a sitcom. Like that's how it appears.

   22. CJCaleb Jones21:24

       It is a sitcom.

   23. CWChris Williamson21:24

       (laughs)

   24. CJCaleb Jones21:25

       It is. You're- you are correct. The perception is reality. It's a sitcom.

   25. CWChris Williamson21:28

       Okay.

   26. CJCaleb Jones21:28

       It's been a sitcom for quite a while. It's not- it's not with Trump. People think it started with Trump. It started long before Trump. But yeah, it's a sitcom. Correct.

   27. CWChris Williamson21:35

       And yeah, I, I see that and I think for some reason, maybe it's just me with rose, rose-tinted glasses, and some of the listeners may be saying that I'm completely wrong about this, but I just- the UK doesn't have that same degree of turmoil. We're not as- we're certainly not as polarized in terms of the- of the politics.

   28. CJCaleb Jones21:54

       I agree with you. Yeah, I agree with you.

   29. CWChris Williamson21:55

       Um, and I think that just that, like that on its own forces people ... when you have fewer people at the ends of each spectrum politically in terms of, uh, how they identify with their parti- particular kind of thinking stance, which is what it's become, right? Political stance is now not just about politics. It downstream from that totally. Well, that- surely that's got to affect your opinion on weed. Surely that's got to affect your opinion on alcohol and, and on pharmaceuticals and blah, blah, blah, blah, taxes and all the rest of it. But I- for the UK, people are a lot less identified with that. Um, we got a lot more rain to contend with, I think, than you guys, so there's a lot more like umbrella putting up and putting down, and-

   30. CJCaleb Jones22:34

       Mm-hmm.
7. 23:46 – 26:45

   Defining non-monogamy: freedom, Alpha 2.0, and the happiness model

   1. CWChris Williamson23:46

      Yeah. You are right. Um, so we touched on it before, your, uh, particular views on monogamy and dating and stuff like that. The listeners at home, as I mentioned before we started, we've, we've never had anybody on who has been a, uh, polyamory, uh, advocate, or whatever you would even- I don't even know how you class yourself. So can you just take us from the beginning? Talk to us about your, your stance and about what it means and stuff like that.

   2. CJCaleb Jones24:10

      So the non-monogamy, I don't call it polyamory because polyamory is a segment of non-monogamy, so polyamory is very specific. Polyamory is when you are dating multiple women and they are dating multiple men, so it's kind of this big happy group.

   3. CWChris Williamson24:23

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CJCaleb Jones24:24

      ... kind of falling all over each other, which is fine.

   5. CWChris Williamson24:25

      Got you.

   6. CJCaleb Jones24:26

      That's one segment of non- so I call it non-monogamy. A, it's a little less threatening than polyamory, and B, it's more inclusive of every- all the different types of non-monogamy.

   7. CWChris Williamson24:34

      Cool.

   8. CJCaleb Jones24:34

      Um, so non-monogamy is not (clears throat) a core ... I mean, it sounds like it is sometimes, depending on what you read of what I write. It's not the core of what I talk about. It is a important slice of the pie. So, it really starts with long-term masculine happiness. And so the way men work, and women are different, but the way men work is the freer you are on a given day-to-day basis, meaning you can wake up every morning and do whatever you want, whenever you want, with whomever you want, without having to check in with anybody or get anyone's permission, if you- the more- the closer you are to that condition, the happier you tend to be. So, you will be happier if you have your own business, generally speaking, than if you have a corporate wage job, 'cause you have more freedom. You will be happier if you're allowed to have sex with multiple women whenever you want than if you're only allowed to have sex with one woman, at least long term. And that's the way you're wired. You can't control this. That's just the way you are. There are rare and usual exceptions, but they're the rare and usual exceptions. So, if you look at, when I talk about things like Alpha 2.0, that is an entire lifestyle where you're gearing your entire life around maximum freedom in all the seven areas of your life, the two core of those for a man being financial and sexual, that you start there, you start with those two core areas 'cause those help you with all the other areas once those are at a baseline.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:48

      Mm-hmm.

   10. CJCaleb Jones25:48

       And so, yeah, if you go into the woman part, you need to be allowed to... well, number one, you need to have sex. A new movement now is guys not having sex. So that's not gonna make you happy long term. You're a guy. So assuming you're having sex, you need to be allowed to have sex with multiple women because long term, you're not gonna be happy with having sex with just one woman. Short term, you will. You can make it work for a while, a year and a half, two years, three years, whatever you are. Every guy's different. But long term, and the models I talk about are all long-term models that last for the rest of your life, not just in your 20s and early 30s, but in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and so on. These are long-term models. So if you want a long-term happiness model, you've got to work in there in some way your ability to have sex with multiple women if you choose to. And there's four or five different ways you could do that. We can talk about those if you want. But that's- that's where the non-monogamy comes from. It's not about non-monogamy. It's about long-term freedom, which creates long-term happiness for dudes.

8. 26:45 – 31:10

   Pair bonding vs sexual monogamy: evolutionary logic and modern divorce

   1. CWChris Williamson26:45

      (smacks lips) Why do you think men and women are so different? What's specifically ... obviously, genetically, you've alluded to the fact that, uh, man's genetic predisposition is to push his genes as far as is possible.

   2. CJCaleb Jones26:58

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson26:58

      However, it would appear, based on some of the people who I've spoken to, uh, anthropologists, evolutionary biologists, that pair bonding has to occur, the reason that gestation is nine months and that, uh, sex, uh, is a long process, a pleasurable process, the fact that women don't have visual ovulation, um-

   4. CJCaleb Jones27:18

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson27:18

      ... all of these sort of things. The fact that conc- conception is actually relatively fairly tough for, uh, humans compared with some other animals.

