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 your host, David Tian.
In the previous two episodes. I've been getting into the do's and don'ts of texting when it comes to dating and dating apps. Two episodes ago, I went into what not to do. I covered the big myth that texting is the problem. Texting is never the problem, and I went into the branches and root analogy there.
I covered the three main problems that guys face when they're trying to implement or get better at texting when it comes to dating. The first is confusing short-term and long-term dating strategies or mating strategies, and the second is relying on copying and pasting when it comes to texting and even profiles, and the third is pimping your profile, doing it at all. [01:06.8]
All of these, copying and pasting, pimping your profile, actually not only hurts the woman through deception and manipulation, but also hurts you that they're robbing you of a fair representation of who you are, so that even if you were to get the woman, and if what you want is a long-term committed relationship or an unconditional-love relationship, or an intimate relationship down the road, that it will actually sabotage the whole thing and put you on the wrong footing.
It will actually deprive you of representing yourself accurately, so that even if she were to reject you, she ends up rejecting a representation that is not you, so that your one at-bat, your opportunity here to actually connect with a woman who would be suitable for a successful relationship, ends up passing you over, not actually passing “you” over it, but passing over the persona that you copied and pasted, and that's actually the worst thing to have happened. Even worse than being rejected, because you weren't even rejected for who you are, and yet you are still rejected. [02:11.0]
In the episode just before this, I went into what to do instead, and I covered how you should strive for authenticity in your photos and your bio, and you should keep it light and fun in your bio and in your texting. I covered the inner game of Instagram, how it should be played for an audience of one. You should be making that Instagram account for you, first and foremost, and not to pimp it out, present a certain affect for others, but that then if it's for you, it will be finally the type of account, ironically, because you've done it for you, that will actually attract the type of women who are mature emotionally enough to be ready for a long-term successful intimate relationship of unconditional love. [02:58.6]
That issue of authenticity is really what's at stake here. It's because you aren't proud of yourself, you don't have that self-worth, that you have these insecurities and you're trying to cover over these insecurities with copying and pasting other guys’ message or hiring somebody else to take over your inbox to message the woman, because you don't actually have enough self-confidence in yourself to be authentic.
But if you were, if you could just be you and express yourself however you like, however you're thinking and feeling, then texting would be effortless and it is possible for that to be the case that you could attract the right type of woman for a long-term relationship—the type of woman who is not just physically attractive, but it's also somebody who is ready to be vulnerable enough and to have that kind of independence of her own to be able to meet her own needs, that she can open up for an unconditional-love relationship—that you can do that effortlessly because of just the way you are, just because of who you are. [04:05.3]
Whatever you're thinking and feeling is how you text, and you're able to keep it light and fun and simple because you're enjoying your life and your life and the way you are. There are plenty of times when you're in a light and fun mood, and you understand how dating works where you date to enjoy yourself, to have fun, to let your hair down, to let go of the stresses of the week and all of that, and to have a good time. You can do that effortlessly because it's just an expression of who you are, and therefore there is no anxiety looking at the phone, wondering, How do I come across in a way that will get her to like me? None of that crosses your mind, or if it does, it goes away very quickly, because you're able to meet all of your needs yourself in yourself.
Now, notice that, regardless of whether the medium is your phone or digital, or if it's in person and you're speaking, the issues are all the same. It comes from a lack of self-confidence and a neediness, and these core insecurities that eat away at you, so you have these parts of yourself that you are ashamed of, that you hide, and you cover over those parts with somebody else's words. [05:11.6]
I guess maybe texting is a relatively new medium for some people, so they think that all the rules that would normally apply in a face-to-face situation go out the window when it comes to the phone, and so they throw their morals as well and their clear thinking out the window when it comes to the phone. Maybe because it's easy to copy and paste or to just follow the instructions, sort of hand their phone to somebody else or their account and have that person manage it for them in a kind of way that's deceptive, and they think now, oh, it won't matter because there are different rules in texting.
