Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast, where we answer key questions in dating, relationships, success, and fulfillment, and explore the psychology of masculinity. Now here's your host, world-renowned therapist and life coach, David Tian.
David: Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast. I’m David Tian, your host, and welcome to Episode 5.
In the previous episode, we covered why values are so crucial to success in dating and relationships, and today we're going to be getting into the specific values that are better for succeeding in your personal life, especially in your relationships and in your love life. [00:44.5]
In the previous episode, we covered the toxic getting-ahead value system that ultimately was rooted in something like evolution, a particular view of evolution of just survival of the fittest. We were just evolved for survival and replication or reproduction and it's red in tooth and claw, and this is a view of the world in life as being based around competition and conflict, and, thus, the value system being about just getting ahead, and how buying into this toxic value system precludes love and happiness and intimacy. It precludes the vulnerability required to move into unconditional love.
Today's episode is not just about the specific values that are better for succeeding in your love life, but it's also about how to attract the right woman naturally into your life, how to attract the right partner. If you're a woman listening to this, how to attract the right partner naturally into a relationship of unconditional love.
Where I say “naturally,” it feels effortless because it's just you living out the values that are defining how you are in your life. Okay, so getting clear on those values, having that clarity is absolutely essential to making this a natural part of your life, to making this flow naturally in your life. [02:07.1]
Okay, so we're going to be looking at the specific values. I've got three groups of values to propose to you, and if you don't think deeply about these values, whether you take the ones that I'm recommending here or not, whether you agree with me or not, the very fact that you're reflecting on the values that are driving your life, that, in and of itself, is already going to set you apart from the average person and already puts you in a really good place, a better place, a better shot at succeeding in your love life—because if you don't do that, if you don't do what we've been doing in the past episode and in this episode, then what will happen is that you'll be wondering why and being frustrated as to why your love life is just going in circles, how without that vulnerability that's required for conditional love, you will never be able to access that courage that's required, that is necessary for unconditional love. [03:06.0]
You're going to be frustrated as to why you can never relax, why in your relationship you always have to be on your guard, be on your toes, because there's another better competitor around the corner, even if you don't know where that person is. Yet it's just the potential of it and that woman could always trade up or just maybe even trade laterally for just something new, and always being insecure and uncertain in your relationship, always having to just be your best self. Otherwise, she's going to leave you.
That's the norm for guys around the world, especially in the modern world, just looking at the content that gets millions of views, which is this toxic value system that if you imbibe, you will never be able to relax. It will preclude an unconditional love relationship. It will prevent you from experiencing unconditional love because you won't be able to give it to yourself, because you're uncertain as to whether she’s trustworthy, whether you can rely on her to always be there for you, never cheat on you, never step out on you, always be there no matter how much vulnerability or weakness you show. [04:14.5]
You can't do that in this value system because it's already built into it that you've got to be your best self, and if you're not your best self, she's going to step out and that's not a love relationship. You don't even need love for that to work. That's just a normal, transactional relationship that you find in business settings all the time.
You just get the best product you can afford and that's how most people are thinking in terms of their dating life and their relationships. They get into a relationship with that and then it's a disaster, and they wonder why, because they've never actually query and evaluate it critically, reflect in any deep way on the values that are driving their lives. If you don't do that, if you don't reflect on the values driving your life, then you will be driven by them unconsciously and not able to control the outcome of your life. [05:03.7]
You don't want that. You want to take this seriously and get into thinking about your moral philosophy, your ethics, your principles, and what is driving your life. Okay so I'm going to be giving you three different categories and telling you what I suggest, what I recommend in each of those three categories, and just the fact that you're thinking about these is already great. It's already a victory as far as I'm concerned, but, obviously, there are some values that are better than others for succeeding in your love life.
Obvious examples are, if you value just getting ahead at whatever cost, if your partner has that view, generally you will not be able to relax and you won't be able to trust the person, because getting ahead for that person might mean dumping you and getting and jumping to the bigger, better. Right? That's an example of a wrong set of values and we covered in the last a whole set of wrong values for succeeding in relationships and in love. I recommend you obviously listen to that one as well. [06:06.0]
Let's dive into the positive side of that equation—what are some good values that will lead to, naturally lead to, a successful long-term relationship and a love relationship, a relationship of love, connection and passion?