   6. CJCaleb Jones27:27

      Yes, accurate. Yeah.

   7. CWChris Williamson27:29

      All- all of that leads towards pair bonding. Pair bonding needs to occur because the infant is pretty much-

   8. CJCaleb Jones27:36

      Agreed.

   9. CWChris Williamson27:36

      ... dependent on the, uh, the mother, uh, the family, but specifically the mother, for the first 10 to 15 years. And you need to have a father around to protect that particular pairing or- or however many children there is in that particular family unit. You need to have the father around, or else everybody dies, because if a jaguar comes while you've got a mother w-

   10. CJCaleb Jones27:59

       All accurate.

   11. CWChris Williamson28:00

       Okay.

   12. CJCaleb Jones28:01

       So-

   13. CWChris Williamson28:01

       So-

   14. CJCaleb Jones28:01

       So now here's the problem. This is where people get confused. Everything you just said is scientifically accurate. (clears throat) I've read about this stuff myself, so you're- uh, that's absolutely true. Human beings, this- and this is where people get messed up. Human beings are pair bonding creatures, but they are not sexually monogamous creatures. There are two- those are two different things. So you can be ... I'm a perfect example. I am pair bonded. I'm married. I am pair bonded to one woman who I share my life with, who I love. I don't love anyone else. I don't want to be with anyone else. I don't want to spend the rest of my life with anyone else, just her and her with me. So we are pair bonded. But I'm allowed to go out on the side and get laid whenever I want, whenever I choose, with whomever I like. There's a few ground rules I agree to. But beyond that, I am still allowed to be non-monogamous even though I'm pair bonded. So what happens is people quote these scientific facts, and they are facts, absolutely true, and they say, "See, we're monogamous." Well, then why is it we have a 76%, north of 76% divorce rate? Why do we have a 77% infidelity rate if we're monogamous? We are pair bonding creatures. We are not monogamous creatures. So again, if you want to be long-term happy, and I realize this is difficult because you're gonna run into all kinds of societal programming and societal conditioning that tells you this is wrong, you're gonna have to be long term in your life, not when you're in your 20s ... I tell guys, you shouldn't have a girlfriend till you're in your 30s, in my opinion. So once you're an older guy, yes, you need to be pair bonded, but not monogamous. So that means you sit down with your special someone and you explain it to her like an adult. "Hey, I love you. I want to be with you. I don't want to be with anyone else. And I'm a human being and I'm a guy. And that means A, B, and C. We could lie to each other like teenagers and say, 'Well, we're in love and we'll be together forever and we'll never want to sleep with anyone else because we're in love,' and Disneys and Narnia and unicorns and roses and shit, or we can be adults and say, 'Let's be together. Let's figure out a plan where we can integrate this into our lifestyles so I can be happy and you can be long-term happy 'cause I'm happy and we avoid all these problems or at least most of the problems that normal couples have.'" The 76% divorce rate people.

   15. CWChris Williamson30:08

       I mean, the fact that there is such a high divorce rate, uh, people just presume, I guess, if you just- if you think about it or if you were to ask a layperson on the street, "Why is the divorce rate so high?" It's-

   16. CJCaleb Jones30:20

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson30:20

       It would be maybe some kind of wistful heritage thing about, "Well, it wasn't that way in my parents' day. My parents are still together." Perhaps that-

   18. CJCaleb Jones30:29

       Right, they just cheated.

   19. CWChris Williamson30:31

       (laughs)

   20. CJCaleb Jones30:33

       Right. People stayed married and they, and the men, mostly men cheated.

   21. CWChris Williamson30:37

       So, do you-

   22. CJCaleb Jones30:37

       They still weren't monogamous.

   23. CWChris Williamson30:38

       Okay, so why-

   24. CJCaleb Jones30:39

       Long-term marriage and marriage working-

   25. CWChris Williamson30:41

       Yeah.

   26. CJCaleb Jones30:41

       Well, they've been married for 47 years. He's never cheated? Maybe he hasn't, but the odds are ... I've talked to a lot of old guys, guys my grandfather's age, guys in their 90s, World War II guys. These guys were married and they stayed married. They were not monogamous. They cheated. You've seen, I don't know if you've seen the American show Mad Men, about Americans in the '60s. It, it's, it was the standard model back then. You cheated. That's just what you did when you're a guy. Women too, not as much, but they did too.

9. 31:10 – 34:34

   Why divorce rose: women’s autonomy, changing incentives, and future projections

   1. CWChris Williamson31:10

      Why has the divorce rate changed?

   2. CJCaleb Jones31:13

      Because women are now allowed to do whatever they want. So, back in the olden days, in like the 1950s, which a lot of guys in my world, the red pier- the red pill menosphere world I want to go back to, um, women weren't allowed to get divorced. So, women would actually go into a court in the '40s, '30s, '50s and say, "I want to divorce my husband." And the judges would say, "What the hell? Get, get, you can't get divorced. Get back to your husband. Next case." Or, and/or they were now, they couldn't do it financially. They couldn't support themselves. They needed to be married.

   3. CWChris Williamson31:39

      Ah, so we've gone-

   4. CJCaleb Jones31:40

      And if they got divorced, their, their religious family would disown them.

