How to Treat Men Better – Alison Armstrong on Modern Wisdom Podcast (Transcript)

There’s physical dangers, need the brawn. And so it’s lasted all this time.

And I mean, I’ve talked to thousands and thousands and thousands of women, and I would call it a human instinct, except for—what I’ve been working on for about the last five years is how many survival instincts are consistent in humans, but they’re not human. We share survival instincts with herd and pack animals with herd, our prey, pack, our predators.

So many of our behaviors are consistent with that, including status. The status determines survival. You got to find it, build it, protect it, find your place that you want to be in the herd or the pack. That’s consistent with the amount of accountability that you want. Most people think of status as power, but ultimately it’s accountability, the level of survival.

And so we have all these behaviors, and pleasing is one of them. And for women, we’re terrified of being displeasing. We strive to please and to avoid displeasing. And we’re watching you so closely, so closely to see what’s pleasing and what’s not pleasing.

The caveman within has been tracking you since the moment you walk through the door and you laughed at something. It’s like, “Oh, okay,” just noticing. And you laughed when I laughed, and then I went and told you about the eyelashes. So it’s a constant. You could think of it as it’s a macro program, and it’s running in the background. “How about now? How about now? Is he pleased? Is he pleased? Oh, was he displeased just then?”

And worse, we’ll actually act upon it. Your expressions, your gestures, your tone of voice are cues to us to how to change and adapt so that you’ll save me. Because we don’t know who men really are, we think you’re only going to save the women you’re pleased by. And if the tiger arrives now, and we’ve just had an argument, right, “Oh, shit, I’m going to die.” That’s what it seems like.

And so one of the things this makes us really sensitive to is preferences. We just suck for what your preferences are, and we remember them, and we think we’re paying attention to your preferences because we love you. And so if you really loved me, you would be paying attention to mine. You would remember which drink I chose, including that when I chose the other one, I chose the blueberries. Right?

And it’s just one of a thousand ways that we expect a man to be like a woman, that you’d be tracking my preferences. You would hear all the hints as requests. You would hear criticism as a request, a complaint as a request. “Why didn’t you do that?” as a request. That would cause you to act, and when it doesn’t, we draw all these conclusions.

That would be what would be true for us. You didn’t act upon that, so you must not care about me. It never occurs to us it wasn’t actionable. That comment did not speak to the action command center at all. It has nothing to do with how you feel about me.

So when you say please, are men easy to please? There are women who spent their entire lives trying to please men. And you’re not that hard to please. It’s just not worth much. You don’t—the point in a man’s life for what he cares most about is being pleased. That’s like all the hunting’s done, all the building’s done, all the accomplishments done, all the animals have been caught and killed and butchered. So now we’re going to pay attention to what type of beer do we want?

But that comes after everything that men are driven to do. Everyone’s—we’ve created everything. We’ve protected everybody, we provided for everybody. “Oh, yeah, no, I’d rather have a Dos Equis.” It’s so tiny, the meaning of being pleased to a man. But yet women are zeroed in on being pleasing and then they miss the substance. They miss—I mean, would a man rather be pleased or empowered?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Wow.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Would a man rather be pleased or admired? Would a man rather be pleased or accepted?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Would the same not be true for women if you offered them that task, that option?

What Women Really Want

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I wish women could be that clear. I mean, that was easy for you, right? That was—that wasn’t easy. Those were all easy.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: All my chips are on one side.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: So obvious. Yes, unfortunately, because of the meaning we attach to it, we want it all. We want you to strive to meet my preferences and my needs and honor my values without me really talking to you about what that would look like. And, of course, the mischief maker of all: meet all my expectations without me having to tell you anything.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s a surprise that anybody’s able to have a functioning relationship at all.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, I’ve been accused of laughing too much. Do you know, in an interview, “Why is she laughing so much?” I have to laugh. I mean, we have a principle in our company. We have a sense of humor about it all. I have to because we’re doomed. Surprise. It’s a miracle.

We have opposing instincts. We seek—the way I seek safety. And you’re likely to seek security. Men only use the word “safety” when they’re talking about “Okay, my family’s safe” or “You’re safe to talk to.” That’s what men will say. “She’s safe to talk to.” The rest of the time you don’t pay attention to safety. You pay attention to being secure. And it’s fact based. It’s not a feeling.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Can you delineate between safety and security for me?

Safety vs. Security

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Some people would use them interchangeably but I pay a lot of attention to the words men use. And as I just said, I’ve only heard men use the word “safe” in regards to “safe to talk to.” And “My family’s safe. Everybody’s safe.” Like the fires in Los Angeles. “How are you? Everyone’s safe.”

And security is based on—there’s usually facts involved. Insecurity. “Yeah, I’m secure. I’ve got this much money in the bank. I’ve got this track record. I’m respected by these people. I have these people owe me favors. What are my connections? What are all my resources?” Right. “This is my influence. Okay, we’re good, we’re good. We’re on track. This is going to turn out.”

And women who use the word “safe” a lot, it’s hard to convey but we’re always paying attention to safety. It’s a constant. It’s one of the—estrogen creates a different kind of vision in women than in men. Men hunting vision versus gathering vision. And part of that gatherer’s vision is always monitoring safety.

And for us and for children for example, we’re constantly monitoring safety and it’s a “feel safe.” It’s not so much fact based, it’s a “feel safe.” And I remember my late husband when he came to our Understanding Women course and he started to get it. Living with me didn’t always have him get it even though he was my prime guinea pig. And whenever we blow up the lab when it was all cleaned up, he said he was going to be in a workshop.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And I’d say “If you’re willing.” And he would say “If it’ll make a difference.” And oh, he got so much acknowledgement when he’d sit in the back of the Understanding Women workshop and I’m teaching men to understand women and the women are learning to understand themselves at the same time. They didn’t know this about themselves.

It took about—I’d been studying men, I think for about 12 years by the time I realized I could translate a woman into a man’s reality. But he got it, and he got this thing. Greg was a car guy. He left me three convertibles, including his favorite, the Porsche. And so moving in and out of traffic, and that was just fun for him.

But when he found out about women’s peripheral vision, in that when he would move into a space, it occurs like, “That car is going to hit me on the passenger side.” Or there’s studies that show the faster an object’s going, the bigger the difference between a man’s ability to track it and a woman’s ability to track it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s interesting.

The Terror of Trust

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah. So he would be approaching and just slide over. Remember, we’re coming or just come out of Las Vegas towards LA, and he’d slide over. And I’m sitting there and I’m having this terror reaction. And I’m trying to fight it with facts. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never hit a truck. Like, let’s be factual. He’s never hit a truck. Never in all these years. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never hit a truck. He’s never. Truck. While my body. We’re going to die. So I’m not sure how we got there, but where you want to go.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Safety and security.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes. So if I’m pleasing you, then I’m feeling safe.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because there’s no way that somebody. There’s no way that a man who is pleased by you would not also look out for your safety.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: We think that that’s the. We think that, but it’s. There’s so many things that women trust too much, including trust. But one of the things we trust too much is connection. So we feel safe when we feel connected, when we’re resonating, when we’re like, okay, you’re with me. We have this thing going on. Like, the first time you went like that, and it was like the reaction in my body to you doing that was, “Everything’s going to be all right.” Okay. We’re connected. But again, we’re.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I didn’t do it for you, but.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I’m glad it had that effect on you. I assumed it was real, but we’re constantly monitoring it. So in the next moment, are you still connected? Are we still connected? But what I mean by trust too much is a woman will think like, women in sales are mystified when a man doesn’t buy. But we had such a great connection, you know, he doesn’t ask her to marry him. We have such a great connection, we should get married. Like anything that you don’t say yes to when we have a great connection is. It’s shocking. We think it should count for more than it does way more.

The 12 Things Men Look For in Commitment

Like interviewing men. 12 things that make a person the right person to commit to, the right person to marry. Love and connection are not in the list of 12. They don’t show up. Oh, we have a great connection. No, there’s 12 things. And they’re all factual, they’re all practical. They’re all. Men are so much smarter about commitment than women are. And yet you’re accused of being non committal. No whole other myth to blow up. I was talking to Ryan about it. Y’all are naturally committal. Testosterone creates single focus. Single focus is commitment specific. Destination, result, a goal. I mean, you. You pick it and your brain screens out everything. Irrelevant. Be really interesting to know what you came in focused on for today.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Did I come in focused on for today? So I have a tendency, like a lot of insecure overachievers might do, to focus on control, planning, reduce down the optionality of the future so that I know exactly how things are going to go. That makes me feel quite secure.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes. You want to blow that one up.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Has this turned into a f*ing therapy session? I’ve inverted this into a therapy session or what?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: It’s not therapy because it’s not personal.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I understand.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: It’s human.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Let me. Let me just finish that one out. I would love for you to blow me apart at any time.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Please apologize for interrupting.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No, no, no. You interrupt away. I don’t know what it is. I’ve done a thousand, over a thousand episodes now on the show, and sometimes I turn up with a real focus. That’s something that I want to get out of this episode and today. And because I’m trying to push my limits of discomfort around lots of patterns that have been around for a very, very long time. I really wanted this to be emergent. I really wanted to see what. What comes out of this. How does it feel to be in the room with Alison? Like, how do I. How do I feel around her? And what am I interested in? And I don’t need to try and control.

Oh, well, because in the back of my mind, there’s a bit of me that says, well, I’ve still got the open loop around the please men thing. And she said that that’s not what’s most important. So I need to go back to that at some point and I. Okay, please. Men isn’t what’s most important. Da da da da da. Let’s go through that. Well, she’s just opened up this really lovely window about the 12 things that you need in order to choose whether someone’s the right partner. So we need to go back to that. But she’s also got this window open, which is that she needs to blow open my desire for security.

So I’m like, you know, I’ve got this branching tree that’s sort of getting very tentacly. But I’m also just. I really, really wanted to get comfortable with just sitting in the flow and doing that too. So I’m trying to balance both. My intention coming in was to just really sort of sit and see where you wanted to go. I trust you. I genuinely trust you. And I think we were going to have an interesting conversation. No matter what, no matter how weavy it gets or how much it meanders and lists around. I want. I want to hear these 12 things. I think the 12. It’s too big of an open loop for me. I’m sorry. My old pattern’s coming back in to get me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: You put a pin in it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: There’s a lot of things worth putting pins in.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What are the 12 things that people should decide whether a relationship is compatible or not based on.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, I wouldn’t say there shoulds. It’s what I’ve learned men look for that make someone the right person. Okay, so we’ve got. So many things you put pins in. Okay, I’m going to rattle these off without explanation, which is very hard for me to do. Getting to the point, like being concise. To me, it’s like you sound cool like when you say these things, but it doesn’t serve people. It doesn’t necessarily give them access to something. But I’m going to try it anyway. Okay. Let’s see if I can remember them all. It’s a long time since I led or watched that course. Okay, so one thing. Let’s just start here. Doesn’t emasculate him too much. Too much changes over time in your stage. See?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Ah, you’re doing it. You’re doing it. Come on, let’s. Alison, let’s move on to number two.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: God, you only got one in one twelfth of the way there. F*ing 8%.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: But it changes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: What’s not too much to a prince? Way too much to a key.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Stop it, Stop it.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay. Stop.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It doesn’t emasculate him too much.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Too much. She likes him. Genuinely likes him. There’s volumes on that. Ah, Sex. There’s enough communication in sex. There’s enough exploration in sex that he thinks that he could do this with this one person for the rest of his life. Enough variety right here between us. Okay, wait. We can do this. It doesn’t have to be perfect or. Okay, all right, I’m going to drop this one. He thinks he can give her what he thinks she needs. That’s a cliff. How he figures out what she needs is a whole topic.