It's not this case at all. It's the myth that texting is the problem. Texting is not your problem. Texting is never the problem. The problem isn't ever the texting itself. Texting is like the branch of the tree when the problem is it's just rotting from the core or it's rotting from the roots, and what you see on the outside is just the branches, maybe rotting, or maybe you see the fruit is rotting or maybe you don't get any fruit. But you think, Oh, if I just keep trimming the branches or if I maybe take somebody else's fruit and hang it on my tree, no one will notice. [06:11.8]
Then, obviously that's the wrong way to go about it because you’ve still got a rotten tree, but if you have a tree that's not rotten, that's healthy on the inside and strong, and it's getting the right nutrients and is in a secure position in a secure place and is tended to, then naturally the branches would be healthy and would be bearing healthy fruit, right? Then you wouldn't even have to worry about texting. It would be effortless. It would just be a natural extension of your thoughts and how you're feeling, and just communication, just another type of communication.
That's how it is for guys who are secure in themselves, for guys who have access to their true self, and guys who have learned how to meet their own needs, men and women who have unburdened the vulnerable parts and are able to be there for their parts and meet their needs. [07:01.7]
When you're able to do that, texting is effortless. There is no anxiety around texting, and you're able to be authentic, not just in your texting, but also in your Instagram profile and in your expression of yourself through whatever medium, especially in-person conversations face-to-face because eventually you want it to go there, right? Eventually, the buck will stop at some point and you're going to have to step up.
No matter how much you hand your phone over to somebody else to manage or copy and paste, you're eventually going to have to take over, and at that point, if you haven't gotten yourself sorted out in that sense of being able to meet your own needs far enough along in your therapeutic process, then it’s just going to fall apart. The rules will be up.
If you are far enough along in your therapeutic process and your therapeutic journey, you wouldn't want to deceive. It would actually totally undermine the whole point of the process of dating, of getting to know somebody. It would be a complete waste of time. [08:04.7]
In fact, it would hurt not just her through your deception, by copying and pasting or having somebody else handle your inbox, but even more, it would hurt you because that one chance that you have with this woman who, if she is an attractive woman, has a lot of suitors, you can just assume that, you have one chance you have now botched because you've misrepresented yourself, so that even if she were to reject you, she's rejecting you for not you, and so you've missed your opportunity to even put yourself out there.
If she doesn't reject you, then you've started your entire relationship on a deception and a misrepresentation, and now that's going to be eating away at you and you're going to have to somehow get around that. I’ll tell you from experience, my own experience and from a lot of guys who I know who were players before, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get around that, that starting that relationship off on the wrong foot is very difficult to turn it around because already you have shown your colors, right? [09:06.5]
You've already started it off from a place of deception, so there's always going to be that voice in the back of her mind, “Can I really trust this guy? Does he have the balls? Does he have the integrity? Does he have the courage to be a man of integrity?” She might feel sorry for you because you were too much of a coward to put yourself out there, because you didn't believe that if you were just your authentic self and authentic expression of how you are feeling and what you're thinking, that that would be insufficient to attract her, and so you had somebody else handle your account or you had to copy and paste. Then the whole thing calls your entire character into doubt.
But, instead, if you get this right, as I'm going to be describing here in three steps in this episode, if you get it right, then your texting will be effortless. There will be no anxiety around texting, and you can just come to your phone, message a woman however you think you should message her. Whatever you're thinking, just send it out there with no extra anxiety, no extra effort involved, because it will just be an authentic expression of who you are and how you're thinking. [10:14.8]
Now, men who are successful in this way, don't just say or do things differently from them versus the men who are so insecure that they have to copy and paste or hire somebody else to do their texting for them. Men who are successful in this therapeutic process actually think differently and therefore they actually feel. They actually have different emotions. They actually have a different inner experience.
Okay, so I'm going to be getting into how to become that. How can I get that for myself, that effortless texting? How can I reach that point? I’ve got three points for you and they're kind of steps, let's say, three steps.