   5. CWChris Williamson31:44

      Uh, so as we-

   6. CJCaleb Jones31:45

      So, all these factors-

   7. CWChris Williamson31:46

      We've become-

   8. CJCaleb Jones31:46

      All these factors are now gone. Women are now encouraged to get divorced. Now, it's the opposite.

   9. CWChris Williamson31:50

      Well, you've become more financially independent, uh, more secular, and more accepting, I guess, of divorce as a whole, um-

   10. CJCaleb Jones31:59

       Correct. Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson31:59

       And, uh, uh, yeah. I, I mean, that's, that-

   12. CJCaleb Jones32:02

       And it'll get worse, and it'll get worse. The divorce rate will increase. You're gonna see soon, in the next decade, you're gonna see 90+% divorce rates.

   13. CWChris Williamson32:09

       Wow.

   14. CJCaleb Jones32:10

       People are very slow to figure this out. I've written about this a lot. They don't want to admit the system doesn't work anymore, so they're just gonna keep getting married, keep getting divorced, keep screwing up their kids, keep getting financially raped, keep cheating on each other and yelling at each other. And it's gonna be a while before human beings finally go, "You know, we should probably pick a different system. This isn't working." It's gonna be a while, unfortunately.

   15. CWChris Williamson32:30

       The stats, I mean, you know, I, I, there's not much that I can say about the fact that more than three-quarters of the people, uh, who get married end up getting divorced. As far as I was aware, maybe it's a UK stat, I think it was more than 50. Um, but-

   16. CJCaleb Jones32:42

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson32:42

       But no matter what the stat is, if m- there's a more likelihood, a high likelihood that you're going to get divorced than stay together, it's a worrying statistic. No matter what your views on monogamy are, it's a pretty worrying statistic.

   18. CJCaleb Jones32:56

       Yeah, it is. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. Instead, people should figure out how to stay together like two normal human beings, the way human beings actually work, instead of the way human beings work in a Disney fairytale.

   19. CWChris Williamson33:07

       Well, it's-

   20. CJCaleb Jones33:07

       Where we're gonna get married and we're gonna be in love forever. We're never gonna fuck anyone else because we're in love and that's 'cause, 'cause Snow White. Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson33:15

       What were you saying at the beginning about humans being mimetic creatures and about us taking a lot of societal conditioning? Swallowing that red pill, as you've alluded to, is a difficult thing to do when everyone else around you hasn't, right? Like, when you, you're-

   22. CJCaleb Jones33:33

       That's the big problem with guys in my audience, right? They're one of the biggest questions I get. "I don't know any other men like me. How do I... If I tell my mom, she's gonna get mad at me." Yeah, that's the big challenge. I've been working last year and a half on that specific problem for guys to plug into more communities and things like that. But yes, that's the problem. That's the problem. 'Cause I, it's very rare these days... Now, 10 years ago I would get this. But these days, it's very rare for a man to say, "Oh, no, traditional monogamous marriage works great as long as you do these few things, and every guy should do that." Very rare a guy, even a hardcore right-wing evangelical Christian, even those guys don't say that. They say, "Yeah, it doesn't work, but I'm not gonna do this and this. And m- non, non-monogamy, well, fuck that. No." Okay, but that's fine if you don't, you don't have to like it, but the alternative doesn't work. You're pointing at something that doesn't work. So, you've either got something that doesn't work or you've got something that works, but makes you emotionally uncomfortable for a while. So, those are your two options. I'd rather pick this because I want to be happy. I'm not going to pick something that doesn't work.

10. 34:34 – 37:02

    Kids in open marriages: privacy, stability, and not parading partners

    1. CWChris Williamson34:34

       So, one of the first things that comes to mind for me when I think about a non-typical non-monogamous, uh, relationship as you're... Or a non-typical relationship, which is non-monogamous, is what do you do about the kids? What do you do about raising children in that sort of an environment?

    2. CJCaleb Jones34:53

       I know, I personally know about, let's see, as in right this second, I know, let's see, seven couples, six couples, and I've known many other couples. Six, six or seven? I have to think about that for a minute. Who are married, who live together. No one really knows what kind of lifestyle they lead other than close friends and people like me, and they have kids. As a matter of fact, when I was married the first time, back when I was young and stupid, I was married 1,000 years ago, I was married traditionally and monogamously. And it didn't work because she got depressed and started taking pills. And, uh, when we were married, while I was married, four, literally, four houses down on my street, I didn't know this till after I had moved away, there was a married couple with two little kids who played with my kids, who had a wide open marriage. I had no idea. As far as I know, they're still married. This is decades ago. They were... And they were the happiest couple on the block, and they had kids. Now, no one knew, that's why I didn't know. I didn't know till later, just kind of through the grapevine, went, "What?" I actually called him up and said, "Is this true?" And I don't want to freak you out here, but is it true that... And he's like, "Oh, yeah." And, and my old thing, my old joke to myself is if I had just sat down and talked to that guy for an hour before I got married the first time, incorrectly in my view, it would have saved me a lot of time and effort. So, you can have kids, you just can't... I have kids, I raised kids under this model. I just got mar- remarried, let's see, a year and a half ago. Yes. And so my daughter and my son were, were little when I was living this way. You just, there are rules. You don't parade women around your kids, obviously. You need to show your kids some level of consistency. You need to be an example. You don't go out and telling everybody in their school or all your friends and family about what you're doing if you don't want to. People don't have to know what you're doing.... that, that's, there's no requirement there. You just have to be realistic about your sexual desires. So yeah, you can have kids. A lot of people have kids. And again, if I say, "Have an open marriage and have kids," immediately your societal programming goes... (imitates programming) Okay, fine. You can, you can live your life like two plus two equals five if you want. That's fine, cool. You won't be very happy, you'll have a lot of problems. You can do that, it's fine. I'd rather live two plus two equal four, even if I don't really like four and four emotionally bothers me initially. That's how I look at it.