Okay, the first category is, broadly speaking, goodness. This is versus mere survival, replication, mere getting ahead. Right, so if you see the world and life, and you and your existence in this world, as being based on simply the top values are surviving and reproducing, and just getting ahead of the competition, there's no room for goodness. Goodness is way down the list, like if it's convenient for you and doesn't get in the way of you getting ahead, yeah, you'll do the good thing, right? That's bad. If somebody has goodness really low on their hierarchy of values, then that's a sign that you should stay away from them. [07:01.6]
Whether it's a love relationship, or even in a business relationship, you're going to have to have a really strong contract with that person and be able to enforce that, because at the first opportunity for that person to be able to backstab you to, clearly, some getting ahead, that person will do it. They'll look for the loopholes in the contract and all of that, and you're not going to be able to relax in that relationship—and, oh, my God, imagine if you were to take that into a love relationship or in an intimate relationship. You're really screwed. But that's how most achievers are because that's how they treat themselves in the world. That's the value system they’ve bought into, so of course, they carry that over into their relationship and they can never relax in it and they actually never experienced unconditional love.
Okay, so the first category, the first set of values, is around goodness and I could spend an entire year of a graduate-level course cashing out all the various theories of what goodness is. We're not going to. We don't need to do that actually right now. We can just take the sort of the common sense view of goodness of “Are you listening to your conscience? Are you following it?” [08:04.1]
Whether you go against your instincts or not, it's the very fact that you're listening to your conscience and that's a big factor in your decision-making. Do you have a conscience? I think everyone does, even though there's some research that psychopaths don't have a conscience. I think they just don't listen to their conscience, but whatever. This is like one percent of the population. I'm not talking to psychopaths right now.
Oh, by the way, how do you spot a psychopath? Obviously, they don't have this set of values that I'm going to be telling you about today, right? That's one way, and then they probably have and will voice the value system that I had covered in the previous episode of red in tooth and claw, just the getting-ahead type of toxic value system.
Goodness, so it's not just about getting ahead. It's about listening to your conscience because you're concerned about what the good is, because you have this tugging in your heart that maybe this backstabbing, maybe this betrayal of faith, of loyalty or something like that, is not good. It's not morally good. It gives you this yucky feeling and that's the warning signal. [09:05.7]
You might still go ahead with it, but the fact that you're listening to your conscience is what we're looking for and, ideally, you will then have the skills or the experience or the wisdom to sit and listen to your conscience and the various needs of your parts that are being triggered or activated as a result of the situation you're in.
A part of this goodness category is integrity. What does that mean? This is a word that gets bandied about a lot in the corporate world and it often means nothing, but it does mean something deep that it should be reserved for, which is integrity, where you're integrating the way that you are on the outside and the way you are on the inside, such that how you are on the inside matches how you are and the outside, in the sense of, when you say you're going to do something, you mean that you will do it and you will make sure that you go and do it to the best of your ability or your effort. [09:54.8]
That also ties into another value that's in this category, which is commitment. Is she somebody who follows through on her commitments? And that requires also another value, responsibility, so if you notice that she's somebody who follows through on her commitments and fulfills her responsibilities. Okay, so that category of goodness versus just mere survival and replication and getting ahead will include also your conscience and striving to lead a life of integrity, where the inside matches the outside, where you follow through on your word, where you follow through on your commitments and fulfill your responsibilities.
Are you a person who cares about goodness? And is she a person who cares about goodness? That is required for a love relationship to succeed.
The second category is of compassion and empathy, and sympathy. Is she somebody who prioritizes or considers important compassion and empathy? Are you somebody who experiences compassion? Now, there are lots of ways of sussing this out, of observing this, of testing for it, right? [11:07.8]
One is an obvious one where it's more direct, where you open up some kind of what you consider as vulnerable, something that's vulnerable for you. Maybe it's something that is very dear to your heart and maybe makes you cry, and already I'm assuming you are mature enough to have those places. I realize as I'm saying that that 90 percent of men will know what that is since they see weakness, crying as a source of weakness.