Their values, as in where they come from, are compatible. They don’t have to be exactly the same. They can even be complementary. Their futures have to be in the same direction. Are we headed the same direction? All of these are standalones, by the way. Each one of them matters. Someone could be 10 out of 12. No, we’re not going to do this.

Oh, Polly. Ah, communication. So sex is one area of communication, but communication in general is productive. It’s got to solve problems. It’s got to identify problems, solve problems on the same team. The way a man put it was, “When there’s a problem, she doesn’t make me the problem. We stay on the same team no matter what. We stay on the same team.” Very hard for women to do. Okay, that’s all I can remember right now.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s okay. Eight of 12. Eight of 12. Eight of twelve is good. I see. I see my friends and myself in all of those.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Ah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There we go.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: She’s attractive to him, which women don’t understand at all. She’s attractive. What we would call her making sense of men. Both sexually attractive. And he’s charmed and enchanted by her. She’s special.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think women wildly underestimate how much men are attracted to charm.

The Four Most Charming Qualities in a Woman

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, my gosh. Well, another topic. The four most charming qualities in a woman. You want to know?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Bring it on. Let’s keep weaving this thing. This tree is huge. It’s a redwood. Let’s keep.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It’s an aspen forest, which is what I live in. Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Four most charming qualities in a woman. In a woman.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Number one, self confidence. It’s hilarious because I’ve had panels of men say, “It’s probably different for other men, but for me it’s self confidence.” And they all say self confidence. I’ve unpacked that for a while. What does that mean? Yeah, like about 20 years.

The second would be authenticity. And men almost always use the word courage when she has the courage to be direct. When she has the courage to speak up, when she has the courage to be who she really is, when she has the courage to say what she needs, when she has the courage to share her dreams and authenticity in. And so much of being a woman is about pretense. Seriously. We’re taught to pretend, push. What was it called that bra, the wonder bra. Laugh at jokes that you don’t think are funny. I mean, so much of being a woman, we’re literally taught to pretend in order to be pleasing.

And this is where we miss the mark. Men would much rather have authenticity than someone who’s pretending in order to be pleasing. Now will you take it? Okay. It’s better than nothing, but not, not worth a whole lot. So self confidence, authenticity, passion, passion, which is. It ends up in the domain of marriage as well. She’s. The way that men put it is she’s got to have something outside of me, outside of us, that feeds her. So she’s bringing something to us.

Can I go down this way a little bit? It doesn’t seem to matter what she’s passionate about as long as there’s a passion. A shared passion, though, is. How cool is that? Right? And women wish that men would listen to them talk longer, but they don’t know that. How long you can listen to us talk depends on how we’re being. If we’re complaining, give me about 30 seconds. If we’re talking about something we’re passionate about and it’s actually been measured that being with a woman who’s obviously, I’ve had a show of hands. Men spend two days with me and like, okay, how many of you, you have a greater sense of well being than when you arrived? They’ll raise their hands.

It’s an effect of a woman being passionate, you guys. Actually, it can be measured. You’ll have a testosterone spike, which is the well being hormone. And so yeah, women’s got to have a passion and be passionate. And it’s really cute how men talk about. Yeah, my wife collects ceramic cows. I don’t know why, but it’s her passion. So I’ll spend my time off buying her ceramic cow. Like it becomes worse than.

And then the fourth one, the fourth one is the most difficult for women because. And they don’t know why it’s so difficult. Because self confidence, authenticity and passion all shift how a man’s being. And it’s the opposite of sexual attraction, which self confidence crosses over. But then there’s shiny hair, which is an indicator being fertile. There’s a shapely body, all kinds of definitions of that. Men have no control over their imprint of the shape that gets them. Sensuality, being present to the pleasure your own senses are bringing you, which causes men to think of the pleasures they would like to bring you.

And then the most. The most is sexual energy. And it’s the. The way I used to say it was. It’s the energy a woman puts out when she wants to put out. And so. But these cause a man to want to take. Give me that. I got to tap that. One of the things I got in touch with about 15 years ago was like, if we were paying attention, not just subconsciously. Do you like dogs?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I love dogs.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: You love dogs? Have you ever trained a dog?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Try to.

The Limbic System and Male Impulse Control

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Try to. So as in humans, we have the limbic system, right? Which is always a split second ahead of the prefrontal cortex, right? So this is the impulse to do. And then this is choice. This can override.

Well, a dog, I have a border collie. And when he was a puppy, I started tagging him as if he were a horse, which proved really effective. And his body would be shaking. And I realized that the shaking came from impulse, override, impulse override, impulse override. And he wanted to jump up on me so badly, and he knew not to. Just shaking, shaking, shaking.

Well, what women don’t know, and it’s one of the crazy things about how much they lead with sexuality, is that a man is having the same reaction that the impulse is, “grab it, grab it, take it, carry it away.” That’s the impulse. And then he’s overriding that. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” To whatever degree has to, depending on how antagonized the most primitive instinct on the planet.

But it’s why women feel really safe around gay men. There’s no override. There’s no vibration, there’s no tension. “Why, you’re just so easy to be with.” But meanwhile, we exacerbate what makes it hard to be with a straight man because of how much we think sexual attraction is what matters. But this is what causes a man to want to take. And these other qualities, charming is what causes a man to want to give.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What was the fourth charming quality?

The Fourth Quality: Receptivity

ALISON ARMSTRONG: How unsettled. You can tell receptivity because the first three make him want to give. But if she’s not receptive, she’s caused him to want to give. And then she’s like, “No, I can do that myself. No, I don’t need that. And I’ll prove it to you. I don’t need anything.” You got what? That’s being a man. No way am I going to be receptive to that.

“You want to give me your opinion. You want to teach me what you know. You want to protect me from a danger that you see that I’ll argue against.” Men are looking for women who are receptive to who they are and what they want to give. They need to give. Men need to give. Women need to give. We need to give. But both men and women suck at receiving. Just suck at it. It’s one of the best skills to work on.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You say that appreciation is a form of oxygen for men. How important is it for women to seem impressed or giddy or appreciative or receptive of their partners?

Peacocking and the Need to Impress

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, I call it peacocking. I remember when I realized that my soon to be boyfriend was doing it because I was with my husband for 20 years, so I had to relearn everything after he died.

And so a man is attracted to a woman. You think she’s special? There’s something. You guys are so perceptive, you can see it across the room. “Oh, who’s that? Oh, she’s special.” Right? Now there’s something at stake now. There’s a nervousness now being turned down. Ouch. Right?

And so he’ll try to impress. But if she’s not impressed, you guys know, if you can’t impress her, your chances of making her happy, that’s number 10.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: We’re going to end up excavating the remaining two.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah, yeah. He knows he can make her happy. Huge. Huge. Men marry women they know they can make happy. Men don’t marry women that they love. But they know they can’t make her happy if they can’t impress her. Like, “Oh, this is a non starter.” If she’s not impressed, which is like this much, how am I ever going to make her happy?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, I mean, I certainly know for me, the sense of being impressive is a wonderful motivator. Do more of that. Good boy points.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Points. Men play for points. It’s not, I don’t know, “Good boy. Good boy.” Minor, but it could be, you know, patronizing or matronizing. Right. But good job. Good job. Or wow. Or there’s a, have you listened to or read The Queen’s Code?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yes. Yeah, read.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay. So do you remember the line in there where Mike says to his wife Karen, “I’m always trying to impress you”? And then she’s like, “Then why don’t you take out the trash?” He’s like, “That would impress you?” Well, that’s our job.

I mean, pleasing a man is tiny, like we talked about in the beginning. But to be impressed by him, he would so much rather that you were impressed by him than he was pleased by you. You know, we’re getting towards the bullseye here, not like the outer edges.

Cultivating Receptiveness and Appreciation

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How do you advise women to cultivate more receptiveness, more displays of appreciation and being impressed?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I can answer that. But I’m going to start in a place that seems like I might not be. Okay. So this has showed up in the last year or so as I started letting The King’s Code come through. You know, I didn’t write the books, right? Okay.

So women have an instinct that anything important we have to tell you when and where we were when it happened. They’re all located in place and time, important things. So I was in my car driving to Wyoming when The King’s Code started downloading. On the day that I put on my calendar that I was going to start typing it, and it didn’t get the memo that my daughter needed me. I was going to whale me. And I’m not in front of my laptop. It just came. It just started coming.

And what I was shown was how men and women both are always scanning for strength. Searching, hunting for strength, scanning for strength, depending on the brain. And women are scanning for strength that tells me you’d make a good provider, you’d make a good protector. You could save me from the tiger. You could make sure I don’t starve. And, oh, with those eyelashes, I want to have your babies. I have kids with long eyelashes, so it’s cute to watch. You’re kind of blushing.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s charming. It’s a delightful compliment.

Complementary Strength vs. Similar Strength

ALISON ARMSTRONG: So we’re scanning. Procreate, protect, provide. Procreate, protect, provide. And what we don’t know is that men are searching. And they’re searching for strength. But what they’re looking for, depending on the context, and let’s talk about mating, men are scanning for complementary strength. Complementary strength.

The way one man put it to me was, Tom Brady is not looking for another all star quarterback. Tom Brady is looking for a Jerry Rice, someone whose strength literally altered the possibilities of his own game. That’s what a man’s looking for in a wife, that she has complementary strengths that alter his possibilities. “I’d be so much better off with her. I so should be with her.”

And but women don’t know that you’re doing that. And this horrible thing happens, which is why I’m more on the side of age differences, because it can happen less. Not knowing that she’s been picked for complementary strengths, then she criticizes him for not being strong the way she is.

When what he needs from this person he admires for her complementary strength is that she’s admiring his complementary strengths. “This is what I bring. Why do you keep expecting me to bring what you bring? This is what I bring.” It’d be like Tom Brady being pissed at Jerry Rice that he can’t throw a ball.

So women will, they’ll be picked for complementary strength, not knowing it, and then they’ll attack him. They’ll criticize him for not being like her. And then instead of seeing his strength and being impressed by it, I mean, it’s intoxicating in a good way to be admired by someone you admire.

And it’s, but it’s like something happened to us, probably in that vortex that I grew up in. A Barbie doll meets feminism. Very, very tough. Being born in 1960. I mean, you got to get a man, keep a man, try to make him act right, but never need him for anything. “Anything he can do, I can do better.” Oh, yeah, that. This is my message.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think it’s still the message now.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: It is. Yes, you have to have thigh gap and a man, but don’t need him for anything. But he’s got to make more money than you because how are you going to be better off with him?

Which is another part of the question you’re asking. How can women get better at this? Is to pay attention to what you need from men. That even if you can do it right, even if you can do that, would you let them contribute that to you? And even to go looking for.

I gave this assignment to this woman. She’s like, “I have never met a man stronger than me, ever.” And she’s in our smart singles program. And I was like, “Okay, here’s your assignment. I want you to, for every man you encounter, I want you to have a question at the top of your head. Like a treasure hunt.”

It’s all about listening, is all a treasure hunt. Most people, the way they listen to filter out all the treasure. “What do I think about that?” Is how most people listen.

