How Men Keep Sabotaging Themselves - Dr Robert Glover

1. 0:00 – 5:54

   What’s Wrong With Being a Nice Guy?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      What's wrong with being a nice guy?

   2. RGDr Robert Glover0:03

      What's wrong with being a nice guy? That's, that's a good question. You know, when I put out a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, I'm sure a lot of people picked it up and said, "Wait a minute, there's already enough not nice guys out there. Why did somebody write a book teaching men how to be not nice?" The, the problem with being a nice guy, just a quick elevator pitch, is, is that a nice guy is a guy who inaccurately internalized the belief system at a very young age, "I'm not okay just as I am." So, he's trying to do two things, very unconsciously usually. One is become what he thinks, uh, everybody else wants him to be so he'll be liked and loved and get his needs met and get laid, hopefully, uh, regularly, and hide anything about himself that might get a negative reaction from people. Uh, hiding his needs, his wants, his sexuality. So, while he's trying to get laid, he's hiding his sexuality. Um, so a core problem with nice guy syndrome is nice guys tend to be un- uh, unau- authentic. Uh, they're- they're- there's not a real them there. They're trying to become something, hide something, and, uh, that tends to make them fairly dishonest, untrustworthy, frustrated, resentful, passive-aggressive, uh, uh, a whole list of traits that can go along. And, and mainly, it prevents... And I'm a recovering nice guy, so I'm not speaking down to anybody. You know, it keeps us from just being ourselves, living up to our f- our full potential, having what we want in life, having a good time. And so just a lot of baggage comes along with it.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:30

      What are the component parts of being a nice guy? What are the traits that they embody or project?

   4. RGDr Robert Glover1:38

      Worry... What you'll recognize most often, and what listeners may recognize in themselves, uh, core tendencies, often people-pleasing, seeking external validation, and, and for men usually that's seeking validation from women. Even, even gay guys, I find, tend to do it, uh, even if they don't plan on having sex with the women. They- w- we're- w- we can talk more about this, but we're, we're- w- we've learned from birth to please women. So there's that people-pleasing, that external validation, um, failing to live up to one's full potential, a basic core dishonesty. You know, thinking, you know, "I'm, I'm a good guy. I'm pretty honest." I al- I always laugh when men tell me they're pretty honest. I say, "Th- that's actually a contradiction of terms. Um, you're honest or you're not." Um, and, um, and just, you know, for most nice guys, there's just a certain dull depression that they live with. Just thinking, you know, "I should be happy. I should be getting what I want. I should be getting love. I, I should, I should, but I'm not, and I don't know why not." And so there's, there's a lot of characteristics. But the, the core piece you'll see the most often is that people-pleasing, that seeking of external validation.

   5. CWChris Williamson2:56

      Who is the prototypical nice guy avatar? Like, des- describe him for me.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover3:03

      (laughs) Oh, he's, you know, he's just, just that guy that's, you know, walking through life, trying to make everybody happy, trying not to do anything wrong, don't wanna fuck anything up, doesn't wanna piss anybody off, uh, goes along to get along. You know, we've heard that. You know, happy wife, happy life. "If I just make everybody happy, everything's good." Uh, I, I have a course that I've taught for a number of years called Nice Guys Don't Finish Last, they Rot in Middle Management. So he's good at being good...

   7. CWChris Williamson3:34

      (laughs)

   8. RGDr Robert Glover3:34

      ... but, you know, he doesn't excel. He doesn't stand out 'cause standing out is actually really scary for nice guys. Uh, it's too much attention. It's too much expectation. Um, so, you know, when I started working with nice guys 30 years ago, um, most of the men I worked with, you know, probably were around my age. I was in my early 30s at that time. And, um, so it was a lot of baby, uh, baby boom generation guys. You know, they, they were trying to be different than their fathers, the World War II, you know, men. Uh, they were in that protest generation against Vietnam, growing their hair out, getting in touch with their feminine side. And, and so a lot of the men I worked with, you know, kind of grew up in that era. But I'd been doing this for a while, and so, you know, my son's 38, for example, so, you know, I- I've worked with millennials- millennials, men younger than that. And what's funny i- is whereas my generation, a lot of the m- men, uh, kind of attribute part of their nice guy stuff to, "Well, my dad wasn't there," or, you know, "My parents divorced," or, you know, "He worked all the time," or, "He was an alcoholic," or... Nowadays, I hear a lot of men say, "Oh, my dad was a nice guy, and, and about all he taught me about life was, 'Don't piss off your mother.'" And, and-

   9. CWChris Williamson4:48

      Hmm.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover4:48

       ... 'cause he was walking around eggshells trying not to piss off my mother. So, you know, I- I've seen that whole range, all the way from the guys that were reacting to, you know, the, the, the, the asshole, um, patriarchal father to now, the guys that were raised by nice guys, and they don't know any other way of being.

   11. CWChris Williamson5:09

       It's like one generation had the tyrant, and the other generation had the compliant, uh-

   12. RGDr Robert Glover5:16

       That's a good way to put it. That's nice.

   13. CWChris Williamson5:18

       Yeah. Uh-

   14. RGDr Robert Glover5:18

       The, the tyrant, the compliant.

   15. CWChris Williamson5:19

       Yeah, it was. Um, but h- here's the interesting thing, right? In the... It's so fascinating that you had one generation that was rebelling in their niceness, even if that niceness isn't that nice-

   16. RGDr Robert Glover5:30

       Yeah. Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson5:31

       ... and then another generation that was following in their niceness. So there seems to be a particular stickiness to niceness. If tyrants that are emotionally unavailable and not nice are able to create nice guys, and nice fathers are also able to-

   18. RGDr Robert Glover5:51

       W- we're in big trouble. We're... (laughs) Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson5:53

       So c-

2. 5:54 – 15:06

   The Origin of Nice Guys

   1. CWChris Williamson5:54

      wh- why is it so prevalent? What is, what is this pull? Are we, as men, are we inculcating or absorbing something from the world? Is this the way that we were raised by mom and dad? Is the... W- what's the gen- what's the origin? What's the genesis-

   2. RGDr Robert Glover6:08

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson6:08

      ... the seed of this?

   4. RGDr Robert Glover6:10

      Well, that's a good question, of course, and that's, of course, what every nice guy wants. "Well, how'd I get to be this way?" You know? And-

   5. CWChris Williamson6:15

      Who cursed me with this?

   6. RGDr Robert Glover6:17

      Yeah, yeah. (laughs) I, I quickly learned when I started working with nice guys again 30 years ago that there is no one, you know, one-size-fit-all how y- how you got to be a nice guy. I, I thought there was at first. I thought they were all like me. You know, uh, disconnected from their father in some significant way, uh, you know, significantly raised by their mother, trying to please their mom, and, and, and, uh, and I thought, "Well, that, that explains it all." But it didn't. And, um, there's so many pieces that go into it. A lot of men I work with that identify as being nice guys, I think part of it's their temperament. Part of it is just they're easygoing. You know, my, my, my mother, uh, would often say in adulthood to women I was dating, "Oh, Bobby never did like conflict." And I'm, I'm thinking, "Oh, thanks, Mom. You know, what are you telling these women? Be nice to my son. Don't be mean to him?" But I'm also thinking, "Who does like conflict?" You know, I, I do tend to marry women who like to fight, but I...

   7. CWChris Williamson7:15

      (laughs)

   8. RGDr Robert Glover7:15

      For me, it's kinda like, you know, "Can't, can't, can't..." You know, instead of us... You, you doing something that starts a fight, I say to them, "Can't I just yell at you a little bit, you cry, and then I hold you? Isn't that really what, you know, this is all about anyway?" And my wife always says, "No. It, it doesn't count unless you're really mad at me." Um, so I, I don't like conflict in particular, so that's my temperament. So I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit more-

   9. CWChris Williamson7:37

      Yeah, so there's a disposition that many of the nice guys will have, the raw materials of someone that's a little bit-

   10. RGDr Robert Glover7:42

       Part of my nature.

   11. CWChris Williamson7:42

       ... averse, averse. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover7:44

       Part of my nature. But, but that's just kinda one category of nice guy.

   13. CWChris Williamson7:47

       Mm-hmm.