The first step is to think of your ideal woman, because this is the first half step. Your ideal woman. Think of that. It doesn't have to be too specific, but you just kind of get an idea of the type of woman that you would want to be in a relationship with. [11:08.3]
Think of that woman. What does she look like? That'd be the first thing most guys think of and you can also think of the superficial sort of stuff of what career might she have, what kind of educational attainments or something like that. That's the sort of typical achiever kind of trauma, so they think about those things like, I need a smart girl, as if smart girls are rare or something.
Then go deeper and think about her character. What type of morals would she have? What kind of moral values would she have? What would she be standing for? This is going to be a lot tougher for most guys because most guys don't have any values, so they don't have any ground to stand on when they get cheated on. But you, if you've been a long time listening to this podcast, have thought about your values, what's important in life, what good is, what the right is, what evil is and what the bad is. At least you have a preliminary start on that, so you have an idea of what she would stand for. What are her principles? Does she stand for compassion, empathy, or is she mean? What about that moral character? What's that like for her? [12:18.2]
Then, of course, you have other hobbies, things that she likes, maybe the way that she smiles or the things that cause her to giggle or to blush, things like that. Maybe how sexy she is or how sexual she is. What's your ideal woman like?
Okay, so you get a good picture of that ideal woman, and if you really are going to do this exercise properly, I would ask you to pause the tape and really reflect 10 minutes or so, and just sort of write it out and to brainstorm, and you can do that if you are self-disciplined enough to pause the tape and do that. But, even then, you can kind of have an idea about it, so I'm just going to keep going.
So, you have this ideal woman. Great. Now think of this ideal woman's ideal man. What’s this ideal woman's ideal man? What would he be like? What would she want in her ideal man? [13:05.2]
Now, you might picture a man and paint a portrait of a man who you don't like, and that might be somebody from who's bought into the in cell kind of subculture or somebody like that, because if, actually, this is your ideal woman for real, you're not just playing around, but you've really thought about your ideal woman and it turns out your ideal woman’s ideal man you hate.
Maybe he's the guy, the type of guy that got all the girls back in the day and you've just got jealous and you have a lot of hatred for them or anger. Then you've got actual internalized self-hatred and you really need to get private therapy. I highly recommend that. That's really required if that's the case where you have a negative reaction to this ideal woman's ideal man. I'm just going to say, get a therapist because you're going to need to do some work. You're going to have to uncover those parts of yourself that you've disowned and have exiled. All right, so this is assuming that you’ve sincerely answered that question about your ideal woman. [14:00.8]
For most guys, it's going to be not hatred towards the ideal man, but when they think of the ideal woman's ideal man, they say, Okay, I can see why he's awesome because part of it would be he's a morally-upright guy and he's a good upstanding man and always tries to do the right thing, and he's got these great characteristics and he's compassionate, and also fun-loving and adventurous, and he's really comfortable with his sexuality and he's a leader, and he's comfortable being dominant and he's assertive and all that. Great.
But they say okay and maybe they'll throw in some other things that reflect their insecurities, maybe he's got a six pack and he's super rich and things like that, and maybe they think that in terms of especially moral character and personality, because for long-term relationships, that's a lot more important. The other things just kind of get your foot in the door. [14:52.0]
The moral character and these personality traits, which, by the way, if you fill out the personality traits robustly enough, will determine what type of access to resources he eventually will have if he doesn't have them already, because a part of that is persistence and independence, and kind of he'll stick to the task and have this kind of resilience and so on.
Okay, you're picturing that guy and maybe our reaction isn't like an incel reaction where you hate him, and instead it's where you think, okay, I can see why he is admirable, but I'm not that guy, and that's an honest answer. Maybe you say, I'm not that guy.