11. 37:02 – 42:41

    Aubrey Marcus case study: when “open” becomes chaotic and performative

    1. CWChris Williamson37:02

       So, uh, some of the listeners may have heard us talk about him before, but Aubrey Marcus, I don't know whether you know who that is, the guy that owns Onnit-

    2. CJCaleb Jones37:08

       I've heard that name, but that's all I know. I've heard that name.

    3. CWChris Williamson37:11

       So he's the, uh, CEO or founder of Onnit, which is a supplement-

    4. CJCaleb Jones37:15

       Oh, yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson37:16

       ... supplement company that Joe Rogan is a, a partner of. Um-

    6. CJCaleb Jones37:20

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson37:20

       ... very big, very successful. Um, I haven't actually gone, uh, spoken that much about Aubrey, but people who read my tweets will have seen that recently I had to unsubscribe from his newsletter. Um, Aubrey and his wife, Whitney, who is a very attractive, um, Ultimate Fighting Championship-type, uh, ring announcer, commentator-type woman-

    8. CJCaleb Jones37:44

       Mm-hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson37:44

       Uh, super fit, very, very... But they are in a, I think it's classed as a polyamorous or an open relationship. I, there's probably a degree of granularity that you would be able to discern from what's going on that I- I'm not gonna be able to get to, but... Um, and he talks about this experience when his wife brought home another man for the first time-

    10. CJCaleb Jones38:03

        Mm-hmm.

    11. CWChris Williamson38:03

        ... and the way that he felt, and then he talked about the first time that he had sex with another woman, and he said both of those situations, every time that his wife brought another man home, he was dry retching on the floor and it took him four months to get over. And-

    12. CJCaleb Jones38:21

        Oh my God, no.

    13. CWChris Williamson38:22

        So this is in his-

    14. CJCaleb Jones38:23

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson38:23

        This is in his email newsletter. One of the things I can say about Aubrey is he's very candid, right? So his email newsletter-

    16. CJCaleb Jones38:29

        Yeah, at least he's being honest. That's very cool of him. He's being honest, that's great. We, we need more people like that, actually, so I, I applaud him for that. I, I'm one of the few guys in the world, I think, literally, who talk about my non-monogamous exploits and my experiences under my own name with my own picture, and it's me.

    17. CWChris Williamson38:46

        Yeah.

    18. CJCaleb Jones38:46

        And I, there should be a lot more people than just me. There are people I know with audiences my size or much larger who don't talk about this.

    19. CWChris Williamson38:52

        Hmm.

    20. CJCaleb Jones38:52

        So at least he's doing that. But yeah, one of the challenges with this are guys who do this wrong. So everything he's describing, I would never do in my marriage. That doesn't work. Y- y- (laughs) I, I, I don't wanna be mean to this guy. I have no idea. But yes.

    21. CWChris Williamson39:07

        No, fire away.

    22. CJCaleb Jones39:07

        A lot-

    23. CWChris Williamson39:08

        I mean, you are, you're an expert in this particular field, or as close to an expert as I can get a hold of, so we're gonna find out what you think about it.

    24. CJCaleb Jones39:13

        You have to sit down, you have to sit down and be realistic about what will piss you off and what will not piss you off before you actually get into a relationship and before you even have these discussions. So that's number one. A lot of people don't even do that. They say, "Okay, we're open." A lot of more, like, left-wing, like, hippie-ish type people, "Oh, we're sexually free. It'll be great." And then, yeah, and then their wife brings a guy to the house and has sex with him. Oh my God, no. You have to, you have to know your own parameters and be self-aware first. What am I capable of doing? What am I not capable of doing? If X, Y, and Z happened, would I be able to handle that or not? And you need to think that stuff through, and even if you need to write it down. You figure all this stuff out and get it all on paper first. Um, I'm, I'm not, I'm not a super jealous guy, but there are things my wife could do that would, that would make me not retch on the floor, but things like, "Ugh, Jesus, what the hell?" So you have to be aware of those things first. Then your partner has to be aware of her things. So she has to, y- you need to get into her head a little bit, 'cause she's probably not gonna tell you and figure out what her parameters are internally. And every woman is very different. So for example, um, my wife is more comfortable if she's more aware of the specific women I'm playing with on the side. Whereas my last serious relationship, the girlfriend I had before her, she was the opposite. If she didn't know, she, she knew I was doing it, but she didn't know any details, she was very happy. She thought, thought it was fine. When she found out details or when I told her things, she would get really pissed off. So every woman is very different about this. So that's the first level. Then the second level is you sit down and you discuss the ground rules, again, before you get too serious. Once you're already moved in and married and now you're gonna discuss ground rules, that's too late. So my wife and I had a very long, detailed discussion I call the OLTR talk. I have a whole structure for this stuff. This was several years ago, and I laid out all the negatives of being married to me.

    25. CWChris Williamson41:00

        (laughs)

    26. CJCaleb Jones41:00

        And non-monogamy was one of them.

    27. CWChris Williamson41:01

        (laughs)

    28. CJCaleb Jones41:01

        And, and that actually wasn't the one she was pissed off. There was, like, four or five of them, and that was just one. Matter of fact, the one she was scared about was that I work a lot, I work every day.