   14. RGDr Robert Glover7:47

       The other one that, that I've bumped into... I call often those the I'm-so-good nice guy. He's the guy that just always did everything right no matter what, you know? But the other side I talk about in No More Mr. Nice Guy is what I call the I'm-so-bad nice guy. This is the one that, you know, maybe started rebelling at an early age, maybe had ADHD undiagnosed, you know, is always impulsive, getting in trouble, you know, not following through, getting yelled at, getting punished, starts doing drugs and alcohol at 14, you know, drops out of school, and then maybe at some point has a, a Come to Jesus moment, religion, military, gets married as a kid, death in the family. He goes, "I got, I, I gotta quit, you know, self-destructing. I, I gotta, I gotta be nicer." So there's that kind of nice guy as well. So it's a different temperament than, than the, than the other. One of the pieces... You know, there's so many pieces that go into this, but to answer your question, how do we... Uh, what's the stickiness part? Again, I think a real core piece that I see with so many nice guys is this attempt to, to please women. And I, I was talking to somebody the other day, it, it, it makes perfect sense, 'cause if you think about it, we're all born to a woman. Our earliest caregiver, if it's not Mom, it's probably some other woman. So from the time we're born, our very survival, our sustenance, our okayness depends on a woman and probably us getting along with that woman. That's probably a good thing, right? And so that's really normal, that the... Our first experiences are<|a|>s Our first experiences are how to, how to negotiate a relationship with a woman to make that big powerful, holds our, our life in her hands, uh, person, how to make sure that's okay. And I don't know about in the UK, but when I was growing up, uh, in Seattle, I had one male teacher before I got to junior high.

   15. CWChris Williamson9:36

       There's four times more female fighter pilots in the US Air Force by percentage than there are male kindergarten teachers.

   16. RGDr Robert Glover9:46

       There you go. You've done your research. So, so I had one teacher. So that means just to learn how to get from second to third grade, not only I had to learn my reading, writing, and arithmetic, but how to please a woman. Okay. All of that's fine. There's, there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I think that's actually probably the way it's always been. But historically, I mean, if we go back even two or three generations, but if you go through most of human history, at about age 12, the man came into the boy's life, took him, you know, from the women, took him out, had a masculine initiation, taught him how to get comfortable being uncomfortable, how to face his fear, how to live in the scary world of the masculine, and therefore... And spent most of his time from then on out with men in the masculine and, and so he got... He moved through that, "What do I have to do to please a woman." So I think it's a really normal thing that... To, to try to please women, uh, is survival for, for every young boy. But what's, what's missing is there's no initiation to teach them how to, how to go face their fears in the scary world of the masculine and quit seeking the approval and validation of women. 'Cause there's this really interesting paradox that I, I've... Took me years to find out and, you know, a lot of men I work with takes You know, it's, uh, it's a big surprise is, "Oh, pursuing women and trying to please them doesn't make them interested in you? It doesn't make them like you? It doesn't make them wanna have sex with you?" No, it actually doesn't. Actually not trying to please women tends to make a guy more interesting to women in general. That's a big paradox for a lot of the men I work with. You know, it was for me. I mean, I mean, all this... Uh, me listening to them talk about their problems, me trying to be different than the jerks they complain about, me repressing my sexuality so it's not like I just want that one thing from them. You know, all that doesn't make them interested in me. No, it doesn't actually. But they do seem to be drawn and attracted to the guy who's comfortable in his own skin, living a life, you know, on his terms, connected with men, uh, putting a big dent in the universe. That is really attractive. But there's no, no "How do I get this woman's approval" involved in that whole mix.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:57

       What are the covert contracts?

   18. RGDr Robert Glover11:59

       Oh, I'm glad you asked that. That's, um, that's my favorite part of No More Mr. Nice guy. And I know, uh, many men read it and say, "Robert, that is the biggest takeaway." The covert contracts are unspoken, often unconscious agreements that the nice guy has... With everything that's not him, with the world, with God, with women. You know, w- which is how things work. And in the book, I- I- I- I'm a little bit general, but I- I've broken it down to three specific covert contracts that nice guys have. They're all if/then, uh, "If I do this, then this will happen." They- they all, uh, are basically manipulative. They all have strings attached. And often, the nice guy isn't aware of them and nobody else is either. So covert contract number one, "If I'm a good guy, I will be liked and loved and get my..." And- and going back to... And the women I'm trying to impress will want to be with me and have sex with me. So, "If I'm good, I'll be liked and loved." Number two, "If I meet everybody else's needs without them having to ask, then they will meet my needs without me having to ask." Now, unfortunately, nobody else knows this contract exists, so they don't know. They're supposed to be reading our minds and figuring out what we want like we're trying to do for them. Another core problem with this is that nice guys are actually really terrible receivers. We're not good at letting people do for us. We're not good at giving to ourselves. So that's covert contract number two. Covert contract number three is, "If I do everything right, then I will have a smooth, problem-free world." So it's kind of a Peter Pan-ish kind of thing. You know, "I- I- I do everything right. I'm a- I'm a good guy, but unfortunately, we're- we're- we're the player, the referee, the scorekeeper. We got the big scoreboard. Hey, I've done everything right. How come this stuff still isn't going the way it's supposed to go in my life?" So, nice guys are walking around with these covert contracts and- and you ask, you know, "What are... What- what- what's the core characteristic of a nice guy?" One of them is, is that they're often really resentful. You know, they might say, "Well, I'm- I'm- I'm kind of bugged or I'm kind of frustrated," but they're really resentful and often rageful. "Because I've been doing this, I've been doing it right. I've been following the rules. I've been, you know, being the good guy. I've been meeting your needs. I've been, you know, following all the rules. You know, how come I'm... When's it my turn? How come I'm not getting all the, all the stuff that I thought I would?" And that leads to a lot of resentments, and that- and that's one way I can tell- I tell nice guys. They go, "Well, how do I know if I'm- if I'm using covert contracts?" And I go, "You'll know, because you're walking around resentful and pissed off, either because you didn't get back in turn or you didn't get appreciated for- for all that- that you did." I heard somebody share a quote the other day that I really like. To me is another really nice way of putting covert contracts, and this, I guess, was from Neil Strauss. And he says, "Un-" um, "Unspoken expectations-"

   19. CWChris Williamson14:53

       "... expectations are premeditated resentments."

   20. RGDr Robert Glover14:56

       "... resentment." Isn't that- that- that is what happens-

   21. CWChris Williamson14:58

       Phenomenal.

   22. RGDr Robert Glover14:59

       ... with covert contracts.

   23. CWChris Williamson15:00

       Phenomenal by him.

   24. RGDr Robert Glover15:01

       Yeah. That.

3. 15:06 – 22:15

   Using Aggression as a Masculine Tool

   1. CWChris Williamson15:07

      So the frustration and the resentfulness, that's coming from offering to the world something that you think should be universally liked. You have... There- there is- there's no way that anybody could be offended by what I'm doing. I'm following the rules. I'm offering the world lots whilst asking for nothing in return.

   2. RGDr Robert Glover15:27

      Yep.

   3. CWChris Williamson15:28

      And the fact that not asking for something in return results in you getting nothing in return.

   4. RGDr Robert Glover15:33

      Funny how that works. I- I don't know. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson15:36

      But it's- it... I suppose this as well plays into the dishonesty a bit. And it's so... L- I understand. I would say that I'm- I'm very much in nice guy category, um, very much a people pleaser. Uh, my temperament is to be averse to conflict as well. Um, I've made a dent in many ways, but it's been done... It's been done by weaving my way through avoiding much of the- the conflict, uh, that- that I would maybe need to. Um, so I suppose I can be, at least in some regards, a, uh, a paragon or- or like a- a- a- a role model for the successful nice guy in- in many ways.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover16:18

      Okay. Well, and- and- and me too, you know.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:20

      Yeah.

   8. RGDr Robert Glover16:20

      Again, I don't like conflict, but, you know, I, you know... I- I'm doing okay.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:25

      There's something I always felt... I always felt the fact that I wasn't... Like, my- my go-to isn't typically, uh, aggression. That's not what I lean into, um, despite the fact I've got a background of fighting and- and doing other things and- and physical training and stuff like that. I always felt like it emasculated me, the fact that th- there was something more heroic about being someone that was quick to anger, you know? There was something kind of typically masculine about that. And I think I was, hmm, not strong enough to say ashamed, but it felt... It- it didn't feel as grand to be someone who would be... I know that there's an ability in, you know, being under control, having your emotions under control.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover17:12

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson17:12

       Um, but there's also a degree of fragility, I think, that you can sometimes feel with that also.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover17:19

       Well, l- let me give, uh, one way to- to maybe look at the model and- and see if it fits what you're saying, is that when I was writing No More Mr. Nice Guy, I really focused a lot on shame being a core foundation of nice guy syndrome, that internalized belief, "I'm not okay." In- inaccurately internalized belief, from our earliest life experience, few weeks old, few- few months old. By the time I finished writing the book and it was, you know, uh, getting ready to be published, I'd- I'd... By that time, I'd really come to also see that anxiety plays a, maybe an equally significant role, uh, in nice guy syndrome. So where everything that nice guys are doing is trying to manage that sense of shame, "I'm not okay. I'm unlovable. I'm defective," and their anxiety states, you know, "I might piss somebody off. I might get rejected. I might get hurt. I might lose. I might look foolish." So, you know, both of those states really play into it. And one of the things I've come to see is- is that whether we've got (sighs) just- just kind of break it down, whether we got kind of the asshole jerk over here, that fighter, that quick-to-fight guy-... Or the wussy doormat. You know, the nice guy over here that's the avoidant and, and kind of doesn't like the conflict. I think they're, they're both on the, the same continuum. I think they are both in a fight-flight-freeze mode of managing their inner states of anxiety. The nice guy is in the, the flight-freeze-fawn, sometimes added to that list.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:42

       Hmm.