But as you progress in the therapeutic process, you will discover areas in your life that were traumatic for you, that now that you have are healing from those, you have a better perspective on them, so that they don't have the same impact of whelming you with these vulnerable emotions as they did in the past, and you can share those with your significant other, and doing that is incredibly powerful for deepening connection. [11:59.1]
Don't do this as a Machiavellian technique, by the way, but if it's nothing real for you of a period in your life or an event or a situation where you perceived it as a traumatic and now you're healing and growing from it, and if you were to share that with all the raw emotions that are there and you're with your higher self or more mature parts of you able to be there for the parts that are feeling sadness or where the pain emotionally, and that's something that you can reveal and you will be able to see her response.
Is she somebody who has empathy for your inner child that's in pain or hurt, or who was hurt? Is she able to feel with you or is she judgmental, or is she having a toxic masculine reaction to that? I mean, obviously it would be toxic. Whatever, feminine or masculine, this is a toxic reaction to that, but it's stereotypical toxic masculine, which is “buck up,” “man up,” “yeah, okay, keep that. Don't show that to anyone, right?” “Get yourself fixed in the comfort of your own room and then come out when you're ready,” when you're ready not to cry anymore and to be all emotional. Is she like that or do you feel that she's with you? Is she listening with compassion? Is she displaying compassion? Is she displaying empathy? Those are things to look out for. [13:12.3]
And what about you? It's easy to talk about what to look for in her. In fact, I have an entire masterclass for free on what to look out for to know whether these are relationship material. You can find that on my website, DavidTianPHD.com, so you can get that masterclass right free and I go in depth on not just the three categories I'm giving here today, but some other more specific ones for single men who are playing the field to look out for, so that they know what they [need to] choose the right partner for them.
For this podcast. I also want to highlight you. How compassionate and empathetic are you? When you see people who are in emotional pain, do you get uncomfortable and want them to stop? Are you having trouble accessing your own compassion because you're unable or inexperienced with being with your own parts that are feeling that similar pain? Because if you are, then you really need the therapeutic process, because without it, you will not be able to experience an unconditional love relationship. You will not succeed in your love life without that. [14:16.0]
I understand that most men have been laboring under toxic masculinity and are unable to access compassion or be comfortable with it, so don't expect that she will. Now, if you are incredibly stoic in that toxic sense of not accessing your own compassionate and tender feelings for yourself, you will probably, as a consequence, attract into your life somebody who is a sort of bleeding heart and maybe even codependent kind of like a white nurse, the female equivalent of the white knight for your more emotionally unavailable rebel. That impairing is quite common, so there's a whole other myth of—or not myth—a whole other dynamic of the woman trying to tame the bad boy and the bad boy being this unfeeling stoic guy who is clearly feeling a lot, but unable to access what’s actually happening at this level of his emotions because it's all under the surface for him, under the level of conscious access for him. [15:11.0]
That might actually be the case, in which case you have attracted to yourself somebody who is overly compassionate, that is her compassion is driving her to violate boundaries—but that's a good sign that she is compassionate because you can work with that. That's a sign of goodness that she has a heart. That's really important. She just needs to learn how to establish boundaries and to enforce those or assert them, and that's generally easier. You have the material to work with with this person. This is a good person who just needs some maturity and some skills.
But if you're the guy who is attracting women like that, the bleeding hearts, because you're the bad boy who is cut off from his emotions, you're not going to be able to succeed in a long-term relationship until you're able to access your own compassion. You can test that out with whether you're compassionate with others, because if you're not compassionate with others, very likely, you're not compassionate with yourself, with your own parts that are vulnerable. [16:07.4]
Compassion and empathy or crucial. They're indispensable. Look for that in others. Look for it in yourself. If you find that you lack compassion and empathy, this is a therapeutic issue. Go and see a therapist and commit to that. You can also get all my online courses. We have tons of meditative exercises and lots of content, seminars and so on, that will move you into a more compassionate place for yourself to move into self-acceptance, self-appreciation, self-compassion, and loving yourself and accessing your higher self.
