Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / When Acting More Confident And Working Out Actually Gets You Laid LESS

Transcript

When Acting More Confident And Working Out Actually Gets You Laid LESS · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:05
  Hi, everyone, and welcome to the dr.
• 0:07
  Psych mom show today. I am going to tackle a
• 0:10
  tremendously awful, bad aversive myth.
• 0:16
  That is sabotaging. A lot of marriages that I see
• 0:20
  and that is that if a man just acts more confident, he becomes
• 0:24
  more attractive to his wife and she wants to sleep with him more
• 0:28
  in fact, many times as many of y'all know, from listening to
• 0:32
  this who have tried these you know, ways of Engaging and who
• 0:36
  have looked on the internet and you're like, I know all I need
• 0:39
  to do is kind of workout. Be more confident, become my own
• 0:41
  man. And guess what, you get laid
• 0:44
  less. So, if that's even possible for
• 0:47
  some of us, it's mathematically impossible, unfortunately.
• 0:50
  But you know, there is a pernicious.
• 0:54
  That's the word I was going for originally myth.
• 0:58
  That women just want really, really confident men like James
• 1:01
  Bond and they don't, so I could talk to you about why?
• 1:05
  Why your efforts in this domain have actually worked against
• 1:09
  you, which is, you know, pretty depressing.
• 1:11
  But really then only by knowing something.
• 1:14
  Can you potentially work, the do the opposite and change your Mo
• 1:19
  before we do that, please do subscribe.
• 1:21
  I'm going to have one coming up about what personality types, I
• 1:24
  see in my office that end up in sexless marriages.
• 1:27
  So if you are in a sexless marriage, you can just then
• 1:30
  easily, just change your personality in accordance know.
• 1:32
  I'm getting that's hard but at least you could be a We're of
• 1:36
  the issues perhaps or of what risk factors there are that
• 1:40
  could make a couple at higher risk of being in a sexless
• 1:43
  marriage. Eventually, if you know that
• 1:45
  you've or you fear that your on that track.
• 1:47
  So every time you subscribe, an angel gets its wings.
• 1:51
  Anyhow moving forward. Oh and also of course do reach
• 1:55
  out for therapy to best life Behavioral Health.com.
• 1:58
  I will link you to that as well, because more and more people.
• 2:01
  Maybe it's the kids are out of school right now and so that
• 2:04
  makes you feel crazy. Crazier and so more people want
• 2:07
  therapy so I will link you to that.
• 2:09
  Okay. So getting back to the topic at
• 2:11
  hand. So a lot of Internet advice
• 2:15
  particularly in male communities on the internet.
• 2:18
  Say that if you just act more confident, you got all your shit
• 2:21
  together. You go.
• 2:22
  Start going to the gym. You get your hobbies, you get
• 2:24
  friends. You stop being such a sad sack,
• 2:26
  you're going to be more appealing to your wife.
• 2:28
  This sounds totally intuitive. You know.
• 2:30
  So a lot of guys really grab the bull by the horns.
• 2:33
  They start lifting they They start that whatever.
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  Okay. Now if this was a research
• 2:39
  experiment which it isn't, but if I could snap my hands and
• 2:43
  make one, I would look at the moderating variables.
• 2:45
  They're the guys for whom this works.
• 2:49
  Uniformly, have higher, emotional intelligence, and they
• 2:54
  are already at starting at a better place.
• 2:57
  So, these are the guys from what I see when it works that going
• 3:02
  out, go to the gym, you know, getting your hair.
• 3:05
  Cut again, stop look like such a slump.
• 3:07
  All of that. The guys for whom that works,
• 3:09
  were already in a closer place with their wives.
• 3:13
  They are sexless, state was more temporary.
• 3:16
  If at all, they may honestly just be trying to go from once a
• 3:19
  week to multiple times a week and, and, or this their
• 3:25
  connection with their wife, on an emotional level remained
• 3:28
  closed, even during the sexless time now, there's a whole bunch
• 3:33
  of guys that this goes, the What's it for and I'll tell you
• 3:36
  why. So what do I mean?
• 3:37
  The opposite. They start lifting starts doing
• 3:39
  all this shit gets worse. Wife looks at them with more
• 3:42
  contempt. She's more detached.