   14. RGDr Robert Glover18:42

       And what we call the jerk is in the fight mode. Now, they're both still just trying to manipulate people and situations outside of them 'cause they're anxious. The nice guy does it by being nice and avoidant and not upsetting anybody and, you know, waiting for it to blow over, you know, all that kind. Whereas, you know, the guy at the other end of the spectrum is, is just, he's just quick to react with aggression to manage the people and situations around him, so, so he doesn't feel afraid and anxious. And so, men will often, you know, they'll read my book or, you know, they'll, they'll hear some of my information and they'll say, "Robert, I get that being a nice guy isn't working and I don't wanna be that. But I don't wanna be the asshole either." You know, "Where, where's that middle ground?" And, and I go, "I actually don't know where the tipping point is between two dysfunctional extremes." It doesn't exist, right? What, what we're actually talking about is, is going to a different plane, a different level where we actually learn to soothe ourselves, where we actually learn to be assertive, where we actually learn to have boundaries, where we actually learn to be differentiated and ask ourselves, "What do I want?" And follow through on it. Where there's, you know, there's a whole different plane of behavior versus just, "What do I do to not feel anxious here?" But, again, the nice guy and the jerk, probably neither one is aware that they're trying to manage their anxiety states. And, and it isn't until you actually get told that maybe that's what you're doing, you go, "Oh, wow, I never thought about that before." And then, then you actually can feel your anxiety rather than trying to just manage it to where it doesn't, you know, make you feel so anxious.

   15. CWChris Williamson20:10

       Is it a desire to feel safe then?

   16. RGDr Robert Glover20:12

       Sure.

   17. CWChris Williamson20:12

       To feel reassured?

   18. RGDr Robert Glover20:14

       Yeah, I, I think, you know, safety's at the core because when I took Child Development 101 back in grad school, I think the very first thing they told us, one of the few things maybe I remembered, was that for every child, abandonment equals death. So children come into the world inherently vulnerable, right? There's no one to take care of us. It takes humans longer to mature and to self-sufficiency than any other animal on the planet. You know, our grandfathers, maybe that was about 12 or 14, you know. Uh, my age was more, you know, considered 18, 21, 22. Now it's like 35 for a young man to, you know, mature, to be able to take care of himself. Th- that's a joke, um, but, but it's true. (laughs) So we're dependent, completely dependent, and if somebody doesn't take care of us, we die. So if we get abandoned and neglected, uh, we die. So I know for me, like even when my wife, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, my wife Lupita and I have been married for seven years now. A Mexican woman I met here in Mexico. And, um, she gets a look on her face and like I'll, I'll go into, you know, this mode of "I gotta, I gotta fix it. She's upset, she's angry, I gotta make it better." And, you know, I've been working on this stuff for 30 years so it's, you know, not like I don't know what, you know, what's happening. And I'll just watch myself having this anxiety state that I gotta, I gotta talk her down, through, over, get her back to good, you know, make her happy again.

   19. CWChris Williamson21:38

       Mm-hmm.

   20. RGDr Robert Glover21:38

       And I'm thinking "Why am I worried about what this short little Mexican woman, why... What look she has on her face?" I, I love her of course-

   21. CWChris Williamson21:44

       Yeah.

   22. RGDr Robert Glover21:44

       ... but why, why is that triggering such depth of anxiety? And really as I really sat with it and worked with it, it triggers a really old emotional state that does feel like I'm gonna die. "If this doesn't get better right now, I'm gonna die." And I, I don't actually have that thought in my head, but m- my reaction to it feels that intense.

   23. CWChris Williamson22:04

       That's the embodied sensation if you were to take-

   24. RGDr Robert Glover22:07

       That's the embodied, the nervous system, my emotional operating system. Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson22:11

       Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, stepping

4. 22:15 – 28:06

   Are Nice Guys More Orderly?

   1. CWChris Williamson22:15

      outside of relationships for a second or, uh, r- relationships with anybody including friendships, one of the patterns that I've noticed, especially amongst some of my friends that are nice guys or recovering nice guys, is a desire to do things right.

   2. RGDr Robert Glover22:30

      Oh, of course.

   3. CWChris Williamson22:31

      So like, uh, uh, a task in and of itself, uh, I would guess that nice guys are probably more orderly than the normal person. Sources will be stacked in the, in the right way.

   4. RGDr Robert Glover22:42

      It, it varies.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:42

      You know, mustn't have a, a dirty room.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover22:45

      'Cause again, you'd think that. You'd think that "Okay, I gotta do it right. I gotta get it orderly." But, you know, I've got my camera angled where you can't see what's over on this side. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson22:54

      All right. It's a mess.

   8. RGDr Robert Glover22:56

      It's, it's not terrible but, um, it, it is messier on the sides than it is behind me.

   9. CWChris Williamson23:02

      Okay.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover23:03

       A- and so, again, uh, a lot of the nice guys I work with, they may have perfectionistic expectations of themselves, um, and some worked really hard to, to, to meet them and then they're, they're in a state of anxiety all the time. But others I know, they go, you know, "I haven't made my bed in years. I, you know, I don't pick up after myself. I can't remember the last time I, I checked my bank account balance."

   11. CWChris Williamson23:26

       Hmm.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover23:27

       So you'd think there would be that but, but ironically, um, there's not. It c- And, and here's a piece that, that it may sound odd o- on, on the surface of it, but when I talk with nice guys about their fears and their anxieties, I think one of the biggest anxiety or fear states that, that the typical nice guy might have isn't so much a fear of failure, fear of foolishness, fear of looking foolish, fear of loss, fear of making a mistake. It's fear of success because what happens if I do get it right? What happens if I rise up to a level of success? And then, you know, there's things that can happen. All of a sudden the bar gets raised, the expectations are higher, I'm in a brighter spotlight, I might get attacked, I'm more visible, um, the- there's so many things. I, I'll lose control over my time. All of these built-in anxieties of what happens if I'm too successful. So again, a lot of times the nice guys will...... unconsciously. I don't really like the word self-sabotage, but they'll get in their own way of living up to, to their full potential. And keeping things messy around you is actually a pretty good way to, you know, you know, not live up to your full potential. Not checking your bank account every now and then. You know, they'll bite you on the ass sooner or later.

   13. CWChris Williamson24:41

       Isn't it, isn't it interesting that the almost universality of liability, of dishonest... Do you want to, uh... Do you need to sort the dog? (laughs) This is a regular occurrence, I can see. (laughs)

   14. RGDr Robert Glover25:00

       She's usually in the room with me. And, and she's a dear. She's my pet.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:04

       Bring her in. She can chill.

   16. RGDr Robert Glover25:06

       Yeah, the problem is she's upset 'cause somebody's out front, and I'm the only one home, and I don't wanna go deal with whoever might be out front.

   17. CWChris Williamson25:12

       (laughs) Okay, that's fine.

   18. RGDr Robert Glover25:14

       It could just be my wife getting home with my daughter from school.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:17

       Okay, okay, okay.

   20. RGDr Robert Glover25:17

       It could be... So, um, yeah, she's just being a good girl, letting me know.

   21. CWChris Williamson25:22

       Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   22. RGDr Robert Glover25:23

       "Poppy, there's somebody out there. There's somebody out there. Let's go, let's go." And it may have been she just saw a cat, so, you know.

   23. CWChris Williamson25:29

       Wow.

   24. RGDr Robert Glover25:29

       I, I don't know.

   25. CWChris Williamson25:30

       So be it. Um-

   26. RGDr Robert Glover25:31

       She walked away, so (laughs) hopefully...

   27. CWChris Williamson25:34

       She's just bored of you now.

   28. RGDr Robert Glover25:35

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson25:36

       It's interesting that there is, uh, this almost universality of, uh, not having healthy boundaries-

   30. RGDr Robert Glover25:43

       Yeah.
5. 28:06 – 38:54

   Why Nice Guys Keep Things Hidden

   1. CWChris Williamson28:06

      hidden behavior? They keep things hidden from themselves. They keep things hidden-

   2. RGDr Robert Glover28:09

      (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson28:10

      ... from everybody else. Why is that so common?