One of the great ways of doing this for those men who are more intellectual or who have parts of the more cognitive, kind of leading and dominating your day-to-day life like I do, reading about it, studying these concepts, these moral principles, like goodness, the moral, like just studying moral philosophy and ethics, at least get you on the right topic, so that your mind is focused on these questions, so that you're actually asking yourself these questions and focusing and thinking about them. [17:10.7]
That's really helpful rather than focusing on just getting ahead and getting lost in making more money or getting more status or something like that that will take you further away from accessing compassion. Even if you don't have compassion, studying empathy and compassion and so on is helpful. There's a really great book on empathy that comes at it from a scientific perspective and, as a professor of psychology, it comes at it from a neuroscience perspective, as well as a perspective from biology and even philosophy. It's called The Age of Empathy and it's by Frans de Waal—de Wall, D-E space W-A-A-L—but you can even start just from Aristotle and read the Nicomachean Ethics. But just getting into moral philosophy, studying virtue, studying virtue ethics, that'll get you on the right topic, so that you're actually concerned about issues around empathy, compassion and sympathy, and so forth. [18:05.6]
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Okay, and the final category, Category No. 3, is epistemic humility in the growth mindset. This is more of a cognitive area and not so much just in the emotions and feelings. [19:00.0]
Epistemic humility is, is she or are you humble enough about what you don't know? Are you open to learning new things or do you take a growth mindset, you have a growth mindset with regards to you? Do you know that you don't know most things and that it’s impossible to learn everything, but that you are constantly looking forward to growing and that you're looking out for growth? Because no matter where you start in your relationship, whatever age you are at, whatever level of maturity, you're going to need to grow in life in order to find happiness—so is this somebody who is open-minded enough and humble enough to seek outside knowledge, to explore areas of knowledge and wisdom and experience of others, and to be able to evaluate that and to take that on?
There are plenty of people in life who, after they finish schooling, start to shut down in terms of growth. Unless they're forced to buy their company, they're not going to seek out learning opportunities or growth opportunities. [20:05.7]
There are plenty of men who don't want to improve themselves and think that they should just get a relationship and get a woman who is happy with them at 25 years old, and no matter what happens, this guy doesn't have to change. That guy will never succeed in a long-term relationship, guaranteed.
What’s necessary for success in the long term in any kind of interpersonal relationship is growing along the way, because life will throw you new challenges. You're going to be forced to grow, and if you're not open to that, then you will just get further and further stuck in the quicksand of life, and it's not just like you stay in one place, like you just maintain where you are—as life goes on, as time goes forward, it's like the backwards travel. You have to keep growing in order to keep up with the challenges that life throws you. [20:55.4]
If you're in a love relationship or if you're in an intimate relationship, that, in and of itself, is a challenge that is constantly going to evolve and you're going to have to learn as you go through it. This is true for everyone. At the time of recording this, I'm in my mid-forties. I fully expect to continue, as I have been all my life, continue to learn and grow, and there are plenty of areas that I'm well aware that I have no idea about or might be completely wrong about and I'll only discover that in my fifties and sixties. I'll look back at what I was thinking now in my forties and think, Oh, geez, that was really embarrassing that I thought that.
But there's no way around it. I'm doing the best with what I've got at this age and that's true of all of us, and that's a perspective of epistemic humility—I could be wrong. I'm doing my best right now—and that’s what's required for a relationship to work in the long term.
Part of the way that you can see that somebody is not epistemically humble is if they're closed off to the prospect of going to a therapist or a coach, or learning about psychotherapy or about any area that they don't already know. [22:05.0]
Maybe it's yoga. Maybe it's the cutting edge research on MDMA or psychedelics with therapy, or maybe it's some … whatever it is. Maybe it's the power of what you're eating and how that affects your psychology.