So I want you to have the question at the top of your head. “How is this man strong?” And when you’ve gotten used to that question, every man you meet, you see strength in him in some color of the rainbow. Then move on to, “How is this man stronger than me?” Scary. It was so scary for her. She’s like, “Yeah, go looking. How is this man stronger than me?”

And I said, after you got that dialed in, then switch the question. “How is this man stronger than me? And I like it.” If you go looking for that, the whole world of men changes. What? You can see who men are instead of seeing how he’s not acting like a woman. And so what’s wrong with him and what’s wrong with me that he won’t treat me the way I clearly deserve to be treated? “Oh, maybe I don’t deserve it.” Let’s work on that. Oh, that’s a nightmare. All other places we could go.

But, yeah, we’re, our brains are wired to find flaws. What’s the imperfection, what’s the flaw, what needs to be fixed? And we think when you’re looking at me, that when you’re looking at us, that you’re doing that.

Women don’t know that men are fed by beauty. So men’s brains hunt beauty, sort for beauty. You can find beauty in anyone. It doesn’t have to be perfect for you to find beauty. “Oh, that nose, those lips.” Who wouldn’t want to be fed, right? And especially when, if you’re my grandpa, he would say, “I’m surrounded by pulchritude.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t know that word.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: It’s an ugly word for beauty.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay, all right.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Pulchritude. Yeah.

Career Women and Masculine Energy

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Desire of men to feel needed and useful, I think is really interesting. And it is certainly coming into conflict with a modern environment that is teaching men, teaching women that men are optional as opposed to mandatory investments in that way.

I wonder whether career women who have spent years cultivating masculine energy in their job, but also want to be looked after, make it a difficult situation for the guys, because women can behave in a hyper independent way, like, “You don’t need looking after.” So they get treated as such by men.

So the very thing that they want is the very thing that they signal they don’t need. If men think, “Well, I’ve tried to do these things, and she didn’t really seem that impressed. And she’s adamant that she’s got it herself in any case, and she doesn’t really need me all that much, I’ll just stop offering it.”

I saw this really fascinating Instagram reel a few months ago that said, in a relationship, men start off treating a woman the way they want to be treated. And after a while, treat the woman the way that they have been treated by her. And this like, “I want, I want, I want,” but I’m also really trainable. I’m super, super trainable. And after a while, “This is what I’ve been crafted into. That was what I wanted. And this is what it seems like you wanted.”

And yeah, this challenge that women have here of blending a culture that says you should be as independent and reliant, self reliant as possible with men need to be needed. They need to feel impressive and admired and useful. And you go, “Well, if I’m just optional, if I’m a ketchup packet on your value meal of life.”

ALISON ARMSTRONG: It doesn’t.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Make me feel very good.

What Women Need Men For

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay, you just said volumes. The place that you started. If a woman has the attitude, “What do I need men for? What do I need men for?” My assignment is answer that question. Don’t ask it, answer it. So what do I need men for? It’s another treasure hunt. What do I need men for? It’s a great thing to answer and to look and to actually see. There are answers. If I’m not proving I can do everything, what do I need men for?

And I’ve done a lot of informal surveys. I was leading workshops 24 to 26 times a year for 20 years. And so I end up in mostly all women for a very long time. And then co-ed and I do these surveys. I’d ask the woman, “Okay, so think about how many women that you know are for you. They’re your friends. How many women does it take to make you feel as safe as one man, you know is for you?”

And I’ve watched them and they’re thinking and thinking and thinking and then they start to shake their heads. There is no number of women that makes a woman feel as safe as one man that she knows is for her.

Sexual Attraction vs. Being Charmed

And this is why this thing we were talking about, sexual attraction versus charmed and enchanted. If a woman is leading with sexuality and bringing out take energy in men, they’re either scary or she’s sure she can manipulate them, but she’s still not going to feel safe.

Where if he’s charmed and enchanted by her, which causes a man to care, which is you guys closely guard caring. Something else I learned from men. You know, it’s your biggest expenditure of energy and it has this paradox, which is another thing I love about you all. You’re the walking resolution of paradoxes.

All the time, women think men are simple. Men even say men are simple. No, no. Not caring can feel like freedom. “I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m free. I’m free.” But not caring can turn into, “I have no purpose. My life is shit. It’s not for anything.” Right?

And men have said, “When a woman needs something from me, I have a purpose.” It’s just like there’s something really beautiful about it, you know?

The Dance of Providing and Receiving

And I think of it like this. You’re making those other marks. I think of it like this. I call this generator: having, providing, receiving. Providing, receiving. Providing, receiving in this beautiful dance. If we’re allowing for it, if we’re feeding it.

And you asked about appreciation. Appreciation is, it’s feeding. It’s feeding providers. And providers are grateful to be received. “You let me.” I asked her once, “Why do you do so much for me?” “Because you let me.”

Oh, women aren’t very good at letting men these days, haven’t been for a long time. Letting men provide what is what they’re compelled to provide. And so there’s so much that’s cattywampus. But the addictive thing is such tiny changes make such a huge difference.

Safety Beyond Sexual Orientation

I was teaching a course in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and we had just done that part about how many women make you feel as safe as one man. And we were finishing the workshop and people were sharing from their seats, and this young woman took a microphone and she announced to the whole room, she said, “I am gay. So what that means men is, it doesn’t matter what you do. I’m not going to fall in love with you. But I want to say that still, what she said about one of you making me feel safer than any number of women is true for me.”

And then on the other side, this big man stood up, took the microphone and said, “It’d be fair to call me a redneck and my daughter’s marrying a woman.” And they started to cry. “But now I know from what that young lady just said that I still have something to give her.” The tears coming down his red face.

Femininity as a Gift

Another way I would put it, Chris, is that femininity is a gift to women from men. That femininity is its own kind of strength, feminine forms of power, its own kind of magic mystery. I learned all this from men, by the way.

But as long as we’re being the warrior, we’re the warrior, we’re the hunter. We’re protecting ourselves or providing ourselves for ourselves. We have no energy left or space left to be feminine. Until we let ourselves be protected. Till we entrust you. Which involves information women don’t impart. “Honey, what makes me feel really safe is…”

Treating Men Like Gods, Not Dogs

When you said trainable, decades ago, one of my first interviews by telephone was like, I was talking about how women have it backwards. What we take personally, we shouldn’t. Don’t take personally. We should and should. The woman said, “So, like, women are dyslexic. They got it backwards.”

And it just popped out of my mouth. I said, “Yeah, if we treated men like gods instead of dogs, it would work much better.” And then I apologized to a group of men for, “I’m so sorry that if you live with a woman who treats the dog better than you.” And there were men, I mean, you could see it on film. The faces are just like, you could tell the ones.

But even so, yeah, men are dogs. They’re loyal. They want to bring you stuff. They’re always happy to see you. They’re so bummed when they think they haven’t done good. Okay, where are we going now?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It’s interesting, the direction of the arrow of causation between these two things. I saw a tweet a while ago.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Trying to jump start me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, yeah, I am riling you up. You haven’t even had caffeine yet.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: The production of causation. Someone who’s obsessed with cause and effect, of course, the direction of causation.

The Direction of Causation in Relationships

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So I saw a tweet a while ago that said, “Women love to submit. You just have to be him.” I think the suggestion here is that a woman’s inability to be submissive or soften up or show needs is because their partner isn’t doing something right.

And it seems like you’ve kind of left both sides open a little bit at the moment. That femininity is a gift from men to women. That is something that occurs because we were able to protect and provide and make them feel safe. Maybe a little bit secure, but mostly safe, but also women’s…

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I’m sorry. As soon as you said maybe a little bit secure, I was like, oh, yeah, that’s what this is about.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah, put a ring on it.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Of course, then I’m secure. You promised.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: All that’s a big statistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That it’s men’s job, it’s their gift, the femininity. I’m showing up, I’m protecting and providing, etc., etc. But also that the receptivity of women, the preparedness to say, “I do need you, I want to need you. I want to be able to open up. I want to soften.”

I don’t think that tweet got to me a little bit. “Women love to submit. You just need to be him” because it laid at the feet of men women’s unpreparedness. It was almost like a shit test. You heard of shit tests from pick up artistry? Do you know what these are?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay, so supposedly during the flirtation stage, women would sort of throw little sort of neggy jokes around to see how a man would respond. It’s kind of a test of your self-assuredness.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay, yeah. Women maybe do do that in a little bit of a way. So I’ll poke you a little bit and see how you respond. Are you able to stand up to this sort of a thing? And I get that. And I think that in the flirtation stage that’s an interesting challenge.

If you scale that across the rest of time throughout an entire relationship on every different domain that you’re trying to relate to your partner in, which is in order for you to submit, you have to be this never stopping, unrelenting, completely omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent force that he’s able to blast through.

Except, well, “Women love to submit. You just have to be him” is exactly the same as saying, “My shortcomings are your fault. My unpreparedness to open up. My unpreparedness to be soft or to be gentle or to be submissive, that’s not a me. That’s your job to overcome.”

That doesn’t sound very collaborative. I’m wondering, when it comes to the direction of the arrow of causation here, how you come to think about that with regards to needing. There you go.

Submit vs. Surrender

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, boy. I want a dictionary. I want to look up the difference between submit and surrender. Oh, my gosh. Let me just put, I’ll just say this this way. In a certain context, I love to be ordered around. “Tell me what to do.” I am a happy camper in a particular context other than that.

So submit to me. Submit has an element of putting up with submitting. One of the things I teach is beware of demanding. Demanding doesn’t work because the other person only has a choice to submit or resist.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Interesting.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And both will create resentment.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think, with that, that is being used in the form of soften up or surrender, I think is probably what that means. So you’re right to say you really mean submit. You mean maybe submissive, as in please take care of me. But not submit as in, “Okay, I submit.” So I think you’re right to call that out.

Understanding Trust and Expectations in Relationships

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah. So I worry about that. And the him part is an impossible ideal. Impossible. Men have a saying that I didn’t understand for the longest time: “I’m only human.” I didn’t understand that “I’m only human.” And then I realized that women expect men to be omnipotent and omniscient. Omnipresence. Oh, omnipresent. Every time I look at you, you’re there, receptive to me looking back.

And I realized, oh, that’s what women are looking for in men. That you’re all powerful, all knowing, all present. And men are going, “but I’m only human.” Oh, we really do judge men relative to what only God is supposed to be and where there’s a flaw, then, okay, I’m talking about this. But I got to bring in this.

Okay. Do you remember very early on I said, women trust trust too much? So I think men are much more discerning about this than women. Women want to trust, have a blanket trust. They want to be able to trust you, period. “I trust you.” Early on when you said you trust me, I wanted to say, “for what?”

Right, because we just want a blanket trust, which most women mean, is, if I trust you, that means you’re going to meet every expectation of mine, can trust you to fulfill my stated and unstated expectations, to trust you to fulfill them, even though you’ve never agreed to fulfill them. And that’s so we want to be able to trust you for everything. And if you do one little thing now, I can’t trust you for everything. I can’t trust you.

So how would I ever surrender? How would I ever give up my autonomy and authority? How would I ever get on the same team and let you call it a play? For gosh sakes, can you tell? I love sports and it’s a great place to study, man. Such a great place.

The Trouble with Trusting

So there’s actually something people can look up. It’s called “The Trouble with Trusting the Opposite Sex.” And I start with the trouble with trusting, period, and how we want this blanket trust. And then there’s a blanket violation instead of what I propose that I assert is you can trust everyone if you pay attention to what you can trust them for.