   4. RGDr Robert Glover28:12

      Why is it common? Because, you know, those two things when, you know, when we first started, you asked me, you know, "What, what is the nice guy?" And basically... And, and I said, "He's the guy trying to get everybody's approval and validation, you know, holding your finger up, which, which way is the wind blowing?" But the other piece is that hiding things about ourselves. You know, hiding anything, for example, that might get that look on my wife's face. You know, "Oh, she got that look. I must've done something. I better not do that again." And again, that began at a very, very early age, when getting that look from somebody important to us might result in getting slapped, getting smacked, getting neglected, getting yelled at, getting shaken, whatever. So, nice guys is, is part of that. I gotta hide whatever there is about me that tends to create these negative reactions around me. But often, there's another piece. Not... Again, not universal, but often for nice guys, in their family system, somebody has been defined as the needy person, the most important person. Could be dad, could be mom, could be a sibling. And their needs were more impor- Their... A- All the attention and focus went on, you know, making sure dad never got pissed off, making sure mom didn't go on a tirade, making sure, you know, brother doesn't, you know, whatever. You know, he's sick or he's, he's out of control, or... So, often, for nice guys, we, we try to become this needless-wantless, never-rock-the-boat, never-be-a-moment's-problem kinda person. So, what we interpret is, us having needs draws too much attention, and, and you know, my... Uh, their needs are more important than mine. And so, nice guys w- we're, again, trying to avoid that negative reaction. The two things we often most hide are our needs and wants and our sexuality. You know, sexuality, that's kinda easy to, to put a finger on. You know, we, we live in a culture that we're bombarded with sexual stimuli everywhere you go. But still, there's still that, you know, that religious message that sex is bad, evil. Save it for the one you love ..........................

   5. CWChris Williamson30:11

      Shame.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover30:11

      Yeah, just the whole shame wrapped around sexuality. You'd think that would've gone away by now, but, but it's not. It's as strong as ever. So for the, the, the, the, the very young nice guy, when... Ki- kinda back up a little bit, back to the, to the child development 101 stuff again-Every child, when they experience discomfort of any kind- you know, they're hungry and they don't get fed, they're, they're, they wet their diaper, they mess in their diaper, they don't get changed, they're cold, they don't get help, you know, they got a stomach ache, they don't get burped, whatever. Whenever a child experiences discomfort, they're n- children are narcissistic by nature. Emotionally, they assume, "This is me. I, I, I'm the cause of this. I did something wrong. I'm bad." They don't think it, 'cause the thinking brain isn't online at this early age. The emotional brain, fight-flight-free survival brain is. And so a child will try to do two things in a very primitive way, a non-thinking, non-rational, purely emotional way. They will try to medicate the feeling states they're having, suck their thumb, eat, cry, sleep, smile, whatever, to try to not feel bad right now, and again, in a very pre- very primitive, pre-verbal kinda way, try to do... Try to not do whatever that was that caused the uncomfortable states or do something different. And so that begins at, at a really early age. And so the child is... These, these, uh... The shame is, is inaccurately internalized at an emotional level. "I must have done something wrong. That's why this is happening. So I gotta figure, you know, how to do that different or not do that high." Uh, and so all of this comes, uh, so early as part of an emotional language, an emotional operating system. It's not in words, it's not in picture memory, and it's, it's primitive. So here we are trying to figure out how not to have these uncomfortable experiences and prevent them from happening again, and one of the best things our primitive brain came up with is hide. Hide. You know, what, whatever. "Oh, I have needs. Oh, I have needs. I, I get... I'm, I'm hungry. When I have needs, p- I get slapped." "Oh, their needs are more important than mine." So just hiding is part of that, 'cause we think it must be about me that's causing these painful, negative experiences to be happening to us.

   7. CWChris Williamson32:30

      Does this mean that nice guys often have coping strategies? Maybe they'll overeat. Maybe they'll be compulsive with social media use or porn or video games or, uh, uh, substances or whatever.

   8. RGDr Robert Glover32:44

      The thing about that model I just gave you, that child development model, every human does that, every human. We all just pick usually, again, based on temperament and maybe just life experiences and birth order. We all pick, "What are we gonna do? How are we gonna try to manage this?" And I sucked my thumb till I was in kindergarten. Think maybe I was trying to deal with some uncomfortable feelings.

   9. CWChris Williamson33:09

      Sooth- self-soothing.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover33:09

       Self-soothing, exactly. Trying to manage some anxiety there. So that's what I did. Now, we, we go through childhood, then we hit adolescence and now w- where we really want people's approval and wanna fit in and be noticed and have attention. All of this really, you know, gets, uh, fueled with, with, with, uh, uh, our hormones and need for attention, where, you know, th- it really gets solidified, and we pretty much carry these routines into adulthood. So yeah, trying to be perfect might be one. You know, trying not to be perfect because my brother was perfect and I couldn't, you know, compete with him, so I'll be the opposite. "I'll, I'll, I'll make the mess." Um, "Yeah, when I eat, I sure do feel better. When I spend all my day and night playing video games, I, I don't feel stress." When, um... "Oh, isn't porn amazing? I didn't know that this existed. Look wh- how I feel." Um, "Oh, you know, if I get straight As, look, I, I finally get some validation, but I don't know if it's ever enough. I better keep, you know, succeeding, performing. You know, I better get into great, amazing shape so I can be valuable. Oh, I'll never get in good shape, so who cares? I'll just keep eating." It can take so many different forms, and the only real logic to it is the, the infant logic that you and I and everybody else had at a few weeks and a few months old.

   11. CWChris Williamson34:31

       Why are nice guys bad receivers?

   12. RGDr Robert Glover34:36

       (laughs) 'Cause we think it makes us bad. You know, the, the thing is, is that, as I said, most of us is, is... Most nice guys internalize this belief, "Well, I... Because I have needs, that's why I, I have these bad things that happen to me. If I don't have needs, bad things won't happen." And often, again, they... I, I could. I could look around at my family. "Oh, Dad's needs are more important. Let- let's all make sure Dad's okay. Oh, now Mom's unhappy. Let's all make sure Mom's okay. My little brother was a general fuck-up at pretty much everything. Oh, okay. You know, we gotta make sure little brother's okay, 'cause he's gonna fuck up." And I'm kinda like, "Oh, if I don't have needs, if I just kinda do everything right, I'll be the golden child, I'll get some validation. You know, I, I, I won't get noticed too much and get in trouble." And, and so... Again, that was my story. It's not every nice guy's story. But there's some fundamental piece in there, that if, if it's visible, if people know I have needs, like, that makes me vulnerable. It puts me at risk. It gives people control over me. I'll owe people something. So in my own personal work, one of the earliest things I had to start doing was, was making me a priority, where I put... Where I did for me. I, I, I'd do for everybody else, but I, I wouldn't make me a priority. And, you know, I'd, I'd make sure, you know, my wife and kids, they all went to the dentist. I wouldn't go to the dentist. I, oh, they... You know, if I saw something on sale, I'd buy it for them. I wouldn't buy it for me. So I had to start taking good care of me. The next step that, that kinda came with that but it came a little bit later for me, was actually beginning to surround myself with people who wanted to help me meet my needs and then actually letting them. That was really anxiety-producing, to let people do things for me. And I, I had to consciously just go, "Okay. I'm, uh..." Uh, it's as simple as, like s- I'll, I'll, I'll take the garbage out. And, you know, we gotta take the gar- from the kitchen to the front gate, it's 20 feet. Gotta unlock the gate, put it out on the street. My, ev- if I'm taking the garbage out, my wife will go, "Do you need help?""Well, no, I don't. I don't need any help to take a bag of garbage from the kitchen to the front..." And I- and so I- my gut response will always say no, but then I realize, "Well, I don't need any help, but she wants to be with me. She wants to accompany me." She doesn't want to think I'm doing all the work. Well, she's not. She's, she's a very hard worker. I go, "Yeah, yeah. Come help me." Do, do I really need the help? No. But it was actually... It took me a while. I'm still learning that way. You know, she's not really thinking I need help taking the garbage out. She just wants to come take the garbage out with me, just to walk to the street with me and back. You know, that's, that's... Okay, well, who am I to say no to that?

   13. CWChris Williamson37:19

       That's the thing about being a bad receiver. It robs people of the enjoyment of helping you.

   14. RGDr Robert Glover37:26

       You've s- you've stole my words. When, um... Uh, when I got- I got divorced in my late 40s after 25 years of marriage to two different women. A- and again, when I started dating and started meeting nice girls, you know, who wanted to do anything for me, wouldn't ever say what they wanted, wouldn't make a decision, I thought, "Oh, I... I got..." I had empathy for my two ex-wives, what I put them through w- with being a nice guy. But I remember I was dating one woman, and I met her 'cause she sold me shoes at Nordstrom. And she, so she worked in retail fashion sales. And I remember one time she came over to my apartment and I'd done some laundry, left it on my couch. She started folding my laundry. And I said, "You, you don't have to do that." She goes, "No, I like doing it." And I... and she goes, "And I'm good at it." And, you know, so she folds all my laundry, puts a little stack on the end of my bed и goes, "But I won't put it away for you." I said, "I'm not putting it away either. I'm leaving it out there to remind me somebody loves me." You know, that, that somebody wanted to do something nice for me. After that, I started leaving my clean laundry on the couch so she could have the joy of coming over and... 'Cause it gave her pleasure. Now, who am I to rob her of that pleasure? And I need to work on it because how am I gonna receive great things in this world if I'm not good at receiving? If I can't- if I can't let somebody fold my laundry, how am I gonna receive the blessings of wealth, of fame, of opportunity, of adventure? So i- i- it's a very conscious practice. It was for me to say, how do I let people give and let them have the pleasure of doing it?