    29. CWChris Williamson41:09

        Yeah.

    30. CJCaleb Jones41:09

        She's like, well... She didn't care about the non-monogamy because I'd already been doing it the whole time she met me, so she was used to it at that point. It was more like, "Well, you're gonna work a lot and you're never gonna spend time with me." It was more that kind of stuff. But you lay all that stuff out and then you lay out the ground rules, and you're very specific about the ro- ground rules based on what you're capable of and what you think you're not capable of emotionally. You just don't go hog wild and, and bring m- men over. So he should have known, "Hey, look. Look, wife," before she's my wife, "Hey, girlfriend, we're thinking about getting serious. We're gonna be non-monogamous. Here are the parameters, but here's what you can't do. You can't bring guys over and fuck 'em on my couch. That, I'll throw up." You, you gotta be honest about that stuff.
12. 42:41 – 46:14

    Relationship typology and boundaries: FBs, MLTRs, OLTRs

    1. CJCaleb Jones42:41

       There are, there are boundaries to these things. Now, if you're not serious, then you can do whatever you want. So I talk about, I have... There's, there's different types. There's FBs, which are non-serious. There's MLTRs, where it's serious but not committed. And there's OLTR, which is like a girlfriend or your wife. So there's levels. And there's less rules as you go further over to this side of the scale. You can do whatever you want over here. Over here, if you want to be pair bonded, you've got to commit to some level of rules. It's not, it's not a free-for-all. It's not gonna work. That's not how human beings work, unfortunately. It'd be nice if they did, but they don't.

    2. CWChris Williamson43:09

       Yeah. So I think w- what it seems to me, so Aubrey's a big, like, psychedelic warrior, right? Like, he's big into his, uh-

    3. CJCaleb Jones43:15

       Mm-hmm.

    4. CWChris Williamson43:15

       ... mushrooms and his DMT, and he goes away with a shaman and, and gets, like, uh, does all the ceremonies-

    5. CJCaleb Jones43:21

       Oh, got it. Yeah.

    6. CWChris Williamson43:21

       ... and all that sort of stuff.

    7. CJCaleb Jones43:22

       Not surprised, I guess.

    8. CWChris Williamson43:23

       Uh, and I think, yeah, it fits the model, right? Um, and-

    9. CJCaleb Jones43:26

       Yeah. (clears throat)

    10. CWChris Williamson43:26

        What I think, what I think he was potentially doing with this was almost seeing it as, like, a rite of passage. I think he had seen this, um, particular prescription for non-monogamy in whatever model it was that he thought, uh, uh, that he was going to adhere to. And then him and his then-wife were going to fit their life around this prescription, as opposed to having it-

    11. CJCaleb Jones43:57

        Right.

    12. CWChris Williamson43:57

        ... be emergent, which is what you're talking about. He had seen-

    13. CJCaleb Jones44:00

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson44:00

        ... "Okay, this is what non-monogamy is, therefore I'm gonna stick to it." And I think he talks about, I think it's in his book, Seize the Day. He talks about how he brought this guy home, and it was like this for the first X number of weeks or months or times or whatever that it happened.

    15. CJCaleb Jones44:15

        Oh, my God.

    16. CWChris Williamson44:15

        And then, and then he had a breakthrough. And you sound... The, the, the terminology for breakthrough is taken from when people smoke DMT, right? It's that you have this breakthrough experience, or you take a hero dose of mushrooms and you break through.

    17. CJCaleb Jones44:29

        Mm-hmm.

    18. CWChris Williamson44:29

        And I, I, I think he was maybe, uh, trying to layer a, (clicks tongue) a psychedelic framework or, like, fit, uh, non-monogamy into a psychedelic matrices. Like, that was what he was trying to fit it into, is that-

    19. CJCaleb Jones44:43

        Too woke.

    20. CWChris Williamson44:44

        Just-

    21. CJCaleb Jones44:44

        You're right. Too woke.

    22. CWChris Williamson44:45

        Too woke. (laughs) That's it. It's- could be summarized in-

    23. CJCaleb Jones44:47

        He's lost objectivity and he's lost reality. You need to be objective about these things.

    24. CWChris Williamson44:52

        I mean, and it-

    25. CJCaleb Jones44:52

        And, and that's, that's an example. It's an interesting example of it going the other way. Most people are on the other side, more the right-wing side, including people who are considered left-wing people. It... Marriage looks like this, and a relationship looks like this, and it better look like this or you're a sinner, or I'm never gonna get... Uh, usually people are on the other side of irrationality. He's on this side of the irration- There's a rational zone in the middle between those two extremes.

    26. CWChris Williamson45:14

        Mm-hmm.

    27. CJCaleb Jones45:14

        You've got to be rational about hu- how human beings are, but you also have to be rational and objective and self-aware enough to know what your limits are. And every guy's different. And every woman's different.

    28. CWChris Williamson45:24

        Yeah. It's an interesting one, man. It's an interesting one. I, uh, I'm mean, his, this, the penultimate email to the one that I unsubscribed from, the title was, "Me and Whitney Nealy Split Up Today." And that's him and his, him and his wife. And I'm like, uh, I appreciate-

    29. CJCaleb Jones45:37

        What are you... Yeah, it's a little too much information. You shouldn't be-

    30. CWChris Williamson45:40

        It's the-
13. 46:14 – 50:57

    Polyamory vs open marriage: why multiple ‘girlfriends’ undermines pair bonding

    1. CJCaleb Jones46:14

       So that is... This is an example of what you were talking about earlier about what polyamory is, the difference between polyamory and an open relationship.