• 3:44
  She's more into Instagram in the evenings.
• 3:47
  She don't go up and feel your muscles for shit.
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  She looks annoyed when you take your shirt off, even more
• 3:51
  annoyed, why could this be? And by the way, like, if you're
• 3:55
  a guy who feels like this frequently, you feel like a
• 3:57
  total freak because it goes against everything that you read
• 4:01
  it. You're like, why am I the only
• 4:03
  idiot that goes to the gym? And my wife want to, fuck me
• 4:06
  less. You're not you're not alone.
• 4:08
  So frequently at those times is when men come into therapy,
• 4:12
  right? Because they're like, I tried
• 4:14
  this DIY and I must be the only sad sack on the planet that this
• 4:19
  didn't work for. So, what's next, right?
• 4:22
  So, what is the moderating variable?
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  If this actually goes worse, you got to look at your emotional
• 4:28
  intelligence and your ability to empathize.
• 4:32
  Basically, what this means is does your wife think?
• 4:35
  A huge asshole. If your wife thinks you were
• 4:38
  huge asshole because you can't really empathize and so you
• 4:42
  listen you may have the emotional intelligence of my
• 4:45
  coffee pot here because you never got taught how to be
• 4:49
  emotionally intelligent by a woman.
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  Your mother was kind of Mia, emotionally didn't have sisters
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  and your current wife is shit A discussing emotion.
• 4:58
  So it's not your fault but in the case where you are coming
• 5:03
  off like a narcissistic jerk. You'll know she will have
• 5:06
  mentioned this at some point. Then you go into the gym,
• 5:09
  focusing on your hobbies and your friends makes you look like
• 5:12
  more of an asshole. Truly think about it.
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  If your problem with your wife was that she was too detached
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  from you, would she make you more into her by going out more
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  with her girlfriends and go in a Zumba more and getting her nails
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  done more? Fuck.
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  No, you be like cheese. Race.
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  You know, is everything about me all the damn time.
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  So for men that are in sexless or low sex marriages that are
• 5:42
  trying to remediate the problem by being more confident than
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  moderating variable. In this flow chart that leads to
• 5:50
  one or the other outcome appears to be the emotional connection.
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  Pre-existing, if your wife has already said, she thinks you're
• 5:58
  self-centered, you is going to go worse for you because this is
• 6:02
  going to be taken as even more. Is that you in fact are
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  self-centered, look, you go four hours to the gym.
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  You'll make all these friend connections.
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  You, you know, you're buying clothes with the same budget
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  that she's trying to buy clothes for the kids from and what the
• 6:16
  fuck is, how she's thinking? Now, you may think it's pretty
• 6:19
  obvious. That I am feeling alone and
• 6:22
  insecure. I met, you have even had
• 6:24
  verbalize that to my wife and so, for her to think that I'm a
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  soulless asshole, would not be possible, man.
• 6:32
  Listen, if you really believe that I have a bridge to sell
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  you, Your wife definitely does not think about you as a
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  vulnerable insecure. Sad guy, if you're going to the
• 6:46
  gym and doing all of this stuff, she's really not.
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  It doesn't matter what words you have said to her.
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  This looks like because think about how women are the majority
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  of women as soon as you have kids, your hobbies die on the
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  vine and they pick back up and, you know, maybe like 10 years or
• 7:00
  something, you know, maybe you go to the gym but that's just so
• 7:03
  that your body does not turn into Into you know, jelly and
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  your hobbies are basically reading parenting books working
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  and answering emails from your kids school.
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  And this is me and I consider that I am not super big people
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  pleaser like your wife is likelier to be if she's more
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  normative on the scale of women people-pleasing so many women.
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  Their Hobbies die even quicker than minded.
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  Not that again, this is again mathematically impossible
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  because for most women they go away instantaneously.
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  So you can go less than zero, can I have - two Hobbies but
• 7:38
  anyhow, so your wife, you may feel that this is very unfair
• 7:44
  because in fact, your self-esteem is in the toilet.