I could trust my husband to eat chocolate every day, no matter what he said otherwise when he died suddenly and the kids came and they wanted to clean out his office. It’s been six and a half years. There are still mice finding Hershey’s chocolate and leaving the foil behind. Right. And so, but you can. What can I trust him for?

And so part of the clarity that men and women both need if they’re looking for a mate or a business partner, what do I need to be able to trust somebody for? Be able to trust them for. Meaning they’re trustworthy. They’ve proven that they’re trustworthy for that. In order to have them be that important to me, in order to have my business in their hands, in order to have my life in their hands, what do I need to trust them for? And then find evidence before you commit.

People commit way too quickly. The due diligence is like, “oh, we have chemistry. And I love him and he makes me feel wonderful. And if I squint, you know, yeah, I’m getting everything I need. Let’s not look too closely at that. I trust that he will eventually once we get married and I start changing him.”

So the unreality around all this, it’s primarily what we’re doomed by, but besides opposing instincts. If we just were aware of opposing instincts and knew we had to negotiate opposing instincts, it can turn out. But being clueless about that, thinking men are kind to women and women are a kind of man. No, it’s never going to work out.

Surrender and Specific Trust

So this surrender part over here, right, has to do with trust. And what can I trust you for? And just being a grown up, I can’t trust you for everything. What do I need to be able to trust you for? What? Okay, what do I see that I do trust you for that. And there’s evidence, it’s based on evidence that I can trust you for that. Okay, cool.

Is there anything else that would make a huge difference in my life if I could also trust you for that? And that’s the thing to have a conversation about. And what would it look like? What would that look like? To be trusted for that?

Most women don’t trust their husbands to load the dishwasher because he’s not going to load it like her. He’s going to load it so there’s clean dishes, acceptably clean dishes. It’s one of the questions Brent asked me. Like, “are you going to close the door and have a party? Is that why everything has to be grouped just right?”

Understanding Men’s Care About Needs

Okay, did. Oh, then there’s this other part that you brought up. Needs. I’ve studied so long. Needs. When I first found out I was bringing out the worst of men, right, and went looking, what I was sure of was that men either didn’t care what I needed or they were actively withholding it, like, to get me. This is really my behavior, my first marriage. Actively withholding.

Oh, well, we have our son who’s just like about six months younger than you. And then I found out men do care. Really. They care about a woman. They care about what she needs, right? One of the 12 things. He thinks he can give her what he thinks she needs. And I thought, okay, cool. They want us to give what we need.

Oh, big problem. They don’t know what we need. They think they know what we need. Things they think we need. And men will project onto women their own needs. This is how men project orgasms onto women. “Please, can I just go to sleep? Sleep. I don’t need that.”

So, okay, so they, men want us to have what we need. They’re willing to do what it takes to give us what we need, but we have to tell them what we need. And when I start teaching women that, they’re like, “but what if I don’t know what I need?”

And then I figured out a way for them to figure out what they need, which is awesome. It’s like, so logical. Well, first, figure out what you want to be. What quality do you want to be? Well, then what do you need in order to naturally be that quality? It’s actually really like magic. You can be anything you want to be.

So then I, you know, I was doing this for years, and then this woman stopped me on a break and said, “there’s something I need from my boyfriend, but he’s not giving it to me.” And I said, “have you told him?” She said, “no.” And I said, “why haven’t you told him?” And she. That was a really fun snort. That was awesome. That was such a great snort.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve been practicing.

The Point of View About Needs

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And you were. You were po. Like at a. Like, like right there, the microphone. So I said, “why haven’t you told them what you need?” That’s what I’ve been. I mean, I started teaching women how to tell men what you need in 1995, and men thought it was ridiculous. “How could you have a nine step process? We’re simple.” And then I walked them through the nine step process. They validated every part of the process. What would go wrong if they didn’t do that?

And you would have encountered it in the Queen’s Code, chapter six. And so this woman, when I asked her, “why haven’t you told them what you need?” And she said, “because I can’t get over what I think about myself for needing that.” It’s like what? And it led to this whole study I called the Point of View.

I identified six different points of view that men and women have about what it means to need a particular thing in the first place. And that what it means to need something in the first place is what causes this lockdown. Don’t tell. Don’t tell.

And there’s, can I show you? You’ll take your imagination. So imagine a spectrum and on this end of the spectrum having a need is weak, empathetic. And then moving this way it might be selfish and self-centered or next over would be it’s unevolved and immature. A grown up wouldn’t need that. Transformed person wouldn’t need that. Right.

And then it gets to justified and reasonable. “Yeah, I could see why I would need that. That’s reasonable.” And then there’s bothersome and annoying. This is here for a reason and the end is entitled and deserved. “I deserve that from you.” Right?

And I was thinking about this before you arrived. I was thinking entitled. Entitled is a perfect word. I’m entitled because of my title. “You owe me that. I’m your girlfriend. You owe me that.”

I just did a course on how even when they agree that you deserve it, it doesn’t make it happen. But we think that if I think I deserve it and you think I deserve it now, it’s going to happen.

How Needs Get Expressed or Suppressed

So what we saw and it was so fun because you were talking about songs earlier. Alanis contributed to this. She was part of the weekend where I was distinguishing it with a bunch of people. And that basically what happens is wherever you are mostly live in regards to your needs, something has to work its way all the way over. Justified and reasonable might be expressed because that’s an okay thing to need.

But most things have to work all the way over to “I’m now convinced I deserve this and I’ve earned it and you owe me and I’m going to demand it.” And so there are a lot of needs that don’t make the whole trip. And so they never get told, they never get asked for. They might, they might break the surface like the tip over there in a complaint, but a complaint is not an ask. Are you with me so far?

So then serving groups of women and then later on serving classrooms of men. Most women will fall in their needs are justified and reasonable or entitled and deserved. The few that are bothersome and annoying, they just ignore it, ignore it, ignore it. But then when they’re dead in a ditch, they’re pissed at the people who should have foreseen that. I mean, it’s really, really interesting dynamic.

There’s a lot of high performers here and then and a lot of high performers here because they got to keep earning what they need. Right.

Men and the Weakness of Needing

So then asking of men because we do this whole thing for them to figure out and find out themselves, and we got a whole grade of what they say and all that stuff. About half the men ended up in their primary reaction to having a need is that it’s weak and pathetic. They just don’t need. Y’all are like Superman. Who’s, have you ever seen a Superman movie where he ate?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: No. Slept.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: No, no. You guys think you should be able to do anything and everything without sleeping, without eating, without being appreciated, without having enough sex, without. Right. And so needing anything, it means you’re weak and pathetic and don’t dare. The warrior’s never going to reveal a weakness. Never, ever. It’ll be used against you.

You guys are, it’s another thing women are pissed at you about. You won’t reveal yourself. Well, of course you won’t reveal yourself. It’ll be used against you. You’re built to not reveal anything that can be used against you, which is why men talk about what doesn’t matter to them.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a nobility in stifling desires. I think that’s how men see it. Maybe not desires is quite the right word, but there’s certainly a nobility in suppressing what you need.

The Fear Behind Not Opening Up

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah, it could be thought that way, that it’s nobility. But if you just confront getting it out of your mouth, you’ll see the fear. Like, “no, don’t say that. It’ll be used against you.” And it’s, and it’s one of the things women want men to open up, but we always use it against you. You’re trainable. We’ll teach you to not open up.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How? How do women teach men not to open up?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, there’s several ways. One is that you tell me a truth about you and it’s, oh, it’s so yummy. “Oh, he told me something really special about him. Who can I tell?” So for a woman, that an admirable man, a strong man, a cool man, revealed something to me, makes me important. Status, herd, instinct.

But it’s only worth something if I can tell someone else it in. Yes. So you’ll reveal to us and we’ll reveal to them. It’s a betrayal. From a man’s point of view, that’s a betrayal. But you’ll find out that we did it because it’ll come back around the end with revealing intimate information.

The other thing we’ll do is we’ll use it against you. So, like, I used to be really cautious. In 1995, when he started a workshop, it was called “Celebrating Men Satisfying Women.” And I called it that to offend people who weren’t up for it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I imagine he did.

The Power of Truth in Relationships

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah, to just turn them away. Celebrating men, their pigs, their dogs, their fill in the blank. But every once in a while, I wouldn’t be like, you can do that. I want to do that. Okay, come on in. It was limited to 12 women. They were so scary at the time. So I was really careful for a long time.

And then as I practiced natural horsemanship and learned how to hold my space, and then I started poking the bear. I did a tele class called “Using Anger to Get What You Need,” because I wanted to attract all the women who used anger to get what you need or wanted to use anger to get what you need. It’s a rug pull. It doesn’t work. But I brought them in so I could pull a rug.

Well, then I did a webinar called “Why Men Can’t Be Trusted to Tell the Truth.” Yeah, why can’t they be trusted to tell the truth? And some of my graduates were just incensed. Alison Armstrong said this about men. So he sent out an email to all the men, and the subject line was, “We Still Have Your Back.”

And I told him about the webinar and that the subtitle of the webinar could be “How Women Teach Honest Men It’s Not Worth It.” And because what will happen is a man will tell the truth, and he’ll tell a truth that’s been true for him maybe for as long as he can remember. For as long as he can remember. Or it may be a newer truth. It’s only been the last couple years or the last few months. But it’s the truth.

And he tells it to her, and she’s upset about that. “You shouldn’t think that. You shouldn’t feel that way. No, that’s wrong.” And because of how women are wired, where to be upset is to be displeased. Don’t have anybody to upset. So women believe, just sure of it, Chris. They’re positive. They’re sure that if you know how upset I am about what you’ve just told me is true for you, you will change your truth. That you will, just like I would, you will change your truth.

No, men are smarter than that. There was no problem with that truth until it came out, until they told her. It was fine as long as it wasn’t said. So this is how men are literally taught, trained, as he said, to not tell the truth. “She doesn’t need to know that. She doesn’t need to know that. She doesn’t need to know that.” But women cause that.

Why People Lie

And another thing I recorded called “Why Men Lie, Why Women Lie.” And you know, I like to drill down, drill down, drill down. And basic survival instincts for all species: fight, flight, freeze. You have reactions. I discovered this fight line, this freeze line, this flight line. I got to go and…

But as I drilled down into it and my kids had been young, children lie. Horses lie, dogs lie. I’ve seen it in all of them. And I realized that lying is a basic survival reaction. Just fundamental to survival. Just lie. Puff yourself up bigger than, right, or I was really still. “I’m not here. I’m not here,” right. All these things.

And, but once I saw, once I saw that lying is completely natural and truth is my second highest value. So if lying is normal and not an aberration, how do you get honesty? You have to celebrate it.

So, like in my company, I have fired people for lying about lying. The problem wasn’t that they lied. It was that then they lied about lying. And I’ve had people, employees say, “I lied to you.” Really? What about? And then they tell me, “Thank you so much for telling me.” What? How’d you lie about that? Oh, is there something you need me to do different? Is there something you need from me?

If you want the truth, you got to celebrate the truth, even if you don’t like the truth. Or the way I would say is a man’s got to get more points for telling the truth than he loses by what the truth is, way more points. “I love you, admire you, and adore you for telling me the truth. I’ll get over the hurt feelings. Just give me a bit. But thank you. Thank you for that.” “Oh, you’re welcome.” Huh. We keep doing this a while.