But notice that if you have, for real, this is your real ideal woman, that this ideal man is a potential for you, especially in terms of those personality traits, and notice that as you look at your ideal woman's ideal man, what comes up for you? For some of you, it might be shame because you're not that guy and notice the parts of you that are holding that shame. [15:57.8]
Those are the vulnerable parts of you that feel like they're not good enough, that feel like they're not worthy that are holding these insecurities and might have created or activated other parts of you that are trying to compensate for that shame by pleasing women, by achieving hard, by trying to get significance through your career or to becoming somebody, and I’ve made many episodes on examining that dynamic and examining those parts that try to achieve to please. Some of them might be that you've developed a joker part in you that jokes around to try to deflect from your discomfort with yourself or your insecurities, or from being bullied way back when.
Whatever you're feeling that is not a feeling of “Oh, yeah, I recognize that in me,” but instead “Oh, that's not me and I have some shame around that,” notice that those vulnerable parts need your attention. Before you can become that, your ideal woman's ideal man, you'll need to attend to your vulnerable parts that are triggered by that and are feeling shame that they aren't that and they feel this lack of self-worth. [17:12.0]
That's what that therapeutic process is for. I do that in my courses, like “Freedom U” and “Rock Solid Relationships.” It's really important to address that in relationships. You can get into a relationship as an achiever and then only notice this sort of thing coming along after six months when vulnerability really starts to matter and you start to trigger each other and you're wounded inner disowned selves.
That's why I’ve included a sequence that will help you do this over multiple weeks in the “Rock Solid Relationships” course, but you can also do it through private therapy, and if you can afford it and have the patience for it and can stick with it, that's a great route to go. I actually have a private practice and, at the moment, I don't have any openings, but if that's something you're interested in, you can check it out on my website and follow up and see if there are any openings. [17:59.0]
That's the second step. The first is to think of your ideal woman and then to think of your ideal woman's ideal man. Then the second step is to notice how you feel toward that ideal woman's ideal man, and notice if you feel anything that's non-accepting or if anything gets activated in terms of something like shame or maybe some fear because he's so intimidating because he can't be that guy.
Just except for now the hypothesis or maybe a working assumption that this ideal man is in you, either a part of you or a combination of parts, because when you go through the healing process, especially in IFS therapy, and you access your true self, accessing your higher self gives you that fullness of not just compassion and connection, and accepting and calm, but also of full confidence and clarity and courage. [19:00.0]
It also helps then from that higher self, the vantage point of your higher self, as you discover the parts of you carrying those burdens and help them unburden from those emotions or beliefs that they took on from long time ago where they believed they had to be a certain way in order to be loved or accepted.
That once they're on burden of those, they come into their fullness and they start to take on these attractive traits of confidence and creativity, and competence and calm in the face of challenge, and courage and adventurousness, and passion and creativity, and sensuality and the fun-lovingness, this kind of playfulness and spontaneity, and a kind of openness and open-heartedness and curiosity about life, and a kind of empathy opens up for them, and the courage of vulnerability that they're courageous enough to be vulnerable because they know that even if they're hurt your higher self is there to meet their needs and to be there for them. [20:05.2]
And that once you have unburdened a lot of your internal system by accessing from the vantage point of your higher self, then you will also be able to access and come into the fullness of you as your ideal woman's ideal man, assuming you really have filled out your ideal woman in your mind.
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A lot of guys, because they're coming from their own insecurities and their neuroticisms, they think that their ideal woman is a certain way, and some of them never get anywhere close to it, but some really persistent achievers might get that ideal woman that they think is ideal and find out that's not really what they wanted. [21:29.8]
Sometimes it has to do with life experience. You may not know what will actually fulfill you and what you really want because your system is so disordered inside, so no matter what, you should start with a therapeutic process.
As you get along in the therapeutic process, you'll get to know yourself a lot better and you'll know who your ideal woman is a lot better, and you'll know what your priorities are—and, often, they are not the priorities of the rest of the world and the rest of the world is living in a kind of a kind of neuroticism and pain, and unmet needs and insecurities, so they project them onto the partner that they think that they want and that will fulfill their needs and actually it really doesn't. [22:11.6]
There's that caveat that your idea of woman might change over time as you mature and grow and develop, so just be aware of that and allow for that. But if your system is relatively unburdened, give access to your higher self, you are beginning to, if not, already well into unburdening your managerial parts, your firefighter parts, your exiled parts—and these are terms from IFS therapy that I have addressed in other episodes—your inner parts that are carrying these burdens and they become unburdened parts.