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  You may even have tried to convey this to your wife
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  previously, although I'll bet you spoke in a very rational
• 7:51
  measured tone that did not in any way indicate to her that
• 7:54
  you. In fact do feel insecure that is
• 7:57
  you gotta learn to communicate differently who can refer back
• 7:59
  to my empathy podcast and vulnerability and women like
• 8:04
  emotional mental Then those would be the key ones to refer
• 8:06
  back to. But anyhow the point being, if
• 8:13
  you engage in these confidence Builders your wife doesn't see
• 8:17
  them as confidence Builder, she thinks here's the asshole being
• 8:20
  more of an asshole. Here we go already.
• 8:23
  He didn't give me enough time, attention, etcetera, and our
• 8:26
  emotional connection was gone and now it has to be around his
• 8:31
  gym, schedule, his workout schedule, his this schedule, his
• 8:34
  that Jewel and whatever else. And on top of it, you as a man
• 8:39
  are trying not to be what you may think of as a whiny bitch.
• 8:43
  So you're not even asking for sex and connection anymore as a
• 8:47
  lot of, You Know, Places advice, now your wife is there's another
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  moderating variable. If you want to get fancy, you
• 8:56
  know, if we were really doing SPSS as I have nightmares about
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  from graduate school, that's a statistics program.
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  We could go on another level and say that it's baseball.
• 9:04
  On your wife's attachment style, if your wife is a void and she's
• 9:08
  going to like this stuff more, you're probably not going to get
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  laid more but your wife will like you doing your own thing
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  more because she wants to do her own thing.
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  She don't want your dumb ass in the house.
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  She wants to watch the TV. She wants to watch without you
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  and you will know if this is your situation and but if your
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  wife is preoccupied, attachment then, or even a securely
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  attached to a woman that just is really in a funk and doesn't
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  want to be having sex. And it's One through some shit,
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  you know then she is going to not like you being gone.
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  It's not going to lead to dread or whatever they say it's going
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  to lead to Detachment. And sometimes it'll even lead to
• 9:47
  Revenge independent such as okay.
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  Fuck. Oh you have all your hobbies
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  guess who's going to go back to scrap booking?
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  You know, me and listen if she's scrapbooking and you're you
• 9:58
  know, at the gym like you're taking off turns, with the kids,
• 10:02
  you're doing the relay, passing the Baton The children when then
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  you really hanging out, you know, there it's great for
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  everybody to be self-actualized but self-actualization often
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  comes at the expense of the couple As I previously discussed
• 10:16
  in many other episodes. So while if you are a sad and
• 10:22
  depressed man, that feels that he's always doing, only his
• 10:25
  wife's bidding is good for you. Personally, certainly to, you
• 10:30
  know, get some hobbies and I do certainly encouragement to do
• 10:33
  this. Lat big, but there is the fact
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  that your wife, if she is not avoidant may see, be lonely.
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  Even if she doesn't verbalize it, like that, and this may go
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  worse. So, there are some men that do
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  not have a lot of emotional intelligence again through no
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  fault of their own. And a lot, not a lot of
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  experience empathizing with women, so they may think.
• 11:00
  All right. She's told me that I should go
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  hang out with people and get a hobby.
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  So, what I'm going to do is, I'm going going to pick back up
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  skiing, there we go. I like to ski.
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  So I'm gonna go away, you know, for a whole weekend, once a
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  month with my buddies. She may be like I thought you'd
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  pick back up bike. Riding.
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  I mean, shit, that's a couple hours Saturday morning.
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  You going to be gone for the whole weekend, but she can't say
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  anything because she's the one who encouraged you to go, but
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  this is the sort of Hobby and commitment to yourself that will
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  be thought of as selfish. So what you want probably to do
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  in general is to as per usual. Have more open conversations
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  with your wife. You got to say, I mean if men
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  just literally narrated their internal experience on these
• 11:43
  men's sites women would be so happy.
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  Women are so happy when I do this like hey, do you know that
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  if he's like most guys, he's going on websites that are
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  telling him to pick up a bunch of hobbies.
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  And a lot of women will be like, wait, what?
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  Really? No, that's terrible.
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  I don't want to pick up a bunch of hobbies.
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  Like I don't have any hobbies. Is that why he's always gone,
• 12:02
  right? So sometimes this does more
• 12:03
  trouble than it's worth. Earth.