    2. CWChris Williamson46:21

       Okay.

    3. CJCaleb Jones46:22

       So in my view, and this is, this is not a fact more than my opinion-

    4. CWChris Williamson46:27

       Yeah.

    5. CJCaleb Jones46:27

       ... but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. If you want to be pair bonded, that person shouldn't have other boyfriends, because that's not pair bonding. So if your wife has a boyfriend, or if you're married and you have another girlfriend on the side, a girlfriend, that's not pair bonding. That's polyam-

    6. CWChris Williamson46:41

       Yeah, he has two. He has, he has two girlfriends.

    7. CJCaleb Jones46:44

       He has two girlfriends. Okay. So if he views these as real girlfriends, real emotional meaning and commitment to these women in addition to his wife, that's not pair bonding. That's something else. That's po- that's more polyamory. So that'd be a polyamorous marriage, which I don't, I'm against. I think that's a very bad idea.

    8. CWChris Williamson47:02

       Why?

    9. CJCaleb Jones47:02

       I think polyamory is great if you are not pair bonded. So for many years, uh, in a, in my parlance, it would be MLTR. So I had multiple MLTRs for years, and it was great. But I didn't have a girlfriend. They were all women I were da- I was dating and I really liked, and I liked on an emotional level, but they weren't a girlfriend. Once you have a girlfriend, that's pair bonding. So if you have multiple girlfriends... I've talked to a lot of guys about this, hundreds of guys about this. Almost never have I seen that work long term, to have multiple... In the Western world. I mean, you could move to Saudi Arabia or do something else. But in the Western world, having multiple girlfriends or multiple wives or something to that equivalent, it doesn't work long term in the West. You can't do that. If you're gonna be pair bonded, you need to be pair bonded. I am with you. I have no other girlfriends or wives except you. I'm allowed to go get laid on the side. These are not my girlfriends. These are women who are my friends, FBs, which is friend with benefits. It's a friend-

    10. CWChris Williamson48:00

        (laughs)

    11. CJCaleb Jones48:00

        ... not a girlfriend. So I have-

    12. CWChris Williamson48:01

        Right.

    13. CJCaleb Jones48:01

        ... an OLTR, I have a wife, and I have FBs. They're not my girlfriends, they're just my buddies. And we have sex, and that's it. We don't go on dates. We don't spend the week together. I already have that with my wife. That's more, that's a more long-term, sustainable model.

    14. CWChris Williamson48:16

        I understand. I think, we... Aubrey, if you're listening, we got some advice for you, man. Get in touch with Caleb. He'll, he'll, uh, he'll do a little rundown. He'll maybe, maybe give you a little bit of a-

    15. CJCaleb Jones48:23

        He needs to downgrade his girlfriends to FBs, he needs to make his wife his only wife and his only girlfriend, and she needs to make that kind of commitment too. And if she doesn't want to, they should get divorced, and they should just date.

    16. CWChris Williamson48:35

        There we go.

    17. CJCaleb Jones48:35

        That's the su- now it's sustainable.

    18. CWChris Williamson48:37

        We fixed it.

    19. CJCaleb Jones48:37

        That's a sustainable model.

    20. CWChris Williamson48:38

        I might re... I'll re-sign up to his newsletter and I'll reply and I'll give him...

    21. CJCaleb Jones48:42

        (laughs) Yeah.

    22. CWChris Williamson48:43

        I'll give him the too long, didn't read from the podcast, man.

    23. CJCaleb Jones48:45

        Fair enough.

    24. CWChris Williamson48:45

        So, um-One of the things that I, I've, I've been thinking in the back of my mind, and I can't fantastically put myself in the mind of a, a female. But to the girls that are listening, I would love to hear what your thoughts are about this, whether or not you would, uh, have ever considered this or whether it's so kind of visceral and stomach-turning because of the way that you, uh, uh, naturally consider couples and partnerships to be that it's difficult to almost put yourself into this situation. But I think certainly one of the things that, that will come to mind for many people when... And I'm, I'm very empathetic, right? Like my, my empathy is crippling. So for me to (laughs) think about, um, the way that-

    25. CJCaleb Jones49:28

        You're probably a nicer person than me, though. You're probably a nice guy.

    26. CWChris Williamson49:31

        Uh, yeah, but too nice sometimes. And unfortunately, people-

    27. CJCaleb Jones49:34

        Right.

    28. CWChris Williamson49:34

        ... people, if they realize that, if they realize how empathetic you are, it's a big, big advantage-

    29. CJCaleb Jones49:39

        Oh, I know.

    30. CWChris Williamson49:39

        ... to faking things.
14. 50:57 – 1:00:24

    Fairness and jealousy: allowing her options, managing male discomfort, and the ‘four answers’

    1. CWChris Williamson50:57

       Interesting. That's interesting. But yeah, so to try and put myself into the mind of a, of a girl, uh, thinking about this particular situation, certainly one of the problems that you may come up against, and I'm gonna guess you will have a, a, uh, format for this or a structure for this that exists, where you have a man who does want to, uh, be able to have other partners outside of his main, uh, relationship.

    2. CJCaleb Jones51:23

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson51:23

       But that-

    4. CJCaleb Jones51:24

       Which is all men, but go ahead.

    5. CWChris Williamson51:26

       (laughs) But the f- the, uh, girl in the relationship has no desire to be with other men.

    6. CJCaleb Jones51:35

       Norm- normal.