6. 38:54 – 45:02

   The Solution is Not to Be a Bad Guy

   1. CWChris Williamson38:54

      So the solution is not being a bad guy because a lot of people and-

   2. RGDr Robert Glover38:59

      (laughs) You could try. You could try. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson39:01

      Yeah. So, you know, nice guys finish last. The bad guy gets the girl. Um, you know, women will, um, sleep with the alpha but marry the beta. You know, pick your meme or cliche of choice-

   4. RGDr Robert Glover39:15

      Yeah, yeah. They're all out there, sure.

   5. CWChris Williamson39:16

      ... to, to, to come up with... And it seems... Let me... I'm gonna try and interpret what I think the, your philosophy is and, and let me know if I get it right. I think the downsides of being a nice guy, although subtle and often completely opaque to the nice guys themselves-

   6. RGDr Robert Glover39:38

      Yes.

   7. CWChris Williamson39:39

      ... are kind of evident given, um... Can become evident given enough crowdsourcing of sense-making. So people and community come up with memes and, and characters in TV shows and, and stuff like that.

   8. RGDr Robert Glover39:55

      Right.

   9. CWChris Williamson39:56

      The solution that... The low-resolution solution that then gets proposed is if X, X being nice guy, is bad and doesn't get what you want, then opposite of X-

   10. RGDr Robert Glover40:09

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson40:10

       ... Y, which is bad guy, must be good.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover40:13

       It must be.

   13. CWChris Williamson40:13

       So the prevalence of inc- you know, uh, treat her like you don't like her, uh, like why women love Chads, like that kind of more, um, Lothario approach to attracting women and, and, and getting what you want in life and sort of, you know, being ruthless and stuff, is that a, an erroneous solution to the problem of nice-guyness?

   14. RGDr Robert Glover40:38

       It's... A core problem with what you just proposed is it is equally inauthentic as, as the other and is equally attached to some external outcome by trying to figure out how to do it right. Right? "And if I just do this right again, then I'll get the women to approve of me." We're still in the same boat. We're just looking for a different right way of doing it. Now, as simple as this sounds, you know, like, when I do, like, interviews with, like, uh, a female coach that, that maybe works with men and, um, and I say something that, you know, a generalization like the feminine, meaning all things feminine, you know, women, but dogs, cats, babies, opportunity, money, weather, whatever, I'll say, is highly attracted to a man who's comfortable in his own skin, knows where he's going, and looks like he's having a good time going there. And the women, you know, coaches, interviewers, podcasters on the c- always go, "Oh, yes." And I'm going, "Okay, they're, they're reacting, kind of their nervous system is reacting to that thing." I didn't say the guy's an asshole. I didn't say he treats women bad. I didn't say he doesn't give a fuck about... He, he's, he's centered in his own body. He's, he's differentiated. He's asking himself, "What do I want? What's important to me?" Following through on that. You know, not leaving the messes behind, not trying to be perfect, not seeking anybody's approval. He's on mission. He's on purpose. And in my experience, the feminine is highly attracted to that. You don't have to work at, at getting the feminine to be attracted. Now, are you always gonna have feminine approval? I told someone the other day. This has never come out of my mouth before, but I said, "Actually, there is no standard of feminine approval." The, the feminine is not about standards. It's just about whatever is moving. Masculine is standards. You, you go into the masculine world, you know when you've lived up to the standard, when you've hit the ball out of the park, when you've scored a touchdown, when you've made A's, when you, you know, made X amount of money. M- Masculine doing standards are clear. We can go into that world and go, "I've achieved. I've made it." We have it. We have the status.

   15. CWChris Williamson42:45

       It's rigorous. It's orderly.

   16. RGDr Robert Glover42:47

       ... it requires something of you, there's discipline. The fe- there is no such thing as feminine approval. I mean, ask any guy. Even a woman who approved of them dearly in one moment, ah, ask them, "Have you ever had experiences where the very next moment she was unapproving of you and nothing about you had changed?" You hadn't even do- And guys all go, "Yeah, isn't that the way it always worked?" (laughs) Yeah, they, you know, one minute, ah, when I was dating, I had women tell me, "Robert, you're the most amazing man, I'm so glad I met you, I'm so grateful, I'm so happy," and then never hear from them again. Or say, "Robert, you know, after two weeks, you know, I'm gonna, I'm taking a break from dating." Or, "I'm giving my ex another try." And I go, "What just happened?" That's the world of the feminine. It does, it isn't nailed down in order. So, we, we have to quit seeking feminine approval. Um, one, one of my certified coaches wrote a book that, that, that I really like, but there's a line in there, it said that a man does not mature until he quits seeking the love of a woman. As long as we're seeking love, that's a feminine trait, as long as we're seeking to get that approval, that love, that validation from a woman, we're in a loop that there's no escape from. But when we, when we can self-validate, when we're on purpose, when we're living life on our terms, all of a sudden that makes us very attractive to the feminine. It will come to us. That's, that's my experience. It will come. Now, as soon as you turn and go, "Oh, it's here, how do I keep it? How do I make..." No, no, no. (laughs) We just blew it. They're, they're all of a sudden now, they're gonna get that look on their face again, like, and go, "What'd I do wrong?" (laughs) So, if we take the how do I get the women's approval out of the equation, you're more likely to get it. Now, does that mean you just don't give a fuck, don't care, whatever? That's not what I'm pr- again, it's not black and white. We, we, we men wanna make it black and white. "It must be this or it must be that." No, it's this. This is a- another level that we rise to, that lets us put a dent in the universe, that lets us live with purpose and passion, that lets us connect deeply with others, that lets us be vulnerable and courageous, that actually invites the love into our life that, that we desire, rather than seeking it.

   17. CWChris Williamson45:01

       Well, ultimately,

7. 45:02 – 48:37

   Alain de Botton on Nice Guys

   1. CWChris Williamson45:02

      I, I was watching this, um, video from Alain de Botton from The School of Life. Do you know that guy? British philosopher, phenomenal insight.

   2. RGDr Robert Glover45:10

      Y- yeah. You, you were the second person who mentioned him in the last two or three days. I always pay attention when s- whenever I hear someone's name, like, you know, when I, whenever I heard, "You need to get on a Chris Williamson show." When I heard that three times in the same week, you know, I thought, "Wait a minute, that name sounds familiar. Oh."

   3. CWChris Williamson45:25

      Three for... (laughs) You, we, we're already-

   4. RGDr Robert Glover45:27

      I'm on-

   5. CWChris Williamson45:27

      ... we're, we're already booked in.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover45:28

      We're, I'm, I'm on, uh, he's on my calendar. What do you, what do you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh.

   7. CWChris Williamson45:31

      It's, um, so I, I use a-

   8. RGDr Robert Glover45:34

      You, you... I was gonna say, what you're referring to, he wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times, maybe 10 years ago, and he said, and the article, the title was why you will marry the wrong-

   9. CWChris Williamson45:42

      Wrong person. Yeah.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover45:43

       I love, I love that article. I copied it. It's, it's just classic.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:47

       He's, he's outstanding. Uh, I've, he is on my Mount Rushmore of, of, of, of guests. He was very formative for me. Um, one of the reasons that... Gonna go on a tangent about why I love Alain de Botton. One of the reasons that I really love him is he's so softly spoken and he's so embodied in the nuance of being fallible, of how our emotions run the show. He's not posturing. He's, uh, unbelievably smart, you know, he's very, very well-versed in Renaissance art and history and poetry and, and sculpture and, and, and, and all s- all this stuff. But there's no posturing from his left brain.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover46:27

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson46:27

       There's none of this sort of over-rationality. He, he accepts with complete face value the fact that we can be self-contradictory and embarrassing and, and all the rest of it. But anyway, he has, he has this line in a video that I was watching recently where he talks about a person whose greatest achievement would be after their death, people would say, "They never made a fuss." Oh, they didn't make a fuss, they didn't, you know, they didn't cause any ripples, they didn't make any waves. And he's talking about largely, uh, uh, an equivalent of the nice guy, this person who's, you know, overly pliable, who's concerned about upsetting others, who's doing all of this stuff. And, uh, I just, it really, it really sort of struck home, like, oh my God, like, that's the, that's the inheritance and the legacy which is waiting for you. And ultimately, you can make it to the end of your life having either made all of the messes in the world or made zero messes at all, depending on whether you go bad guy mode or nice guy mode.