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  And if there's going to be some philosophical argument over,
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  well, you know, people ought to have hobbies, I don't do
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  philosophical arguments. What I do, is what I see in
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  practice, there's a time of life with multiple young children and
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  careers that the person with even a very high income, should
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  not really be doing that many hobbies, you know, I mean, the
• 12:24
  Hobbies can be, if they can be worked around the Family
• 12:27
  schedule in a non-intrusive way, okay?
• 12:30
  But if it turns into every morning, you're getting up and
• 12:34
  lifting. And so she's with the kids every
• 12:36
  morning, you know, she may say that's okay because she doesn't
• 12:41
  know how not to say it's okay. But isn't it may not be okay and
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  the majority of women who are not avoiding, this would cause a
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  great deal of resentment and empathic ruptures.
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  So like if and and also just not for nothing, she doesn't even
• 12:58
  have time then to just like hang out with you.
• 13:02
  If you are the average couple with kids, Because a lot of that
• 13:05
  time is like being together in the morning and being together
• 13:09
  in the evening. And if you're like, what, she's
• 13:10
  not jumping, my bones at any of those times, perhaps you all our
• 13:14
  ships in the night. And that's what you have to work
• 13:16
  on being present, loving and attentive during the times you
• 13:19
  were together versus thinking, you're going to make her somehow
• 13:22
  miss you and you're in for you by leaving.
• 13:24
  I not seen this yet in marriage, except for the moderating
• 13:27
  variables that I talked about. If it's already an avoidant
• 13:30
  woman, she likes you being gone more or if you are ready, have
• 13:34
  Of a close good and loving connection and you are, then,
• 13:39
  you know, just starting up a hobby and she's supportive of
• 13:43
  you and you're supportive of her.
• 13:44
  This is not the case that most of my people with sexless
• 13:47
  marriages are in. There's a lot of resentment in
• 13:49
  the woman thinks the guy's a dick, that's a key variable
• 13:52
  underscore dick. She thinks he is selfish to
• 13:55
  start, so him becoming more into his own self is not thought to
• 14:01
  be a good appealing. James Bond kind of thing.
• 14:04
  Not at all the entire fantasy of being with a James Bond.
• 14:08
  Like, man is the, you're the one who gets to make him domestic
• 14:12
  and loving and attentive. So for the rest of the world,
• 14:15
  he's mr. Confident in the boardroom and
• 14:17
  with you, he loves you so much, he would die for you.
• 14:21
  That is the ultimate female fantasies that unconditional
• 14:24
  love, you know. Like, he would, he would lay
• 14:26
  down his life for me. You can't think he's gonna lay
• 14:29
  down his life for you. If he won't even skip a workout
• 14:33
  girls, do not That's cute. I saw something on Tick Tock
• 14:36
  where it's like, like when she asks you to skip your workout
• 14:41
  and it was like the guy was like he was like nodding his head
• 14:45
  really fast like no no, I would never let a woman, tell me too.
• 14:49
  It was a you know young adult not a married guy.
• 14:51
  I would never let her tell me to get my work out but then like
• 14:54
  you saw his face change and you know, you're led to believe that
• 14:57
  he's thinking about what he's missing out on if she invites
• 15:00
  him to come over and he doesn't miss his work out, you know,
• 15:03
  you're led to believe that he would.
• 15:04
  Be missing out on a wonderful romantic or sexual encounter.
• 15:07
  And so, he's reconsidering, you know, and he's thinking I think
• 15:12
  and then he gets up at the end like his, oh he is gonna go to
• 15:14
  the woman's house that just texted him and he is gonna miss
• 15:17
  his workout. This is what women want, that is
• 15:22
  what women want, they don't yearn for the guy unless they're
• 15:26
  really fucked up and they have what men like to term daddy
• 15:30
  issues, which just means abandonment issues and they are
• 15:33
  more. And you could refer back to my
• 15:36
  previous podcast on that unless they have these issues, they
• 15:41
  don't want to be not prioritized, they don't respect
• 15:46
  and yearn for the man that shit's on them in their thought.