    7. CWChris Williamson51:35

       Yeah. But that, I think what that-

    8. CJCaleb Jones51:38

       You just described the norm.

    9. CWChris Williamson51:39

       Okay. What happens-

    10. CJCaleb Jones51:40

        At least in the earlier parts of the relationship. You just described the norm. He wants to play around, and she doesn't, doesn't want to or doesn't want to yet.

    11. CWChris Williamson51:46

        What that leads to people thinking, and what it certainly leads to me thinking, is that there's, there's some kind of imbalance, unfairness between the two, that somehow the open, non-monogamous relationship would work more easily or would somehow be more balanced, is ma- a way to put it, if both partners had other things going on.

    12. CJCaleb Jones52:10

        That's true, but if one partner doesn't want those things, which happens all the time, it's happened to me a lot-

    13. CWChris Williamson52:15

        Yeah.

    14. CJCaleb Jones52:16

        ... then fine.

    15. CWChris Williamson52:17

        Mm-hmm.

    16. CJCaleb Jones52:17

        The, the l- as long as she is allowed to, because that's one of the first questions she's gonna throw at your face when you start describing these things to her. The very first thing out, that's gonna tumble out of her mouth is, "Well, can I fuck other guys?" Even if she doesn't want to and has no intention to and thinks it's gross if she were to do that, she's still gonna say that. And if you say, "Whoa, whoa, no, no," well, then you're out. If you say, "Yes, if you really wanna do that, yes, of course." And then she goes, "Oh."

    17. CWChris Williamson52:44

        Cool. So I mean, so there we lead on to the next thing, which is that for men, and again, this is evolutionary conditioning, for men, allowing your partner to sleep with other men provokes an incredibly visceral response.

    18. CJCaleb Jones53:00

        Incredibly.

    19. CWChris Williamson53:01

        And if you want to have your cake, you need to... I'm going to guess, uh, that it's probably a pretty difficult sell to say, "Our relationship is going to be non-monogamous, but only for me."

    20. CJCaleb Jones53:16

        And not long-term sustainable.

    21. CWChris Williamson53:18

        Okay, so if you're-

    22. CJCaleb Jones53:19

        I've never seen that... I've seen guys try that. I've never seen it last more than nine months.

    23. CWChris Williamson53:23

        Where the guy is able to s-

    24. CJCaleb Jones53:24

        I've seen numerous men try that in the Western world.

    25. CWChris Williamson53:26

        Guy's able to sleep around, girl isn't.

    26. CJCaleb Jones53:28

        Yeah, so he's, literally says, "I'm gonna fuck other women. You can only fuck me." And she's like... And he's a strong alpha male, and she's a little willowy, little submissive girl. And she goes, "Oh, okay." And within nine months, they either break up or she bangs someone else just to g- just to make it even-

    27. CWChris Williamson53:42

        Yeah.

    28. CJCaleb Jones53:42

        ... and to balance it out just to get back at him.

    29. CWChris Williamson53:44

        Yeah. So, f- for guys, I mean, like for me personally, again, maybe I'm too blue pill or maybe I haven't taken the red pill yet enough for this, I struggle to see a situation in which I would be able to stomach somebody that I love sleeping with someone else with my, uh, allowance, with my, um, grace.

    30. CJCaleb Jones54:06

        So there's several answers to that. Answer number one, and they're, and they're different areas. So answer number one is, a significant percentage of women who are not super young... So if she's under the age of 23, she's gonna have sex with other guys. That's, that's what young girls do. If she's older, a significant percentage, and in my experience, in my anecdotal experience, but I have a lot of anecdotal experience, it's around 40 to 50% won't sleep with other men. Even if they have the opportunity to, they don't want to. They think that's gross. So even though you're sleeping with other women, they say, "Okay, you're a man. You're a barbarian. That's how men are, but I don't do that. I'm appropriate. I'm a Christian," or, "I'm a this," or, "I'm a that, so I'm not gonna do that." So that's one. Number two, if she does, women are not like men. And so what men do is they negative fantasize about, "Well, well, if sh- if I'm allowed to go out and have sex constantly with other women, and I'm gonna constantly do that for the rest of my life, oh no, she's gonna constantly do that." No, she doesn't. Women go through horny phases, they go through non-sexual phases, they go through all kinds of different phases. So if she does-She might do it for a few months and then stop and never do it again. Or maybe do it once every 10 years, or once every few years, off and on very rarely. She's not gonna do it consistently like I do it or like you would do it 'cause we're men. Men are not like women. That's the second answer. Third answer is, you should train yourself to get to the point where you care less. So if you're a jealous person, it's gonna be harder for you to be a happy person. So if you have this thing where, and a lot of guys are like this, it, there's, there's guys who are really jealous, guys who are moderately jealous, and guys who don't, really don't give a shit. So the really jealous guys, if they even see a guy comment on her Facebook page, or they hear, uh, a thing on Instagram go off on her phone, and they just go into a rage, you have a problem. There's something wrong with you, you need to fix. You don't say, "Well, I'm a man, and that's just how I am." And, and quote a bunch of, you know, evolutionary psychology about how, "I need to, you know, protect my woman and I'm not gonna..." You can, you can give me all that science you want, you're, there's something wrong with you in terms of your long-term happiness if you're that angry and that jealous. So if you are, on a scale from one to 10, you're a 12 if you visualize a woman you like having meaningless sex with a beta male who's no competition to you wearing a condom, if that just drives you insane, then it's, it behooves you in terms of being a man and being a happy man and to improve yourself, to get that 12 down to a six, or a seven, or a five, or somewhere in there. Drop it down. You should do that anyway, regard- even if you had planned on being monogamous for the rest of your life, you would do that anyway. You shouldn't go through life being that touchy about these things. 'Cause that's all I see all the time, and that's one of women's biggest complaints about guys, is they start seeing them and all of a sudden, the guys starts to just put all these fences and walls around them, and the woman's attraction for the man goes down. She's like, "Ugh." Now for a while she likes it, 'cause that means he likes me. But after a while, "Oh my God, kill me." And that's one of the reasons why 75% of boyfriend/girlfriend relationships are terminated by the female. Because the woman gets tired of the stuff.
15. 1:00:24 – 1:07:33