A Funny Story About Truth

Can I tell you a funny story? We hadn’t been together for very long, Dan and I. It’ll be five years and a couple months, but we were very new to each other, and he knew truth is one of my highest values. Freedom is number one. Which Freedom and control. And I’m a freedom fighter. I want to set you free. That thing we were talking about before. Strategy. Strategy is a cage.

So we were getting naked and I said, and I realized I was self conscious, which is, that’s the last thing I want to be naked is self conscious. And I said, “I just got to tell you, I’m feeling a little chubby. And so I’m self conscious.” And he said, “You’re not chubby.” And then like about three seconds later, he goes, “Well, you’re a little chubby, but it’s all good.”

And I turned around and I like, looked at him. I was crawling over him into the bed and I turned and looked at him. And he goes, “I remember truth is one of your love languages.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Do something. Be careful what you wish for.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: But I never been so tickled to be called chubby, which I’d been called since I was a little girl. It like, thank you for checking. That was funny. That was awesome. Isn’t it great just to be real? Just be out loud. It’s so awesome.

So, yeah. So that was like the happiest time I’d ever been called chubby because he was just being truthful. And Dan’s superpower, which I didn’t even know could be a superpower, is acceptance. He’s like, he’s a genius at acceptance. It’s like, yes, I’m perfectly imperfect. So are you, Biala. Perfectly imperfect. Oh, thank you.

How Men and Women Commit Differently

And it, it’s, by the way, the difference in how men and women get married. When you guys decide she’s the right person, it doesn’t mean you think she’s flawless. There even could be things that would be, that’d be nice if that went away. But when you choose you, you buy the whole package. She is what she is and she isn’t what she isn’t, just seems logical, factual. That’s not how, what women do.

So you commit, guys. When you guys commit, you commit all the time. Just like the whole thing, the whole picture, the whole package, just scoop it up. We can feel it. And I’ve, and women who are like, “Where’s the ring? Where’s the ring? Give me the ring.” And like you guys, once there’s a ring on that finger, he’s going to be married and he’s going to start acting like a husband and he’s going to think he has a right to have veto power over dangerous things that you want to do where it’s physically dangerous.

Or a man who got engaged recently. I said, “Oh, you’re married.” He was all happy we got engaged. I said, “Does she know you’re married?” He goes, “What do you mean?” I said, “You’re all in. You’re already married. The ceremony’s just like, for friends and family.” And he’s like, “Oh.” And I said, “Are you more protective? Do you seem controlling? Has she accused you of being controlling?” “Yes.”

“She’s an actress and she told me about a job she was offered. I said, you can’t do that movie. And she looked at me like, I said, what?” And it had been the most natural thing for him to do is protecting her career, her reputation, who she’s becoming. “No, you can’t do that.” And she was just like, “Who the hell are you that you can tell me what to do, doing my job?” “I’m your husband.” He didn’t say that, but that’s what he thought.

Women commit one acceptance at a time. One acceptance. It. I know women who had a wedding 30 years ago, and they’ve hardly accepted anything. They’ve been trying to change them for 30 years. They’re not actually married. Women don’t understand how men be married. “We’re a team now. It’s us. We’re a team. We’re a team about everything, aren’t we?” “You don’t do that, right. You can’t be on my team.” It breaks my heart.

Understanding Emasculation

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m interested in the role of emasculation here. You mentioned it a couple of times. Yes, kind of a, it’s a word I don’t hear much outside of your work. I wonder whether it appears in different ways or other people. Men use other words instead of it to explain how they feel when what they mean is, I feel emasculated. But I’m interested in what your definition of it is and why it’s so important.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I, I was asked, six months into studying men, I was asked to stop castrating men. A harsh word. I did changed my life forever. But I looked it up in the dictionary and it, it says “to deprive of virility.” And then I looked up and it had a synonym, emasculate.

And over the years, right, since 1991, emasculation, the idea of emasculation, it got captured. His name is Tomer, and we were talking about feeling bad that women don’t want to make men feel bad. And especially my graduates, they don’t want to make men feel bad because they’ve given up the right to emasculate men.

So they don’t want to tell their man something they need because if he can’t do it, he may feel bad. And Tomer said, “Feeling bad does not emasculate me. Sort of when you diminish my ability to produce results, you have emasculated me.”

And that set me on a whole other trajectory of productivity versus connectivity, which goes back to that security through productivity, safety through connectivity. So you could call it the masculine and feminine if you wanted to, but so many women spend more time in a hunting, committed, goal producing, committed state of mind that those terms have got, they were hard to deal with in the 90s. So much baggage to unpack.

But if you’re finding security through productivity, male or female, doesn’t matter if you feel safe through connectivity, which comes with an open state of mind, which estrogen naturally creates in the brain. So to diminish someone’s ability to produce results as a man, it can be anything from being taken down a notch, the wind’s out of your sails, the plug was literally pulled out of the wall. And you…

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Specific for me. What are some of the ways that women emasculate men? That, what are the most common ways that they do it? Or, and, or some of the ways that they do it and they might not notice.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Can I expand it a little bit? Because what we figured out after a long time was everybody does it to everybody. Women emasculate men, women emasculate women, women emasculate themselves. Men naturally emasculate men. It’s part of war. Whether it’s war in the boardroom, right. Or it’s part of business, it’s part of the workplace to compete and diminish. And it can be honorable or dishonorable.

So what we saw is everything women do to men, we do to ourselves. And in the case of what we were talking about, not telling a man what we need because we thought it would hurt his feelings, and Tomer is saying, that doesn’t hurt my feelings.

Withholding Quality Information

One of the ways that we diminish the men in our lives ability to produce results is we withhold quality information. We don’t speak up about what really matters to us. We don’t expose ourselves that way, we don’t say it. That’s why authenticity is so valued, so charming. And the way one man put it is a head turner.

And you would have heard in the Queen’s Code, “A strong woman, voluntarily vulnerable.” So she’s clearly capable and yet she’s admitting a need. Oh, it’s breathtaking. Especially if what she needs he can give her, and he knows he can give her, and she’ll entrust him to give it, and she’ll, she’ll think it’s worth a thousand points, like, “Oh my gosh, I needed that so badly.”

So that dynamic, right, can get really beautiful. But when we don’t want to reveal a need because we think it’s unattractive. “If I need something, then I’m not perfect, and I’ll be unattractive and less pleasing to you, and then you won’t save me and I’ll die. You won’t choose me.”

So it’s just not speaking up about what we need is emasculating.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Give me some more.

The Cost of Interrupting Men’s Peace

ALISON ARMSTRONG: This is a hard one, and I apologize for it earlier. We interrupt. So we’ll ask a man a question, for example, and then he doesn’t answer fast enough. So we’ll interrupt his thinking, and he still doesn’t answer. We’ll rephrase, and then we’ll interrupt him again. Give him options because he’s too stupid for an open question.

We think this stuff, but we also don’t understand that. My husband helped me understand this in studying natural horsemanship. Buck Brannaman was talking about how horses are seeking peace. And I was thinking about how much men have talked to me about peace. Yeah, we’re warriors. And what do we crave? Peace. What do we want most when we walk through the door? Peace.

And so I asked Greg, “So when you accomplish what you’re focused on, then do you experience peace?” And he would look at me in this, it was the sweetest way. He’d just be kind of like, “Like when I was good, honey. The hierarchy of instinct. So is it protect, then provide, then procreate? Is it provide, then procreate, then protect?”

And he’s looking at me and looking. Keep going. And I went, “No, it’s procreate, then protect, then provide.” And he just smiled at me. So then I asked other men. They’re like, “Yeah, of course. You create it, then you protect it. You have an invention, you patent it.” It’s the most natural thing to do.

But there’s a hierarchy. One trumps the other. This is why emasculation is important, because women want men to be in provide mode. But when we criticize, which is a form of emasculation, a man will retract from provide and to protect. And if it’s a direct attack, like on your character, “You’re just like your fill in the blank, your father,” now he’s protecting himself.

And that’s what brings out the worst in men, when they’re protecting themselves because it overrides their compelling desire to protect others. They’re the smallest version of themselves, and they’re protecting themselves. And they could shut down. They could withdraw, or they could attack.

And women cause men to attack. And then we think that’s who men are. Women cause men to withdraw. And we think you ghosted me. Of all these accusations after we’ve caused it by doing something like ignoring, for example, walking by a man day after day as if he’s not even worth acknowledging his existence. Women do that a lot.

Single Focus Is Peace

But interrupting, this business of interrupting. When I ask Greg, I’m like, “So do you get peace from accomplishing what you’re focused on?” And he gave me that look, said single focus is peace. Wait a second. This state of mind where committed to one thing. And your brain is screening out everything it considers irrelevant. Focus, single focus is peace.

Your brains are designed to give you peace. You commit to something, it screens out everything it considers relevant. It doesn’t usually ask your opinion about, “Do you think it’s irrelevant?” Men’s wives’ voices are relevant. But when I got it, like, oh, focus is a state of peace. So he’s being productive. So he’s secure. He’s being productive. We’re getting it done. We identified the problem. That’s productivity, right? Even just identifying a problem is productivity.

And then she’s interrupting him because she wants to connect. She can feel that he’s gone. There’s no connection. “Honey, I’m going to the grocery store.” “What?” And so now she’s uber disconnected and freaked out and thinks he’s, but she doesn’t know. She interrupted his productivity and his peace, blew it up. Ran the train off the track. She doesn’t know she did that. And he’s reacting to that.

So we interrupt. It’s one of the biggest things I’ve been teaching women. Count to 30. Wait. Count to 30 again. Wait. But estrogen creates a brain that’s in a constant state of interruption. We’re monitoring so many things at the same time, we don’t really understand interruption.

You tell, we get older, our hormones change, we get focused. I actually had to tell my daughter I’ve changed. I’m not ignoring you. I’m just focused. She thought I was ignoring her. I was turning 50. She was 15. She thought I was ignoring her. No, my brain was just rewiring, getting focused.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Are there any other big emasculation?

The Many Forms of Emasculation

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, golly, let’s see. Monks, the withholding. So we withhold quality information, we withhold attention. Even bad attention a man will seek. Bad attention is better than no attention. Ponytails in the inkwells, you know, goes way back.

Affection, admiration, it’s a whole lot of A’s, accountability. We’ll let you be helpful, but we won’t entrust you with accountability. You help me with my plan. Don’t you dare have one of your own. It’s a whole area. It’s a whole area to shift how we interact. I call these the green emasculation because they’re low energies. Just what you don’t do. Holding back, refraining from.

The Cs. We criticize, we compare, we complain, even we have so-called compliments. “Oh, a gentleman, finally. You’re so rare.” Okay, you just insulted my whole gender. But I’m supposed to feel good about that, right?

So we, let me see. I just was going through this a few weeks ago with my students. Let me see the board. Oh, there’s the worst one. Be a better man. There are women who walk around sure that they are the best men they’ve ever met. “What do I need you for? I am a better man than every one of you. I’m more everything than you.” It’s brutal. They could take out a whole room just walking in. “What do I need you buggers for?”

We withhold sex. Some women withhold food. Just watch them power down. Don’t feed them. Oh, yeah. Brutal.

Can I tell you something sweet? There was a woman who did the celebrity Men’s House and Women workshop when she was 86. And she came back to the second day of the workshop and she’d given up the right to emasculate men forever. And she came to the second day and she said, “I’ve been withholding sex from my husband, but not anymore.”