These are areas that we don't get taught in school and, therefore, they will not succeed in relationships, but many people think that everything that was important in life was taught in school and they will fail in life, and that's very sad.
What you're looking for is someone whose value system includes epistemic humility and that you're also looking for evidence of your growth mindset. If you're listening to this, I know you already know you have that or you'll have quite a bit of it. Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to this episode, so that's awesome. Congratulations to you. I want to encourage you on that, and pat yourself on the back, because you're already in the upper elite minority of the world that will be able to have the prerequisites for experiencing a love relationship. [23:07.0]
Spread this to your friends. Try to help others see that they should take a vantage point or a perspective of epistemic humility, intellectual humility around what they don't know. There's so much they don't know and a great portion of what they think they know actually they should revisit, and life opens up for you and you'll grow so much faster. You'll have so much more access to control and mastery of your own emotions when you do that.
Now, let me illustrate this with a story of a client I had. We’ll call him Barry and Barry was a super successful entrepreneur. He had started multiple companies, exited multiple companies, and this was all. He was only in his mid-thirties at that time and he was incredibly driven, but he was driven by this need, unconsciously, obviously, his need for significance, to be somebody, to “be worthy of”, and he didn't understand this until we did some more work together, but to be worthy of his father, his father's love and approval. [24:10.0]
He toiled away at this and part of his feeling worthy enough was having a mate, having a partner, a girlfriend and eventually a wife that they could be a power couple. That was a big phrase for him, a big term of art, “power couple.” He needed to be a part of a power couple and part of his narcissistic fantasy was that the two of them would arrive at some venture capital gathering or whatever and everyone would turn and look, and they'd not only be super attractive sexually, but also incredibly influential and rich, and all this stuff that in that world would have constituted power, right, so the power couple. [24:49.8]
Because he was so smart and driven, when he came to see me to get help, he was recovering from being burned very badly by an emotional vampire, of course. His personality type would attract an emotional vampire and, because he's partly—he is—an emotional vampire as well, he was an emotional vampire himself, but he eventually attracted an even bigger predator, emotional predator, who won out and eventually cheated on him and was very public in his circles, and he felt he lost face and his whole self-esteem was ruined.
With our work together, he was able to get back on his feet, and then as soon as he got that confidence back, just like the typical narcissistic personality, he was off to the races. In our one-on-one coaching program, he did half the sessions.
He got back on his feet. He felt really confident and he felt like he had got all these dating skills, and we went over the therapeutic material, but it didn't really sink in for him because it would be too painful for him to go there. But he started canceling sessions, not showing up and coming up with excuses, and then he got a girlfriend and this girlfriend was going to be part of his power couple. [26:03.7]
Of course, that didn't work out, and so several months later he was back and contacting me, Hey, can we meet up, same story? and then getting back, working with him, until he got his confidence back, and then he was off to the races again. That narcissistic part took over and off he was. Off he went.
The problem I started to realize was that we never questioned the value system that was driving him to try to get ahead. Because it was unquestioned, it was just this background assumption that if you're more successful, then you will be more deserving of happiness, and then, therefore, you would attract a woman that you will be happy with. No, duh. This was the background assumption that I didn't realize at first, because this was several years ago that we were working together, of success necessarily leading to happiness, necessarily leading to love, and that in order to be worthy of love, he had to be successful. [26:59.2]
That was the cycle that was driving him where he was getting confidence whenever he had outward success that would then attract a woman who was kind of predatory in that emotional way, these matching narcissists, and then eventually he would be outmatched and that he would crumble and come back for treatment or for work, for coaching work.
Eventually, I was able to challenge him on his values to help him reevaluate or actually first bring out the values. There was quite a lot of resistance because he was afraid that if he adopted or even questioned this value system of getting ahead, that he would never be successful, and it was never enough.
That was one of those questions that will be able to stop an achiever in their tracks and help them, sort of like a pattern interrupt, of “When will it be enough?” If they look back on their lives, they will see that there was never a point where it was enough.