   14. RGDr Robert Glover47:28

       Yeah, yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson47:29

       Um, but, like, your legacy as you look back on your life is going to be one of you playing a persona. You're never going to really be able to connect to any of the things that you do, people, accomplishments, praise, compliments, adoration, money, because it wasn't you that earned that. You didn't earn your money. The role that you're playing earned the money. The role that you're playing got the marriage. The role that you're playing got the relationship, or the job raise, or, or created the family or the, the billion-dollar company. It wasn't you. It wasn't you.

   16. RGDr Robert Glover48:12

       That's g- that kind of messes with your head, doesn't it? (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson48:16

       Scary.

   18. RGDr Robert Glover48:17

       You know, when you were describing, and I can't pronounce his name. Pronounce his name.

   19. CWChris Williamson48:21

       Alain de Botton.

   20. RGDr Robert Glover48:22

       Oh, yeah. That's beautiful. When you were describing him, I'm sitting there thinking, "I'm a straight guy, and that guy sounds sexy as hell, the way you were describing him."

   21. CWChris Williamson48:30

       (laughs) He's, uh, yeah, I mean, he's got the classic philosopher's build. But, uh, so be it. So be it.

   22. RGDr Robert Glover48:36

       (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson48:36

       Here's,

8. 48:37 – 58:38

   Why Women Aren’t Complaining About Nice Guys

   1. CWChris Williamson48:37

      here's something else though, here's something else that I've had in, in my mind, um, since looking at your work and kind of... I've spent a lot of time over the last three years, uh, looking at evolutionary psychology, mating dynamics, so on and so forth.We don't see, especially from women at the moment, many conversations online about nice guys, about guys being too nice, about guys being too pliable. A lot of the conversation skews towards guys being too toxic.

   2. RGDr Robert Glover49:04

      Sure.

   3. CWChris Williamson49:04

      Guys being too immature, but it's immature, it- it tends to be in a- in- in a toxic manner. It's sort of the use and discard, the use and abuse-

   4. RGDr Robert Glover49:13

      Right.

   5. CWChris Williamson49:13

      ... uh, the- the very sort of transient, transactional nature. What is the reason, do you think, that there isn't as much popularity if- if... And I don't disagree, I think that a huge problem will be the pliability and- and dishonesty and niceness of men. Is it just less tweetable to- to have that as the reason-

   6. RGDr Robert Glover49:35

      (laughs) .

   7. CWChris Williamson49:35

      ... that you can't find men... I've got all of these men that keep bending over backward and keep doing things for me. Is it that it's kind of publicly unpopular for women to call that out, because it seems like they're being ungrateful? What do you, what do you think it is?

   8. RGDr Robert Glover49:47

      Well, because I'm not in a woman's head, I- I- I can't... And- and 'cause I'm not on social media, I- I also... But I- I do know what you're talking about. Of course there are memes that- that- that- that run. And I- I do, you know, because I get a Google, uh, notice every time "nice guy," you know, pops up somewhere, I- I do see wh- when it does pop up. It usually pops up in right-wing Republican writing, um, most often. But when women do write their blog articles about nice guys, it is most often how nice guys aren't nice, of how they use basically the covert contracts of, "Oh, I'm gonna listen to you talk about your problems. I'm gonna pay your car payment this month. I'm gonna pretend like I care about you." And then, when they, you know, ask the woman out or want her to have sex, they go, "No, I- I never thought of you that way. You're a friend," you know? And then- and then the guy, of course, has all that resentfulness, that passive-aggressive, the rage comes out.

   9. CWChris Williamson50:48

      Yeah.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover50:48

       And so, you know, that meme does show up. But- but it still ends up being toxic masculinity. Here is my thought. And it sounds like you've looked, uh, uh, a lot at this, and you might even have a better perspective than me. My thought is that... You know, I grew up during whatever the wave of the angry feminism was in the '60s and '70s. I don't know if that was first wave, second wave. But, you know, "Every man's a rapist" and "Erection's a sign of aggression." And, you know, that already bought in... My mother, you know, my mother's generation were the first, I think, true feminists. She raised my- my sister to not need a man, raised her boys to be different from their father. You know, that was kind of the beginning of- of that movement. And, um, so from that, I grew up with, "I don't wanna be like those bad men that women are complaining about." So- so kind of the toxic masculinity meme has been around for a while. It just didn't have social media, and now mainstream media. Mainstream me-... I- I can't even listen to like NPR anymore, because it's kinda like it's just gone so much to like, "Let's just run fluff articles, you know, or fluff stories," and stuff like that.

   11. CWChris Williamson51:56

       Agreed.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover51:57

       Um, I think there had to be a pendulum swing. You know, most of that's directed at patriarchy. You know, now you just say "patriarchy," and like we all understand exactly what that means. It's evil, right? But- but patriarchy was also provide and protect. You know, there was also positives a part of it. And was there an ownership mentality? Yeah. Did that lead to colonialism and, you know, abuses towards women and children? Yeah. Uh, racism? Yeah. So yeah, all of that. Well, you know, when we make a social change, we tend to throw the baby out with the bath water. So yeah, let's just rail against this big idea of patriarchy, toxic masculinity, you know, you know, mansplaining, manspreading, "everything that men do is bad" kind of stuff.

   13. CWChris Williamson52:49

       Yeah.

   14. RGDr Robert Glover52:50

       I- I think maybe it had to go to an extreme. And- and I think m- most sociologists that look at big shifts in society say when you have, uh, an oppressed people, um, down-tro-... It- it almost has to become like a revolution. It has to be at the extremes. It doesn't have to-

   15. CWChris Williamson53:06

       It needs to be a correction.

   16. RGDr Robert Glover53:08

       Yeah, it's- it's not like a Gandhi that just, you know, "Let's- let's subtly create the shift." Um, so I think there has to be that over-correction.

   17. CWChris Williamson53:16

       Yeah.

   18. RGDr Robert Glover53:17

       And- and, you know, so we went through the #MeToo where, you know, men were, you know- you know, accused, tried, you know, prosecuted in- you know, in the media, lost jobs, lost status, purely 'cause some woman said, "Oh, I wanna join the Me Too crowd," you know? And yeah, there was a lot of abuses that were being addressed. Should they have been a- addressed through social media? I- I don't know if that was, you know, the most, uh, democratic way to do it, but it's how it got done. And then, you know, yeah, if you, you know, publish something that gets a lot of likes and a lot of follows and, yeah, other people are gonna publish it. So yeah, it went to the extreme.

   19. CWChris Williamson53:53

       The incentives aligned to make it happen more.

   20. RGDr Robert Glover53:56

       Oh, of course they do. And social media is all about algorithms and, you know, the more something shows up, the more you see of it. Um, that's why I don't... (laughs) One of the reasons I don't like social media. Um, but I actually think that we're actually making an adjustment. You know, I- I- I saw articles, yeah, a couple years ago, likening anything that had to do with men's work to like the j-... Oh, there goes the balloons.

   21. CWChris Williamson54:24

       Jesus Christ.

   22. RGDr Robert Glover54:25

       (laughs) You said it wasn't gonna happen.

   23. CWChris Williamson54:26

       I didn't think it was gonna work. How have you managed to make balloons come up on the screen?

   24. RGDr Robert Glover54:30

       I'm- I'm magic.

   25. CWChris Williamson54:30

       I promise. I promise.

   26. RGDr Robert Glover54:31

       I'm magic.

   27. CWChris Williamson54:32

       Stop doing it.

   28. RGDr Robert Glover54:32

       (laughs) I- I wish I... Yeah, I can't quit moving my hands now. The- the thumb will probably go up.

   29. CWChris Williamson54:37

       (laughs) That's fine.

   30. RGDr Robert Glover54:38

       Maybe- maybe confetti.
9. 58:38 – 1:05:23

   What Nice Guys Need to Know About Female Attraction

   1. CWChris Williamson58:38

      getting into, getting into relationships, which are obviously, I think ground zero for a lot of this stuff. You know, you can kind of hide things away from yourself when it's on your own, and you're in and out of work and all the rest of it, and people, not everybody is emotionally connected with their work, not everybody's emotionally connected with how organized their sauce cupboard is. Relationships, real ground zero. What do nice guys not understand about how female attraction works?

   2. RGDr Robert Glover59:06

      W- well, most of us are believing what our mothers told us, (laughs) you know, uh, if they told us anything. "Well, just be nice to girls." That's what my mother said, "Be a gentleman." Well, okay, makes sense, you know? "Be a gentleman," and I am. Uh, I'm a gentleman, but a woman taught me this one. Uh, I always open the door for women. I tell 'em, "Wait for me, I'll open your door." Now, if you really break it down, that's me being dominant, you know? I tell them what to do, "Wait for me, I'm gonna open your door." And of the, of the several hundred women who I've told to do, "Wait for me, I'll open your door," only one has pushed back against it, and she pushed back for a while, then all of a sudden she quit and kind of decided she re- actually really liked, uh, actually what she did is she jumped on my bones in a public place, in a very ... I said, "I don't, uh, we, we need to take this somewhere else." After a while, she'd been pushing back against my dominance. So, for there to be attraction, there has to be a polarity, and polarity involves dominance and submission. I know those are evil, terrible words, you know, uh, 'cause we think about dominant men, you know, making women be submissive.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:00:14

      You're in, you're in a safe space here, Robert.