The combination of your burden parts will be able to be any ideal woman's ideal man. Maybe on the outside, you're going to change, maybe because you love yourself.
You'll take care of yourself in terms of your diet and your health and fitness. You'll be maybe taking that time for yourself to meditate and so you come to a calm and that will have an effect on your body, so even on the outside, the inside-out change will transform. [23:12.2]
Then your career options will transform. Your career decisions will transform. What you do in your day-to-day life will transform as you unburden your parts, and then you'll have access to the power of your personas of these different parts of you that can be that adventurous, fun-loving you that finds texting to be effortless, that is comfortable with sexuality and even really leans into a sensuality, comfortable with your own body and what it can do, and comfortable with all of your parts, even including the ones that you were previously ashamed of, and you were able to give them that love.
To recap, the three steps are to think of your ideal woman's ideal man. The second step is to notice how you feel toward that ideal man, and then notice what comes up for you, the shame, perhaps, and to realize that those vulnerable parts are the ones that need your attention.
Then the third is to actually undergo that therapeutic process and I’ve covered this in many other episodes of going through an unburdening process led by your higher self to find these vulnerable parts and help them heal. As they do so, they will unlock for you all of these attractive traits.
Just to end off here, I'm going to share with you a story of a client and now a friend named Vic. When Vic first started to get better at dating, he really threw himself into it and put a lot of effort and time into thinking about dating and researching what are the best ways to present himself and changed his fashion and changed the way he talked. He ended up coming across really confident and self-assured because he was just so good at working hard and he was so assiduous and diligent at this. [25:04.6]
But there was also sort of, and this was about five percent of the time, there was this sort of nagging kind of desperation, especially around texting where there would be a girl that he’d think was really into him, and then when he texted her, she'd kind of really take her time to reply.
Then, next thing you know, two or three days later, he sees her at the bar that they met in and she's with some other guy and it destroys him for that night and he gets really drunk or something like that, because he's now pegging his self-worth to how women respond to him because he has put so much, invested so much time and effort into improving himself and all for impressing women. If these women weren't impressed by him, “Heck, what was all this hard work for?” and this was the internal dialogue that he was going through. [25:51.2]
The problem was that there were still these vulnerable parts of him that were filled with shame around self-worth, feeling like he wasn't good enough just the way he was, that he had to do all this extra stuff—and not just fashion makeover or changing his career and upgrading himself and all of these self-improvement in self-help ways, which I’ve already covered in other episodes, that can be quite toxic depending on how you approach them, and how most self-help approaches self-improvement is very toxic, and Vic kind of had got sucked into that.
But, also, texting, because even all of this extra effort, thinking about what to text her, looking for the hacks, the gimmicks, the best first texts, all of this extra effort actually did the opposite. It undermined the right mindset. It actually gave him this over-invested mindset where he was now just over-investing because he didn’t think he was good enough just the way he was.
So, he had to go and learn all this other extra stuff about texting and put in all this extra effort into texting, so that sometimes it worked because the woman maybe was naive or maybe she just fell for it, or maybe she just wanted a fling that night.
But then with the women that he really wanted that he was really hoping would follow up with him didn't, and it destroyed him because he put all of this extra effort into presenting this front that wasn't really him. [27:09.3]
Eventually he just dropped it all and I guided him through just breaking that down, stop doing this stuff that used to work for you because it only worked for you in the short or medium term, and it's not working for you in the long term and you want the long term. You want a relationship. You don't want just a bunch of hookups, because the hookups never went very far or he’d get into a relationship for three or four months, or he had some relationships that went on for about a year, only to discover she was cheating on him because he had sucked in there emotional vampires, because he was presenting a front and putting a lot of extra effort into hiding who he really was and his lack of self-worth in these other areas. [27:48.4]
Instead, he learned to become happy with himself and to give love to himself in accessing his higher self and unburdening his parts. As a result, his whole entire career transformed and he was doing something he really loved, and while he was doing that thing that he really loved—that he was kind of ashamed that he was doing it because it was something that his parents didn't think there was any money in, and it turned out he was just really, really good at it and it was able to be one of the top in the world at it—and while he was doing that, he met a woman naturally as a result of that.