• 15:50
  You being more consistent about your workout than you are about
• 15:52
  being romantic with them is shitting on them and they're not
• 15:55
  wrong. They want the man who is
• 15:58
  flexible and who would of course skip a workout for love.
• 16:04
  Loving and Direction and if you are responses, well there's no
• 16:08
  loving and directions on offer. They are could be if y'all
• 16:11
  engage differently and if you worked on two parts of the
• 16:15
  marriage, the sex life, and the emotional connection.
• 16:18
  So many women do a lot better with extra love.
• 16:22
  Just like how I said. I have a pose, what would your
• 16:25
  husband act? Like, we got all the physical
• 16:26
  affection you wanted. Why would your wife act like if
• 16:29
  you were as romantic as she wanted?
• 16:31
  If you're mr. Workout, and you say, you know,
• 16:34
  sweetheart This goes without saying, but if you ever need me
• 16:37
  here, I'll skip my work out. Of course.
• 16:40
  I mean, it goes without saying you come first, just try that
• 16:44
  sentence. If you even tried that sentence,
• 16:46
  she you you're probably being a better marriage in and of itself
• 16:50
  and she will be more likely to have sex with you, you know?
• 16:54
  And if she has her own issues with sex, she will be more
• 16:56
  willing to work on them individually if she is in that
• 16:58
  sort of a relationship, that's like the best thing like in a
• 17:02
  loving marriage. So, my And says that a lot.
• 17:06
  Oh, like I'm gonna go for a run or I'm going to do her, but if
• 17:09
  you need me, I will be here. And so 95, 99 percent of the
• 17:15
  time, I say, no, go ahead, but it's so different because you
• 17:20
  have in your mind. Oh, this isn't somebody who's
• 17:23
  prioritizing something else if I would need him if I would need
• 17:27
  and we would prioritize me. And remember you may do this and
• 17:30
  not tell her because you're emotionally avoidant and you
• 17:33
  don't know how to talk about emotion.
• 17:34
  Again, no shame but it's something to work on in therapy
• 17:37
  and so, therefore you may be missing loads of workouts to
• 17:40
  help her with the kids, but you don't say it because you don't
• 17:42
  know that you're supposed to say it.
• 17:44
  In fact, you think would be bad to say it would make her feel
• 17:46
  bad. No, no, it's good to say it.
• 17:48
  Every time that you ever do anything for her, say just don't
• 17:51
  say it like an asshole. Say it like, oh, you know, it's
• 17:54
  funny yesterday. I thought that I might go for a
• 17:55
  run this morning, but I didn't because, you know, you needed me
• 17:59
  and I love spending the morning with you, you know, I'm glad I
• 18:02
  was here to help there. Bam.
• 18:05
  Wonderful. You know she'll probably say oh
• 18:07
  I didn't know you were gonna go for a run, you should have told
• 18:11
  me and look, you told her. Now you say listen, it's not a
• 18:15
  big deal at all. I just told you because I want
• 18:17
  you to know. I prioritize you, that is
• 18:20
  perfect. You're so many men who Skip work
• 18:22
  trips and stuff that their wives don't even know about this is
• 18:25
  leaving money on the table and it really is just your
• 18:28
  discomfort with emotionality that makes you think this is a
• 18:31
  good decision and that you would somehow be guilt tripping.
• 18:33
  Her you're not guilt tripping, her dad.
• 18:34
  Or that you prioritize her. That's a positive thing.
• 18:38
  So what to get from this podcast, a listen to it with
• 18:41
  your partner asked if that's what's really going on and be.
• 18:44
  Maybe if you have been trying the super confident route,
• 18:48
  reconsider think that perhaps in light of your pre-existing
• 18:51
  relationship and your pre-existing personality, the
• 18:54
  confidence is coming off as cocky and selfish and there's no
• 18:57
  emotionally healthy woman. That wants to be with a cocky
• 18:59
  selfish man and this may be the the the the missing piece and
• 19:05
  trying to understand why various things you have been doing to
• 19:08
  help. Quote-unquote, your marriage
• 19:10
  have not worked. Alright, hope you guys got
• 19:12
  something out of this and I will talk to everybody soon.
• 19:14
  Please do subscribe.