   4. RGDr Robert Glover1:00:16

      Okay.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:00:16

      It's fine.

   6. RGDr Robert Glover1:00:17

      I, I'm not s- I'm not sweating it. Uh, but yeah, (laughs) it is all, it is going out on the internet, which is fine. You know, and what's happened is the polarity has just switched, where the females have become dominan- the dominant players and the guys have become the, the submissive players. And then the, the women go, "How come I can't find a guy that turns me on?" And the guys are going, "How come I can't seem to turn women on?" Well, it's, it's, it's reverse, the polarity. You, you can't have polarity, that's attraction, without dominance and submission, and the more subtle it is, the more subtle the attraction is, the more blatant it is, tends to be the more intense the attraction is. We've probably all experienced that in one way or another, and I tell people, "You can't have sex..."... without dominance and submission. Otherwise, there's two bodies lying next to each other waiting for something to happen. You know? You gotta have a-

   7. CWChris Williamson1:01:04

      Or fighting.

   8. RGDr Robert Glover1:01:04

      Yeah, yeah, or fight- you gotta have a top and bottom. You gotta have a pitcher and catcher, right? The- there's got to be a, a polarity. Now, the beauty is, that polarity can, you, you, you can flip it around, you know, back and forth. And I think in very conscious relationships, that that happens beautifully. My, my wife's very strong. She grew up eight out of 10 kids in poverty in Guadalajara, Mexico, alcoholic father, got beat on by family members, beat on by neighbors, you know, abused by family members, abused by priests. You know, she's, she's been through... You know, she goes to the gym two hours a day. She can out-squat me easily. She's done Muay Thai. I, I don't, I don't piss her off. Um, you know, she can get shit done. I grew up in a middle class, white bread neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, surrounded by Boeing engineer families. You know, just, you know, I, I never had to fight for anything, okay? So she's tough, but she doesn't... She's always told me, "I love it when you tell me no." She goes, "I don't..." She goes, "I, I don't wanna be in charge. I don't like you to always ask me what, what... You know, what do you want to do?" She, she likes it when I'll make... We'll walk into a restaurant and, you know, they'll... Here in Mexico, and they'll say, they'll, they'll say, "Should I..." They'll ask her, "Should I get..." The waiter will say, "Should I give him a menu in English?" She goes, "No, he lives in Mexico. Give him one in Spanish." And I'll say, "Yeah, give, give my wife and kids the menu in English." And then they hand her a menu and she goes, "No, he's my boss. He'll order for me." And they always laugh about that. And I say, "Yeah, I get to be the boss when she says I can't." You know? So we got the whole s- the whole shtick down. But the truth is, she is strong, she's powerful, she can get shit done, she can kick ass, but she doesn't want to be in that mode all the time. She wants to, to be led. She wants to submit. She wants to open. She wants to be done to in, in blissful kinds of ways. Well, that's my job, right? So... And even though I'm kind of more that I'm, I'm go along to get along, I... You know, I'm, uh, yeah, this or that, either one's okay with me. I'm kinda more that way. She doesn't like it when I'm that way. So for her, she's happiest when I will play the default lead, the default decision maker. But she likes it best when I said, "Here's what I was thinking. What do you think?" You know, I don't just say, "What do you think?" You know, "What do you want?" I'll say, "You know, I was thinking of white with a little bit of tint of gray in it. What do you think?" You know, she wants me to, to, to, to lead that, and then she'll feel the polarity, and then she'll tell me what she thinks or wants, and then you just say, "You decide. Okay, let's go. Let's go, let's go pick out the paint." Um, am I being abusive to her by being dominant? No. I've heard so many women tell me when the guy leaves it all up to them, too compliant, the women feel burdened by that. Most are in their masculine dominant role all day long, in their work, in their career, raising children. Even mothering is a masculine dominant state to be in. You're taking care of kids' needs. Uh, uh, that's not feminine at all.

   9. CWChris Williamson1:04:01

      You don't then want to have to take care of your partner after that.

   10. RGDr Robert Glover1:04:04

       Yeah. Then, then when the guy says, "Oh, I don't guess you wanna have sex tonight, would you?" Or, "What do you want for..." And it's, it's just one more thing that they gotta check off their to-do list.

   11. CWChris Williamson1:04:13

       Yeah.

   12. RGDr Robert Glover1:04:13

       They don't want that. Now, am I making a generalization? Yeah. Is it fluid? Yeah. Is it nuanced? Yeah. Is it, okay, the guy's always gotta be the dominant and the woman's... But no, that's not what I'm saying. But for, for men, when I start talking about them consciously setting the tone and leading in relationship, when I say that to a nice guy, the response he usually... He'll, he'll ponder it and go, "Okay, Dr. Glover, what I hear you say when you say take control..." I go, "No, no, you did not hear me s- say the word take control. I did not say it. I don't believe in it." I'm talking about you lead, you set the tone, you say what you want, where you wanna go, what you wanna eat. And, and, and give her a chance to follow, like on the dance floor. She can't follow where you don't lead. Give her that, and then be open to a discussion. Be open to her taking the... You know, setting the tone and leading. But it's not about... But guys, nice guys will say, "Well, you know, when you said take control." No, no, no, no. It's more nuanced than that. But again... So that, that, that's my job, is helping guys apply the, the nuance, that, that word of 2024.

10. 1:05:23 – 1:13:54

    The Role of Emotional Tension

    1. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:23

    2. CWChris Williamson1:05:23

       What is the role of emotional tension?

    3. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:26

       Oh, you've done some research. Um, yeah. (laughs) That's a cute little wink of the eye that just is reflex-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:05:32

       I'm just flirting with you.

    5. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:33

       It's, it's-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:05:33

       I'm just trying to-

    7. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:33

       It's reflexive.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:05:35

       I'm just trying to, I'm just, I'm just trying to flirt with you.

    9. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:36

       Yeah. I, the... I know. The, the girls like it. Uh, probably the boys do too.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:05:41

        Ah.

    11. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:41

        I, I, I live in a very gay community, so, you know.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:05:44

        (laughs)

    13. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:44

        I, I know how it is. Um, okay. So the role of emotional tension. There we go. We, we just had emotional tension going on right there.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:05:51

        Yup.

    15. RGDr Robert Glover1:05:53

        I'm gonna, I'm gonna make a generalization that doesn't apply to everybody, but it does seem to apply to a lot. And it's... The generalized statement is, is that in general, for women to experience attraction, say, towards a man, arousal, and to stay attached to that man over time, she has to experience some kind of emotional tension. She's gotta feel something, the butterflies, the this, the that, the drama, the does he love me, doesn't love me. And we men can kind of understand that a little bit. We kinda like the tension we feel and go, "Oh, she's, she looks nice." You know, "I like her boobs," whatever. You know, that creates a tension for us. But in general, men don't like emotional tension, especially in a relationship. If you even think about, you know, our sporting events where we do get our tension, they have clocks on them. You know, we know it's gonna end at this time. That's why baseball has fallen out of favor. That's why they put a clock on baseball.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:06:51

        They put the, they put the pitch clock last year.

    17. RGDr Robert Glover1:06:54

        Yeah, yeah.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:06:54

        Fix that problem.

    19. RGDr Robert Glover1:06:55

        How many times you can throw to first, you know? 'Cause, oh, we gotta have it on a clock, you know? So, um, so men's tension is on the clock."Oh, yeah, I- I- I know this, you know, this- this adventure flick I'm watching and the hero. This is happening. I know he's gonna get out of it and it's gonna be done in 35 minutes, you know? It's done. We're done. Shoo, go home, kick back into nothingness, right?" The feminine never gets tired of tension. The feminine, if it- if it isn't feeling tension, is bored, it will create tension. And so, that's what's hard for men to understand. You know, we think that being nice to women will make them be attracted to us. But nice creates absolutely no attention- no tension, really for anybody, men or women. But we think, "Well, that's what Mom told me to do. Go be- go- go be nice to them." It's what- it's what I... In junior high, all the women were complaining about those jerks who created tension for them. And so I listened to her complain about the jerks and she kept going back to the jerk, even after, you know, "I'm such a nice guy." So in general, women need that emotional tension. Watch it, they create it within themselves. Um, and- and we guys, if we have any kind of tension between us, we'll just have it out. Maybe we'll punch each other and then we'll be done, we'll go have a beer. It's all good, you know? Uh, we- we don't need to keep going back into that tension state to have a bond, to have a connection. Well, we'll go do something together. We may go compete, we may go bring our A game and leave it all on the field, but then we walk off arm in arm, you know? So it's just the- the- the- the difference between that masculine and feminine. So the hardest part for men to understand is that the women need that tension. So even when I say, "Wait for me, I'll open your door," and now I create a little bit of dominance and she waits for me, that's tension, right? It's just a little bit, it's a little subtle. You know, even like, you know, saying, "Hey, put the menu down. I'll order for us tonight." There's tension in that. Not being nice. It's actually creating some te- "What's he gonna order for? Is he gonna pick something I like? Do I trust him?"