And then he died a year later. And I asked her son, who’s a dear, dear friend of mine, I said, “How’s your mom doing?” He said, “She’s doing great. She knows she gave him the best last year of his life that she could.”

That’s amazing. What’s even cooler, 91, she got remarried.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Jeez.

Fear and Frustration: The Root of Emasculation

ALISON ARMSTRONG: This is super sweet. Can I tell you apart? So how we emasculate is here in the middle, like in terms of time causation. So over here is what triggers us to emasculate. And everything I’ve seen that triggers us to mask it, which one is one of the first things I had to learn after I gave it up. You could boil it down to fear and frustration if you wanted to simplify. Fear and frustration trigger emasculation.

And then there’s how we emasculate. And then this piece, which I’ve referred to, what we do about it, this is the thing that if you take it out, these can fall apart. And what it is is it’s how we justify diminishing men, how we justify stealing your power, taking your feet out from underneath you. How do we justify it?

So one of the things I’ve interacted with women for a really long time, 30 years or more, even before we started our workshop. They called it the Cast, the transformation of the castration club. Talk to women one on one about what triggered them, what they did, and then why men deserved it. And they have all these different reasons why men deserve to be diminished. And it goes back to fear and frustration.

But things like, “Well, they abuse power,” or “They can’t be trusted,” or “They don’t do anything right.” My mother’s was “They’re stupid.” And what’s interesting is as I would see the justification, I could see the flip side of it. Like my friend who her justification was, “They have too much power and they abuse it.” It was like, “Oh, because you think that and therefore you diminish them, they can’t ever use their power for you.”

And she got it. She’s a co-founder of our company, she got it in her bones and she shifted so fast. She’s my best student ever.

So my mother, who was just determined that men are stupid, my father was a genius. My stepfather number one, really intelligent man. Stepfather number two, intelligent in a different way. Stepfather number three, intelligent.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: She really went through it in a…

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Different way, great modeling. She could never avail themselves or of their intelligence, their unique intelligence, because she was looking for them to be intelligent the way she was. And since they weren’t intelligent the way she was, they were stupid.

So this complementary strength thing, never have anything be good enough, never be satisfied, be unhappy on principle. There are women who think if they never give up the happy, you’ll keep trying harder. They’ve got it backwards. You give up the happy. He wants to know how much happier he can make you. “Well, if that made her happy, what about this?” I don’t know that.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You mentioned at the start, right at the top, that pleasing men is pretty low down on the triaged hierarchy of what men care about.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes, being pleased.

What Men Really Want: Beyond Being Pleased

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s higher up? What should women focus on?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, they mentioned some of them, being taken care of. It’s stunning to men. Like while you’re looking out after me, I mean, how much more productive can a man be if he’s being taken care of?

When I left home to come be with you, I cooked a bunch of food to bring with me because I eat very particularly. And I cooked a bunch of food for Dan so he can eat very particularly. And he just, it’s like he just loves it.

When my grandson was born, I was gone for a month, and I made his favorite cake. It’s called Jack ginger apple cake. And he was coming over. This is when I lived in his backyard. And he would come over once a week to water my plants while I was gone. And I left him with a ginger apple cake.

And I didn’t tell him that in each of the three drawers in my freezer, there was another ginger apple cake. So here, “Come water my plants.” “I watered your plants.” “Oh, thank you. In the bottom drawer, in the bottom drawer, there’s something for you.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And I said, “Which drawer?” And he goes, “Did you already forget?” But I wanted to make sure he looked in the bottom drawer because I didn’t want him to find the other one. Although now that I think about it, whichever one he opened, he would think that was the only one. Duh.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So take care of.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah, it’s just like, to take care of him, and it’s different for a different man. You’ve got to ask, “What would take care of you?” And a man might say, “It would support me if…” So it’s interesting. I ask, “How do you feel supported?” Men say, “I feel appreciated when…” When I say, “How do you like to be supported? How do you like to be appreciated?” “Well, I feel supported when…”

So taking care of support and appreciation, they all live in the same domain. What you appreciate, you take care of. What you appreciate, you support. They all live in the same domain, and they’re priceless in terms of quality of life and in a partner that they’ll take care of you and they’ll support you.

Sunday was my birthday and…

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Happy birthday.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Thank you. 65. It’s crazy. Beat 65. I feel invincible.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You look invincible.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Thank you. So, you know, it’s my birthday. It’s special. It’s my 65th. We’ve got to do something really special. We did do something really special. He went to Father’s weekend at CU Boulder with his son, who’s a senior. He was there for all the frat stuff and CU Boulder to beat Iowa. And I had three days home alone. It was heaven. It was so awesome. It was one of my best birthdays.

But for me to support him, like, something women don’t know to listen for, like, when they’re sorting for a relationship is what matters to him. What matters to him? Just keep thinking that he’s talking. What’s important to him? What matters to him? What does he care about? We call it listening to learn.

And so it was obvious to me after the first three hours, I talked to Dan on the phone before we ever met. The most important thing to him in his life is his children. Okay, I got it. I was really, I was glad so many women like women in your age group. They want to be a man’s first priority. Tell them it’s a huge mistake. Men’s capacities are enormous. If he makes you his first priority, he will drive you nuts.

Why Being a Man’s First Priority Is a Mistake

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s interesting. Dig into that for me. Why would a man who makes a woman his first priority drive the woman insane?

Understanding Male Happiness and Power

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Because, you guys, you got so much to give. You have such capacities for productivity, for getting things done, for creativity. Like, y’all are amazing. And if that’s all focused on me, I don’t need enough to occupy you. I need enough that you could really help me. Probably every day, several times a day, in different ways.

But to be the focus of all that attention, all that mind power, all that oomph, it would be emasculating to you, and it would feel needy and controlling and icky to me. So just as a man is looking for a woman who has a passion that feeds her, that she can bring to the relationship, you got to have a purpose. You got to have something you’re up to that’s hot. What you’re up to.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You ever read Dr. Robert Glover’s book “No More Mr. Nice Guy”?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I’ve never read it, but he interviewed me about three months ago.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, cool. Yeah, I like Robert. Did you have—did he teach you the three things that make an attractive man? Did he give you that one?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: No, he—

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I feel like there’s a story here. What went on?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, the interview, which is on the Internet, was for the men that he coaches, and he has a whole team. And he’s adorable because in the interview, he talks a lot. And after it was all done, everybody was gone, and we were in a room with the group, and the group were saying their favorite things that they learned.

And at the end of it, what Robert said was, “I learned when Alison Armstrong’s talking, I should shut up.” And it was just so sweet that he caught it, right? It was really, really sweet.

The Three Essences of an Attractive Man

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So the three essences of an attractive—

ALISON ARMSTRONG: What are they?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: A man who is comfortable in his own skin.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Knows where he’s going.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And is having fun while he’s going there.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, my gosh. Yes, yes, yes. That’s bringing back so many things. My husband was not comfortable in his own skin. He felt trapped in a human body. It was too heavy. It was too slow. It was just a burden. So I drove fast, rode motorcycles really fast. He was so happy.

But when he died, which he did suddenly, I felt his exhilaration. He was free. He was free of this thing that had just been too heavy and too slow his whole life. I could hear Mike going. He was like—it was incredible. It made it really hard to grieve in a normal way to know what that was like for him.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How interesting. I had a conversation with my coach. Guy called Joe Hudson. Had a conversation with him the other day, and I was talking about trepidation, and he asked me this question. He said, “How much of it’s fear and how much of it’s excitement?” I was like, oh, you motherf*er. I really, really try and, like, sit with it.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Like, the first 50% of the outside of the gobstopper is fear, the core of its excitement. It’s really messy. It’s trite to do the whole “you’re not nervous, you’re excited” thing. I think it’s a little trite. Just—it’s—yeah. Cool. Like, these two things can—a slight different perspective.

You finish a workout, you’re on the floor in a sweat angel, panting, and you’ve got the taste of metal in the back of your throat and your heart and breathing heavily. And it’s exciting. That happens spontaneously in traffic. You call an ambulance. Okay. The same sensation. Okay.

So our framing around the present moment largely determines our experience of it, like, whatever. But that one around fear I’d never heard before. And I’ve been working with fear a lot, especially the last month or so, and I found it—I found it really interesting.

I found it really interesting to think about when you’re telling that story about Greg. And there’s less cleanness around the grief. There’s cleanness available. I’m sad that he’s gone, and he was sad that he was going to, but also he was in some ways maybe glad that he was going. And I’m glad that he was glad that he was going, but he’s sad that he went, and I’m sad that he’s gone, and—oh, here we go. Like, this is a big, complex knot to try to cut through.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah. No. Grief is extraordinarily complex and has so many gifts. May I say something about the fear and excitement?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Absolutely.

Two Nervous Systems: Understanding Emotions and Feelings

ALISON ARMSTRONG: So one of the things I’ve found useful is the awareness of having two nervous systems, that we literally have two nervous systems. They call them the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems. And excitement and fear and anger, I would call those all emotions and how you can tell.

And someone, I wish I could credit them, defined emotion as “energy in motion.” So if you think about fear, fear moves in the body. It zings around. Chemistry zings around. Excitement zings around. What if those are all sympathetic nervous system responses? They’re all in response to the perception of a threat or an opportunity.

And opportunities can go either way. They can cause you to live or die. Right. It could—it could be a fake or you could not be up to it. So opportunities quickly become threats to the nervous system. Right.

So if you—so if you distinguish that from a feeling. And feelings have locations. Feelings have a place, dad. You have a place right there. Now, it’s interesting where you put your hand because that’s your diaphragm right there, right?

Yeah. Well, if we were going to talk chakras, I’m not fluent in, I’m not even a novice in chakras. But right there, right there would be the chakra of yourself, who you are. And somewhere near there, maybe a little lower, you would find it would be the place that both men can be a little high. That men and women feel shame.

Not when we’ve been shamed, like when we’re between me and me, someone was harmed. Even if I harmed myself by failing to be or do what I most value being and doing. So it’s one of the few feelings that men and women have in the same place, which I find fascinating because so many of our feelings are not in the same place.

And women don’t know this. So when they ask a man, “So how do you feel about that?” We think you should just look right here, which is where we would look, and you’d know how you felt about it. But do you ever notice a woman said, “You hurt my feelings”? She doesn’t say, “You hurt my feeling, you hurt my feelings.” Because it—like, we have a stack of pancakes right here. So many feelings that all, like, it’s like a condo complex. They’re all in different floors, but they’re right here.

And I started paying attention to men and where, where are these feelings? And this goes back to the emasculation, which is so sad. So I started asking men, “Where do you feel happiness?” They couldn’t answer. Men pay women attention to women being happy. They don’t pay attention to themselves being happy. They just are when they are. And you were talking about fun, right? So have a be at home in your skin.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Comfortably in your skin. Know where you’re going. How’s fun weather?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes. So having fun, men at play. Men at play is when we fall in love with you. You having fun, you’re open. You have an open state of mind. And we just, like, just fall madly in love with you. But if you’re always that way, then you’re not strong enough to save me from the tiger. Right?

So if you don’t know where you’re going and then doing it, we need both, right? And so back to the feeling things. So I asked men, “Where do you feel happiness?” And they couldn’t answer. So I started—do you ever review videos in your head? Like your memories? And you, like, go through the video and I can take a video from 30 years ago and rewatch it and learn something. That’s what was happening there, right?