    What’s the optimal long-term relationship model—and why cheating is worse

    1. CWChris Williamson1:00:24

       So, as a bookend question to what has been a really interesting discussion, I'd love to hear your thoughts on what you think is the optimal setup for a relationship in life. So we've talked about you've, you've had multiple long-term partners moving through. Would it, would you have preferred in a different iteration of the world where you could control everything that occurred within it, do you think it's optimal to have A, uh, what, I can't remember what, the MLFB or whatever it was?

    2. CJCaleb Jones1:00:56

       OLTR?

    3. CWChris Williamson1:00:56

       The main one.

    4. CJCaleb Jones1:00:57

       So one, one wife or girlfriend you mean?

    5. CWChris Williamson1:00:58

       Yes. Is it optimal, if you can, to have one for 60 years, 30 years, however long, from mid-30s until whenever? Or from-

    6. CJCaleb Jones1:01:08

       Are you, are you talking about optimal as in how human beings are now?

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:11

       For you, if you were to say to someone, "This is what I think is, for a broad cross-section of people, the best way to do things."

    8. CJCaleb Jones1:01:21

       Yes, for a broad cross-section of men, but not all men, 'cause there are exceptions to all these rules.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:26

       Yeah.

    10. CJCaleb Jones1:01:26

        There are some men who should never pair bond. There are a small percentage of men who should never have a girlfriend. They should just go bang chicks and date and, into their 60s and 70s and there's just, but that's an exception. Um, yes, for a broad cross-section of people, the least bad scenario, 'cause I don't wanna say best 'cause there's problems with what ... There are problems with the models I'm talking about.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

        Yes.

    12. CJCaleb Jones1:01:45

        Everything you've talked about are, those are accurate criticisms. The least bad system is a long-term pair bonded wife or girlfriend, however you wanna term it, s- assuming you're over the age of 35, 'cause I tell guys don't, don't settle down with a woman until you're at least 35. That's insane. At least you're 35. So, assuming you're 35 or older, you have a long-term, decades-long wife or girlfriend that you are really good with and you're very complementary with and compatible with and you are allowed to get sex on the side within ground rules. These are not your girlfriends. This is more casual, friendly sex when you need it as a man, and she is allowed to, too. And the older she gets, the less she'll do it. She may not do it at all as she gets older. That's the least bad scenario for the broadest cross-section of people, yes.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:02:34

        My, my.

    14. CJCaleb Jones1:02:35

        'Cause that is ... Uh, what I just described is doable long term. What is not doable long term is we're gonna be married, you're never gonna touch anyone else for the rest of your fucking life and I won't either, and you roll your eyes as you're saying it when you're a guy. "I promise I won't either, honey. And we're never gonna get divorced, we're never gonna split up." That's not long term sustainable because that is a fundamental violation of everything in which, all the ways in which you were designed as a man and as a woman. That's why it doesn't work.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:03:02

        Okay. So, I'm gonna finish off with a question which is, you've got the monogamy, which is the traditional relationship approach, which you've just identified there. And then you've got Aubrey's relationship, which is-

    16. CJCaleb Jones1:03:13

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:03:13

        ... I'm gonna have a wife and the wife's gonna have ... Which one is-

    18. CJCaleb Jones1:03:16

        A polya- that's a polyamorous marriage.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:03:18

        W- which one is the, in your eyes, the least effective? Which one's gonna f-

    20. CJCaleb Jones1:03:24

        Neither of those are long term sustainable.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:03:25

        Which one's gonna fail first?

    22. CJCaleb Jones1:03:29

        Hi- how long ... His? How long has he been married?

    23. CWChris Williamson1:03:31

        Uh, I'm not sure. I don't know.

    24. CJCaleb Jones1:03:33

        His? His will. You can, you can grit your teeth and be monogamous to a wife for a long time. I did it for nine years and I'm a really high sex drive, so you can do it. Women, men and women can grit their teeth and suffer through shitty marriages. A lot of people can do that. They did that all throughout the '50s and '60s and all that good stuff. So you can have a marriage, traditional monogamous marriage that lasts a long time. It won't last forever. That's not how you're designed. And if it does last forever, someone's cheating and someone's putting up with it.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:03:59

        But someone's going to encounter ... In the polyamorous marriage, someone's going to encounter a problem that is, they're unable to-

    26. CJCaleb Jones1:04:05

        That is catastrophic to the relationship. If he's retching on the floor because there's a man fucking his wife in his house-

    27. CWChris Williamson1:04:12

        (laughs)

    28. CJCaleb Jones1:04:12

        ... how is that long term sustainable? It's not. Can't do it.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:04:16

        Well, I mean, I, I ask myself the same question.

    30. CJCaleb Jones1:04:18

        Whereas the guy who has a wife at home and he cheats on her and hopes he doesn't get caught, you could stretch that out for a, a long time.

Episode duration: 1:07:34