He just tried to present himself as authentically as he could. “This is what I'm into and this is what I like, and take it or leave it,” and she took it and now they are happily married and they started a family, and it's a beautiful thing to witness that when you drop the facade, when you stop trying so hard, when you stop trying to figure out the best text and you just say what you mean or what you want to say, or however you're feeling at that time—because you've already given love to yourself and you're happy with yourself, and you don't need somebody else to tell you you're good enough, and you can just be authentic then—then you don't need anybody to tell you what to text. You just text however you feel like texting and saying whatever you want to say. [29:09.8]
It's the same advice that I give to guys when it comes to them asking, What should I say in person? Just because you change the medium from face-to-face to a texting machine, which is your phone or some other digital interface, it just moves it to a different medium.
Sure, now you've got to figure out what emojis are and learn how to use gifs and things like that, but those are just different types of communication. The inner game of it, what you're feeling and thinking, still drives the thing, so if you're copying and pasting, you're actually just doing the same thing where you're memorizing pickup lines and spitting them out, and then wondering why real women aren't responding. Right now, maybe women still might be naive because the technology might be still relatively new, but they'll figure it out pretty quickly, if they haven't already, by the time you hear this. [30:00.3]
I’ll tell you this, guaranteed, all the emotionally-mature women who are ready for a secure, successful long-term intimate and passionate relationship of unconditional love can see through all of the bullshit of you pimping your profile, of you copying and pasting gimmicky posts or copying and pasting gimmicky texts or the cheat codes. They can see through all of that and they're either just passing you by or maybe they're shaking your heads taking pity on you, but in either case, you're not getting attraction out of that.
Stop all of that game-playing on text and just access your light and fun. Keep it simple, accessing your light and fun parts because you’ve got those, and the more of that therapeutic process you go through, the more you will be able to unlock and unburden those parts that are naturally playful and spontaneous and adventurous, and assertive and dominant and sexy, and courageous and self-confident. [31:02.8]
You have all of that in you. It's just part of being you. It's part of being human and it’s part of your higher self, and it’s part of the very exiles because we have these qualities already, many of them as children, and without shame, you then come into being comfortable with your sexuality because it's just natural and becoming confident and courageous, because you know that you’ve got this and you can handle it. You can handle these challenges because your higher self is there.
All of that is available within you if you go through the therapeutic process. Again, I’ve got courses that will lead you through it. You can also do it through private therapy. I recommend therapy for everybody. Go check those out. Check out the online courses and also you can go to the IFS Directory and look for an IFS therapist. It’s the style or approach I'd recommend the most. You can find an IFS therapist around your time zone.
You can also check out my website and see if the therapeutic-coaching or my private-practice link is up there or not, and if it's up there, then we might have some room in the schedule for you. But you can write to support@AuraTransformation.org to find out more, or you can just go to our website and just fill out the contact form. [32:15.7]
I hope to hear from you, and let me know what you thought about this podcast. If this was meaningful to you, please share it.
I just want to mention again who this is not for. These past few episodes and, really, this whole podcast is not for guys who just want to optimize and maximize sex and hooking up. I totally get the motivation behind that, but that's a different motivation.
This is for those who want to have fun, for sure, and want to experience passion and a lot of great sex, but also as a priority, want to find and create a successful intimate long-term relationship of unconditional love. If that's you and if you know other people who are into that or who are looking for that, then share this with them and rate this podcast on Apple Podcasts and let me know what you thought of this episode. I'd love to get your feedback. [33:09.1]
Thanks so much for all the engagement and feedback on the previous episodes, and I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. David Tian, signing out.
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