So I just was replaying videos and then I got it. That where you guys experience happiness, which you usually conceal that you’re feeling happiness because it could be used against you, is right here. And there’s this thickening of the neck and this or this, and there’s a swell right here. The test when you guys feel happy, and if a man, if someone that you admire expresses admiration for you, that will cause a feeling of happiness for you.

But since warriors conceal, you can tell that it really affected them because they’ll go something like this. You have to watch so closely, like, oh, that mattered to him. And it’s hard because women will go on and on about what mattered to them, right? So expect you to go on and on. “Oh, that was such a great acknowledgment. Thank you so much. I just felt—made me feel like a million bucks.” No, it’s just going to be this subtle thing.

But, oh, it broke my heart when I found out about it. The problem is, where you guys feel happiness is also where you experience power. Your shoulders and your arms. This is the strongest part of your body. This is why when you guys pick something up, you lift it up. It’s weak here. The pelvis is weak in men. It’s the women’s strongest part. We’ll pick something up and we’ll carry it like this. This is our strongest part. It’s a good thing my pregnancy works, right, you guys?

I know this from cutting logs in the woods of Colorado. And then the guys would chainsaw it and we would move them onto the truck. But no, my girlfriend and I, we would roll them on the ground or we would clear the pathway. And the men are like, “Why are you clearing the pathway?” Because they just lift something up and then they just step over what was in the path. And so I paying attention to all this.

But anyhow, so power shows up here, happiness shows up here. Happiness and power go together. But what are women terrified of? Power, yes. Men feeling powerful is scary as hell. So guess when women emasculate men.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: When—

ALISON ARMSTRONG: They feel happy, when you’re happy, when you’ve had a victory, when you feel empowered. Off with his legs. We attack. It’s terrifying to us.

Mate Value and Relationship Dynamics

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a really interesting idea from evolutionary psychology that you might be familiar with. Two types of relationships that caused or mediated by an imbalance in mate value.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Typically an imbalance in mate value. Okay. Yep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How I see your value, how I see my own, and how those two relate to each other, it’s not necessarily how it is. Something usually, sometimes is anyway, cost affording, benefit affording, cost inflicting. So two types of mating strategies.

Benefit affording I will get—I will cause our connection to deepen by doing more, by making you feel great. I could look at it through prestige as one of the ways that you have this. And I’m continuing to afford these benefits to you. But if there’s too much of a disparity, this can flip and it flips into cost inflicting.

And this is, “Well, no one’s ever going to want you.” It’s cutting you off from seeing your friends. It’s passive aggressive comments. And this is done when the fear is that delta in mate value is so great that I need to pull the one that appears too high down.

And I can do this by little jibes and jabs and withholding love attention, not making the effort that I know that I could do if I wanted to. And this will just erode away, perhaps at your own self image sufficiently for you to come back down into the same solar system of mate value that I perceive myself to be in. And it made me think about that, made me think about benefit affording and cost inflicting mating strategies.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Doesn’t sound bubbly. It is.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Look, we are, we are, we are, we are a fascinating creature when it comes to the way that our mating systems work. Because everything’s so predicated on status. Male parental uncertainty and male parental investment are probably in the animal kingdom. We probably have the greatest of the two. There’s probably no other creature on the planet that has more male parental investment in fact, there can’t be.

There’s no other animal which comes out as neotenous and useless. It’s a blob that can’t look after itself at all for 10, 12, 14 years, something like that. So you need fathers around. But also women have concealed ovulation. And we’re monogamish, but very clever. And we can—

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Monogamish.

What Earns the Most Points

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Monogamish. And we can be devious. And no woman has ever given birth to a child that they’re not sure was theirs. But every man has looked at their partner giving birth and had in the back of their mind a hope that it is theirs. Until only 50 years ago or something have we actually been able to do the test to be able to verify that.

And when you combine all of this together, you have a fascinating dynamic. That is, I really can’t afford to invest my efforts. Women the same way, but for different reasons. But for men, I really can’t afford to invest my efforts into someone who might not be as invested in me as I need them to be.

And I can get them to continue that investment and connection and love and dedication through showing how valuable I am and how much better we can be together. Why would I ever look anywhere else? Look at how phenomenal the thing is that I have at home. On the flip side, why would I ever look anywhere else? Nobody else would want me. Right? That’s the benefit of hoarding, cost inflicting.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Interesting. At least 10 things would come to mind. But one thing you might get a kick out of is there’s at least one study that showed if you ever take baby pictures in, like, high school graduation album and you compare them, you usually can’t match them because for the first year of life, babies look like their dad.

And most people say they look like their dad. About 80% of his family will say they look like their dad. And they actually do look like their dad. And the point of looking like their dad is, “I’m yours.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Wow. You think that’s a reliable. So are you suggesting that human babies have evolved to look more like their father? Because that is going to increase male parental investment due to less uncertainty around whether or not the child says, absolutely, that is so cool. I’ve never heard. I’ve never heard that.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Absolutely.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That is so cool.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: But then what happens is, over time, they start looking more and more like their mom. And it’s a characteristic, actually, in herd animals where, like, you know, the difference between donkeys and mules and horses.

So donkeys are the most masculine, you would say, in the equine world, they’re logical. You can’t train them by the use of fear. They’re pound for pound the strongest large animal. I had a donkey, immovable. And if it didn’t make sense, there’s no way he’s going to do it. Also extremely sensitive. So to train them, you have to be super perceptive to everything.

Horses, more on the feminine side. Easily controlled through fear, easily controlled through the desire to be pleasing. You can train them through that. You’re not going to get the best in them that way, but you can train them through it.

So mules are a cross between a male donkey and a female horse. A hinny is a male horse and a female donkey. Hinnies are not desirable. Nobody wants a hinny. Why would I want a hinny? Because the beauty comes from the female. This is not just horses. Beauty comes from the female.

And so the mule has the beauty of the female. That attractive face and the ears aren’t too big and all that stuff, and the grace in the body, but ends up with intelligence and the sensitivity of the donkey. And it’s a natural thing for men to look for beauty in a mate because there’s a primal knowing that the beauty in her is what my children are going to end up with and it will be an advantage to them. Beauty is a currency in human cultures for sure. So. Hmm. Yeah. So babies look like they’re dads.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wasn’t aware.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And then their faces change and they don’t look like dad so much anymore.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t know how human mothers and fathers contribute differently to looks. That would be an interesting one. I do know that there is something called the sexy son hypothesis, which is a additional benefit that attractive men have when being assessed by women.

Not only is this man attractive, which is symmetrical face, good immune system, genetic profile, seems to be sort of relatively all there. Has been able to look after himself, hasn’t incurred any great injuries, blah, blah, blah. But also he’s good looking. I’m attracted to him. That means if I have a son with him, the son will be good looking.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Interesting.

The Grandchildren Optimizing Machine

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Steve Stuart Williams refers to humans as grandchildren optimizing machines. It’s really cool. At the start of his book, The Ape Who Understood the Universe, he goes through all of these different. He imagines an alien looking down on Earth and what is it that humans are doing?

And he says, is it this? No. Is it this? No. Is it this? No. He’s sort of building on it each time. Well, maybe they’re children optimizing machines. He’s like, well, no they’re not.

There’s a really interesting, really interesting study done about Charles Darwin. Darwin I think ended up having 12 kids, something like that. Not all of them survived. And some, you know, still Victorian England, maybe one or two died in infancy, childbirth perhaps. But the one that was most painful was the one that died around about age 11.

And this seems to be reflected in studies and the reason that’s put forward, the evolutionary logic, reason for this is you’re a grandchildren optimizing machine and your child was just about to get to the stage when they could have become a mother or father.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you lost them at that point.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: So no, maybe there’s lots of things you’ve had enough time to attach to them. You’ve fallen more deeply in love. There are all of these memories that you’ve got, so on and so forth. They still had all of their life ahead of them and yet you’d spend enough time to be able to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All of that’s lovely. And those are the proximate reasons. But the ultimate reason why, why that moment, why did that one hurt so much? The grandchild optimizing machine was just about to be able to start producing grandchildren.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I thought that was really. That’s cool.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah, I can see that at any age that a child dies if they haven’t reproduced yet.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. I’m an only child, so I’ve got a lot of pressure on me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Very fortunate. My mom’s not ringing me that much. Not yet.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

Men Play for Points

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: One of the things you mentioned earlier on was that men play for points.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What earns the most points?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: What earns the most points with a woman or what counts as the most points to a man?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What counts as the most points to a man?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Happy. Happy is the bullseye. It’s a spiritual quality. It’s transformative, makes life easier. The same happy wife, happy life. It’s victory on so many levels. Like for a man to be successful at what he does and his wife is obviously happy with him. He’s a rock star.

So I’ve worked so long with women on about happiness, how to what does it take to make them happy? And in teaching men that it probably at least 90 to 95% of what it takes for a woman to be made happy is up to her.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Does that, what’s that mean?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: You like geometry? So picture this. Okay. So we’ve got the vertical axis, the horizontal axis. So imagine the vertical axis has to do with having what you need, a real need has a big payoff when you get it and a big loss when you don’t. So, like sleep is a perfect example of a verified need, right?

So if this is a about your needs being met, actually it’s this one that’s about your needs be met. This would be the enough line. The vertical would be the enough line. The horizontal is your needs met. So on this side, you’re in the negative. You’re in a deficit of food, sex, sleep, accomplishment, even. Right this side, right here, you’re right at zero, zero. Little over the edge or barely enough.

Over here, the more you’ve got, you’ve got like a buffer pantry. It’s in the bank, right? So you can have extra sleep and then have not enough sleep and you’re still fine, right?

So the intersection here, down here is not enough of what you need. And you’re not doing anything that makes you happy, that’s fulfilling. Up here, you don’t have enough of what you need, but you keep trying to make yourself happy on top of not having enough what you need. You can’t get happy.

Over here. You have more than enough of what you need, but you’re not engaged in what fulfills you. You’re just getting what you need. This quadrant up here is where you have more than enough of what you need and you’re engaged in the things that make you happy. This is the only quadrant in which you can actually experience happiness.

So if a woman doesn’t feel safe, which is feeling safe is something she needs, if she doesn’t feel safe, she literally can’t feel happiness. She can’t experience it. It’s a different nervous system. She’s stuck. She’s stuck in fear. She’s stuck in the sympathetic nervous system. She’s stuck in emotion, energy and emotion. Energy, emotion. She can’t be in the feelings.

Happiness is this huge feeling for women in the middle of our chest. It’s like a direct connection to the eternal that we fill with. But if she hasn’t had enough sleep, she’s not going to be able to feel it. If she hasn’t had enough quality alone time, if she hasn’t had enough quality attention.

Like a man will try to give her something that will make her happy, but he hasn’t been present enough to connect. So she’s not safe, right? And so that, that thing isn’t going to make her happy. So making sure this is, this is mostly on her. There are some things that men can provide, but a lot of what we need is support. We need. Honey, go to bed.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. I can’t make you sleep, I can’t.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Make you eat, I can’t make you sleep. But how about I put the kids to bed and you start your hour long process to fall asleep?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yes. Bedtime bullshit. Bedtime bullshit.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Bedtime bullshit.