    20. CWChris Williamson1:08:55

        (laughs)

    21. RGDr Robert Glover1:08:55

        "Is it gonna be an adventure?" You know, I- I tell guys, and you g- and- and- and you know, guys will think it's game playing. And it- it kind of can look like that and... But the- the- the real thing is actually just, is how do we get more conscious? So I'll tell a guy, for example, you know, "If a woman sends you a message, text message, or calls you, and if you reply right away or you pick up the phone and answer, how much tension will the woman experience through that? Well, well none. We've relieved it. As soon as we answered the phone, her tension went away. But what if you didn't answer it? What if you called her back in 30 seconds, 45 seconds, an hour?" And she goes, "Where were you? Why didn't you answer?" And what if you didn't give her an answer to that? And she's going, "Why didn't he answer? What was he doing?" Now here's the thing. Because us guys tent- if we do have emotional tension, we like what I call positive emotional tension. You know, it- it- it feels good to us, where you're ha- For the- for women, they don't care. Is it positive emotional tension? Is it ne- is it PET or is it NET, negative emotional tension? They don't care. Emotional tension is emotional tension. And so, you know, if it means, you know, them starting a fight, you know, them doing something knows- they knows is gonna piss us off, it's kind of like, they don't care, they got our attention. And- and that's all that mattered. They got our attention and there's tension. And then- and even the thing, a guy who likes listening to women talk about their problems, I tell guys there's a- an- an inverse negative relationship between the amount of time a man spends listening to a woman talk about her problems and the likelihood he's gonna get laid.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:10:28

        What do you mean?

    23. RGDr Robert Glover1:10:30

        It means that if you sit and listen her talk about her problems, you've actually relieved all of her tension. Tension's flowed completely out of... 'Cause you know, she talked, she talked, she talked, all- all the tension came away. And what I tell guys is then you end up looking like, uh, her girlfriend with a penis, and odds are she doesn't want to have sex with her girlfriend. So anything we do to relieve their tension actually works against us and robs them. Kind of like we were talking about earlier, are we gonna rob them of the joy of doing it for us, or are we gonna rob them of the emotional tension that they have to have to feel- to feel something, to- to want to engage?

    24. CWChris Williamson1:11:08

        You had this fantastic example of how emotional tension is enjoyed differently by men and women by the story arcs of romantic comedies and how men and women, uh, experience- experience that. Can you explain that?

    25. RGDr Robert Glover1:11:27

        What, you mean like, you know, you- you- you take your woman to watch Titanic and she... Titanic, you know, she's already seen it eight times and she walks away with her panties wet thinking, "How come I can't have that?"

    26. CWChris Williamson1:11:37

        (laughs)

    27. RGDr Robert Glover1:11:37

        And the guy- the guy's checking his watch, checking his phone, "Is SportsCenter on yet? How do I get out of here?"

    28. CWChris Williamson1:11:43

        Well, I- I thought what- what was particularly interesting was you- you explaining, and it- it really sort of hit home to me, that, uh, if you're a man who's watching a romantic comedy, you see, um, regulation at the beginning, everything is- is fine. Then you see dysregulation, something happens and everything goes up in the air. Then you see regulation again, a mo- like middle movie regulation-

    29. RGDr Robert Glover1:12:04

        Yeah, yeah.

    30. CWChris Williamson1:12:05

        ... where the- the couple first starts to get together, and you're like, "Oh well, I mean, that's it." Like you-
11. 1:13:54 – 1:25:42

    The Importance of Playfulness

    1. CWChris Williamson1:13:54

       of- of dominance and- and, uh, direction, uh, uh, and- and suggestion that comes from the man, um, there will be women listening and out there who enjoy-

    2. RGDr Robert Glover1:14:06

       Oh, they're- they're writing a blog article about us right now. (laughs)

    3. CWChris Williamson1:14:09

       That's fine. It's fine. Add it to the list. But there will be women listening who are maybe a little conflicted, or there will be men who imagine that their woman might be conflicted because you said, "Well, she wants... She comes home, she's had a difficult day at work because Kelly, that bitch in the cubicle next door has done that thing again that pisses her off."

    4. RGDr Robert Glover1:14:27

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:14:27

       And the woman wants to be able to vent. She also wants her man to listen to her. And it's this odd duality of not knowing what's best for us and of the things that we want not always being in our best interests.

    6. RGDr Robert Glover1:14:43

       Right.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:14:44

       And you quoted the best Onion article, which is, "Woman Turns Man Into a Partner She Doesn't Want To Be With."

    8. RGDr Robert Glover1:14:51

       Uh, I- I- I... That- that- the article, the headline alone is- is enough, right? You know, and- and again, this is, this is the dance of relationship. Wouldn't it be great if, you know, we could just say, "Guys, just do it this way. Every woman's gonna like it"? No, it doesn't (laughs) work that way. And but what- what you said, what was really true is that, yeah, so, uh, for example, you know, the woman in your life's been in her masculine all day, doing, at work, putting up with asshole managers, asshole customers, asshole clients, asshole coworkers, and now, you know, she comes home, there's one more asshole in the house putting demands on her. So, for example, um, the woman that folded my clothes that I mentioned. Uh, again, I met her at the mall. Uh, she sold me shoes. And when, and after we started dating, um, one of the things where we really clicked is she liked baseball, I liked baseball. So, um-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:15:46

       I'm a Texas Rangers fan. I could've been part of a threesome. It would've been great.

    10. RGDr Robert Glover1:15:50

        (laughs) There- there we go. Here you go flirting again.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:15:53

        (laughs)

    12. RGDr Robert Glover1:15:53

        But, uh, but you- you lost me as soon as you said Texas Rangers, you know. Uh-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:15:57

        Hey.

    14. RGDr Robert Glover1:15:58

        But I don't... That doesn't-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:15:58

        Those- those of us with a World Series championship-

    16. RGDr Robert Glover1:16:00

        They w-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:16:00

        ... in the last year...

    18. RGDr Robert Glover1:16:01

        They... Yeah. Yeah, you're- you're the we, you're the homer. Yeah, we, we won the World Series. Let me see the ring, man.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:16:06

        Uh, it's we. It's we.

    20. RGDr Robert Glover1:16:06

        Show- show me the ring.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:16:07

        Yeah, yeah.

    22. RGDr Robert Glover1:16:07

        Okay. So, um, she liked baseball. So, you know, she'd get off work, 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. I'd already have a bar stool staked out at the Ruth's Chris that was right next to, you know, where she worked. Couple baseball games are already on the screen, uh, at the bar. They have this great half-price hamburger at, during happy hour. She'd come in, and she would just start. You know, I'd already had the wine ordered, sitting there, you know, the, you know, the- the appetizers are come... And she's like this about her day, right, like that. She's been in her masculine all day. I would take out my phone, set it at five minutes, and say, "You have my undivided attention for five minutes." Put the phone on the bar. I would give her eye contact. I would face her. I would listen. Undivided attention. She would run out of steam before five minutes was up because she's going, "I can sit here and complain, but there's a baseball game on, and there's a glass of wine sitting here. What do I prefer?" Before fi- now if I didn't put her on the clock at five minutes, it was a game, it was me being dominant, but in a loving, playful... If I didn't put her on the clock, she might be crabby all night long, and she would not enjoy herself 'cause one of the things I found is that, uh, for... Somebody who identifies as feminine to be in their masculine all day are often not good at getting themselves out of that masculine role. "Oh, I gotta go home and wash dishes, and get the laundry done, 'cause there's things we gotta do before... I gotta get up and go to work tomorrow." "Oh, sit down. Have a glass of wine. Tell me about your day. Let me rub your feet." I'm a big fan of- of, in a sense, leading her back into her feminine, out of that masculine, rigid, get-shit-done kind of state of mind, and now all of a sudden, she begins opening. And she'll tell me her attention. I might even say, a woman taught me this, I'll say, "You know what? I wanna hear about your day, but give me the guy version." You know, and- and I've never had a woman ask me, "What does that mean?" I'll say, "You- you- you want me to be your guy, right?" "Yeah, yeah." "All right, then I need the guy version when you tell me about the day and how it sounds-"

Episode duration: 1:47:42