When they started at T1 and they got to T2, at T1, X amount of money would have been enough, but then they get to T2 and they get the X amount of money, and now they need X+Y amount of money, Xn amount of money to get to T3, and then at T3, they needed to add to that. It was never enough. [28:12.8]
They could never rest because, in fact, their sense of significance didn't come from some absolute number. It was always a comparative metric and there was always that uncertainty, or they just ratchet up the comparisons. “Who am I comparing myself with? Because I need to compete at that level now and then I will never …” and then they got used to feeling not enough. That was their modus operandi, feeling not enough.
That's their comfort zone, actually, this feeling of unease and “I'm not enough.”
Then, if they were to stop and even consider that “I could be worthy of love just in who I am, not in doing anything or in achieving anything,” it was scary for those parts of him, because then they were afraid that he would stop working so hard, stop pushing himself from 8:00 AM to 12 midnight days, seven days a week, and then he would not ever get that love that those parts and the exiles they were protecting were desperately craving. [29:09.2]
Through this long therapeutic process, and it's triggered by re-evaluating his values, and in a kind of gentle way over the course of weeks and months, he was slowly able to reset his values and let go of a lot of bad businesses decisions and bad business relationships he had gotten into because he was so desperate to succeed at higher and higher levels. Parts of him were just not into it anymore because a part of him realized or knew in the back of his mind that that would not lead to unconditional love.
Then, eventually he was able to find the woman he's engaged to now and they're growing together with that third category, epistemic humility, maturing together with a growth mindset of being well-aware of what they don't know and that what they need to succeed in their relationship lies, a lot of it, in the areas of that they don't know very well. [30:03.8]
So, they're open to growing and coming to this work with curiosity and openness, and that puts them in a really good place to succeed in the law in the long run because when you're in a relationship, it's not about “How do I solve this relationship issue right now or this week's relationship issues? It's about the fact that you're going to need to set yourself up for success 10 years from now, 20, 30, 40 years from now, however long you're going to be together, and people enter intimate relationships, hoping that they can be together for life.
Think about how long that will be. You're going to need to really take that growth mindset on board because you can't stagnate now or only fixate on the issues happening to you right now. You're going to need to realize that this is something that is ongoing for life.
This was something that Barry took on and, through a really tough process, and it was really tough because his narcissistic parts were holding so tightly to the getting-ahead value system out of fear that, if they dropped that, that they would not then be successful and would not then experience the love they've been craving. [31:07.5]
But once they were able to understand intellectually that that will lead to love, in fact, is preventing the very thing that they want, they were slowly able to relax back and to drop that, and to trust Barry’s higher self.
Okay, to recap, the first category, it was all about goodness versus mere survival or merely getting ahead, and this included your conscience, and included integrity, commitment, and responsibility.
The second category was about compassion, empathy, and sympathy.
The third category was about epistemic humility and the growth mindset, and just having the maturity to realize the longer-term perspective and to be open to learning new things in areas that they don't know anything about. I illustrated that with the story of Barry.
Okay, I have online courses that will help you with all of these different areas as you might have predicted. Of course, this is my work. There's a course called “Invincible” that will help you think through your own values and that's a really great starting point. [32:03.5]
There's also a more advanced course called “Rock Solid Relationships”. That's especially good with leading you through thinking about, reflecting on and accessing, discovering for yourself, those relationship values that are most important for relationships.
Then, of course, there's another course called “Lifestyle Mastery” that will help you think about, in a bigger sense, the meaning of your life, the purpose of your life.
Okay, so “Invincible”, “Rock Solid Relationships”, “Lifestyle Mastery”, those are all great courses for digging deeper into these areas.
In the next episode, I will be getting into why this is so hard for so many men, why this is so difficult, this re-evaluating and reflecting on value systems, why it's so challenging for so many men. Come back in the next episode. It might be all about you, in fact, and we'll be covering that in the next episode.
If you liked this one, please share it with whoever you think could benefit from it. Share the link. I’d really appreciate that. I’d also appreciate hearing from you about what you thought about what we covered in this episode.
Looking forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening. David Tian, signing out. [33:08.0]
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