Bedtime Bullshit

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Bedtime bullshit. Every girl’s got bedtime bullshit routine. Every girl’s got tons of bullshit.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I know it would occur like bullshit.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Bedtime bullshit.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: That’s so funny.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What is all this?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I can hear.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is this a fing incantation? Are you doing some sort of rain dance for tomorrow? I must apply the cream. I must do the thing. I have to do the dance. There’s sage everywhere. Like, what the f is going on? Bedtime bullshit.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay, well, our bedtime bullshit is for the purpose of being able to fall asleep because our minds are quiet enough.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: They’re not dishwashers loaded, living rooms clean, etc.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: The pillows aren’t crooked, Nothing.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I don’t disagree. I understand. Orderly home local spatialization. I get it. I feel like sometimes becomes gratuitous. I think that that is used as an excuse for this. Like superfluous. It is a terrain, Dad, I got to bow in front of the altar of the mirror five times and you know, say Beetlejuice or whatever it is. But Tambo, she.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, I will. I will concur that the way that our environments literally talk to us and get us to do bedtime bullshit is worth examining. Like really is that worth doing?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, there’s certainly.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And we don’t examine it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s certainly an argument to be made around how could it be that the unfolded clothes in the laundry are causing me to not want to have sex with you as a woman? And you go, well, because I got. There’s this big open loop in the back of my mind.

You go, you’re kidding me. Guys are like, you being serious. We’re not having sex because the dry has not been emptied.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Okay. We could spend a whole like three hours.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Let’s not get derailed. Let’s not get derailed. Too much household bullshit.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, no, on sex, the difference between men and women approach sex and what they need from sex.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Three hours of sex is a lot, even for me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Pardon?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I said three hours of sex is a lot, even for me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: That’s funny. And a brother in law said, “What do you do the other 23 and 3/4 hours?” Okay, so what were we talking about? Oh, happy.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yes, happy, happy. So there is. It is on you.

The Radioactive Nature of Happiness

ALISON ARMSTRONG: If she hasn’t done these things, nothing rings the bell over there. But the miracle is that when a woman has enough of what she needs, the way I think of it is happiness is radioactive. So teeny tiny, teeny, teeny, tiny amount. And I’ve proven it. Like I have had women get happy from remembering, like, happy, like truly the feeling in their chest by remembering something that made them happy.

I’ve had them get happy by planning to do something that makes them happy. In fact, happiness, well, it’s the bullseye. It’s the most points. It’s cheap if you know what to pay attention to. You put all the energy into getting what you need, and then teeny tiny things make you really happy.

We call it a moment of ecstasy when it’s a big happy and it feels like that and the body’s like this feeling goes out from the center and it goes down the arms and the legs and we get for a little happy dance and we’re like, “Ah.” And it comes out of our cheeks and our eyes. And every man in the vicinity is suddenly, “Let’s build something. Let’s kill something.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I did that. I made it happen. Happiness has been achieved. Yes, I conquered it. Briefly.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes. Which, the downside of that is one of the ways women emasculate men is they make sure he knows it wasn’t you.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m happy because of my career. I’m happy because of this thing that I did. I’m happy of this thing that somebody else did for me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Why can’t you just be happy for me? Right. We won’t go. Look at the victory. And I couldn’t have done this without you.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s so interesting. That’s so interesting. Why can’t you be happy for me? Is the same as, look at how much the most important thing in my life was achieved in the absence of you. Not.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And it’s a lie. It’s horseshit.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, of course. Because even the patience of that, like, let’s say that it was exclusively on you. It was this thing. It’s the next book, it’s the next convention meeting. It’s amazing. And all of the things. Well, even if I’m completely on the sidelines, I had to be sufficiently patient to let you do it. Even if I wasn’t. Even if you didn’t speak for a week, didn’t talk for a week. Yeah, I had to put up with not talking for a week.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I gave you your space. I went without what I needed to give you your space, to go be awesome.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That must have been really hard. It must have been really hard for you to put up with not speaking to me for a full week while I went away and did this thing.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Thank you.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Thank you. So I couldn’t have done it without the space. Yeah, very interesting. Why can’t you just be happy for me? Look at how much happiness I am deriving without you.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Maybe even in spite of you.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Not because of you.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What a way to make someone feel like they’re not a part of your life.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah. So it’s the opposite. Like what’s the most amount of points and then what’s the most emasculating. We seem to have a sixth sense for that, how to get you.

Fear and Self-Defeating Behavior in Relationships

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Why? Well, you said before, you said before about what it is, is fear. It’s very self defeating the things that we do in relationships. A lot of the time the thing that we want is the thing that we push away. Women wanting to be cared for, to be made to feel safe, but being so independent and in masculine energy themselves without needs that they don’t allow anybody to actually help them.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Well, if you think about it, the source of coupling is survival. Let’s hole up in a cave together, fight off the tiger, try to protect our young. The source of human relationships is not fulfillment. It’s not love, it’s not satisfaction, it’s not teamwork. That’s not the source of romance.

The source of romance is reproduction and survival and survival into the grandchildren. Right. So when we’re doing what we’re compelled to do, which instincts are compelling, like there’s a tension in our body and it’s telling us to do something. Whenever we follow the tension, we reward the tension. We act on the tension. We’re going to do something destructive to love, to happiness, togetherness, fulfillment. We’re just going to. But we’ll survive.

So most of my work is helping people to become aware when they’re not at choice. This is the instinct acting itself out. And most of it is primordial. It’s not human. It’s not even packed and heard. Most of what we’re compelled by we share with bacteria, viruses. We behave the same way.

And it’s a thing I started working on about five years ago. It’s like, I wonder if Chris and I’ll talk about this. Most people don’t want to talk about it. It’s so ugly. So, “Oh, we’ve evolved beyond that.” Really? Really, really.

It started with someone saying to me, “The basis of the immune system is discerning me and not me,” and my brain just glommed onto it. It just, like, went fireworks, like, “Oh, a sneeze.” A sneeze is a not me reaction from your body to eject what is not me. A cough is a not me. Diarrhea is a not me. Get rid of it.

But we have the same reaction to another human being, any human being. We’re scanning. Are you me or not me? Oh, you’re like me that way. Oh. And then we assign too much meaning. You’re like me so I’m safe, and you’re going to be like me in other ways. And so I can trust you to do what I would do. And you’re like me. Like me. Like me produces this instant connection that’s overestimated.

Oh, you’re not like me. And what’s funny is, women are like, you’re not like me. That you’re strong or you’re not like me. I’m not safe because you don’t do what I would do. Better take your power quick.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: All right.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: That’s interesting. Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah.

The Me vs. Not Me Dynamic

ALISON ARMSTRONG: And so women are looking for men who are like them. It’s very confusing because then we have no chemistry, because chemistry is caused by differences. Men lean into, “Oh, you’re not like me. Ooh, you’re not like me.” Men have told me so many times, “I don’t want to be with someone who’s like me. I don’t need another me. I want someone who’s not like me.”

But then women are trying to prove, “I’m as strong as you. I’m as smart as you. Everything you can do, I can do better.” Right. My mother danced around the kitchen singing that song after Guys and Dolls. So if you look at human atrocities, they’re all me, not me reactions.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah. Disgust.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Just boom, boom, boom, boom. But it happens so fast, and it’s usually below the surface. And it tribalism, it survival. It’s why we pick up accents in order to pass. If I talk like you, you won’t kill me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Some really interesting research that you might be familiar with on probably not people. I think you might be people more prejudiced against those with different accents than those with different skin colors.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I’m not aware, but it makes sense. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Ancestrally, the likelihood of you meeting somebody with a different skin color is very rare. The likelihood of you meeting somebody with a slightly different word for stream or river or leaf or meat.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, that’s pretty high. So, yes. Somebody walks into the room, different skin color, same accent.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Ah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s going on? This person’s got a lot to do. It’s interesting. One walks in, same skin color, different accent. You go, “Hmm, where are they from? What do they do?”

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yes. Not me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Not me.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Me is safe. Not me is not safe. Unless. And I’ve encountered in teaching this, there are people who know that if you’re like me, you’re dangerous. Because they know they themselves are dangerous.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s interesting.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: If you’re like me. Oh, not safe. Yeah, it’s cross. Crosswired. Trauma. Trauma takes hold very quickly.

Where to Learn More

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Listen, let’s bring this one into land. It’s been so much fun, and I literally could keep going for the rest of the day. I think you’re delightful. I think the work that you do is fantastic. And I think that you specifically are very delightful yourself. Where should people go? They want to learn more about this, whatever this is.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Oh, gosh. It depends on how much contact they want directly or how much information they want cheaply. YouTube, Alison Armstrong videos, lots of information cheaply. Even if you’re not on my, I don’t know if you’ve tried it, but Alison Armstrong into YouTube and there’s literally videos back to the 90s on there. You can watch the whole, the aging of.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Oh, wow. Okay. Doing some archaeological research.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Tons and tons. Millions and millions of views of things. People who started collections of my stuff before I ever knew you could do that. Audible has the old stuff, things I recorded before 2006, but it’s easily available and it’s evergreen.

In Sync with the Opposite Sex is one of the most popular and I recommend it to people. Our website, AlisonArmstrong.com is where there’s our formal curriculum where I interact with students, answer questions about 10 hours a month for people, about four hours of that’s dedicated to specific clarifications of, this is what you learned and how do you apply it? I’m very rigid about it.

And then we have a subscription program where no rules. Ask me anything, I’ll talk about anything. It’s really fun. We have hundreds. And I mean, everything I ever discovered, I needed people to know. They need to know this, so I’d record it.

Feels Like Love, Looks Like Math

I did an event just a few weeks ago called Feels Like Love, Looks Like Math. It’s so cool for my little brain. It’s so happy, right? So what feels like love? Think about what feels like love from this person, from that person. What feels like love. It’s always going to be something that they do that they took the time to do, that they remembered to do, that they spent energy on doing. It’s something that they’re going to do or say, which takes time to do that too.

And then we explore deserving and how that thing I said before, if I think I deserve it and you think I deserve it, we’re good to go, right? No. You could think I did. Could. You could think I deserve something, and I should be with someone who could give that to me. You could think I deserve something and you know that you could do it and feel guilty about not doing it, but it’s not worth doing.

So it takes deserving and appreciation. And then it all comes together in this thing called the worth it calculation. And there’s the pre worth it calculation, where everything’s estimated, and then there’s the ongoing worth it calculation. No, this is taking more time, effort, energy, pain in my a than I was expecting to. It’s not worth it. I’m not going to keep going.

There’s a post worth it calculation. It’s constantly being paid attention to. Is it worth it? And it’s mostly being paid attention to by men because, because you all have an awareness of time and energy and resources being limited, being put to use, no longer available to use, saved for use.

Women, we don’t so much. The thing that you all love about us, we mostly have a connection to the eternal. For present, we’re, we’re connected. And in eternity, there’s all the time in the world, so why not throw the laundry? Be one less thing yelling at me. So almost everything is worth doing. It just has to be a little bit worth it for a woman to do it.

For a man, it’s got to be, you know, I call it winter. You’ve got to save for winter. The ROI has to be high to be worth doing. And there’s so many things that women want from men, but they don’t make it worth men doing. They don’t provide the appreciation that would make a stupid thing worth doing.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Interesting.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Yeah. So that’s what I did a few weeks ago. Feels like love, looks like math. And I mean, that’s my thing is figuring out, okay, why doesn’t this work? Well, what’s. Are you familiar with the term trim tab?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: No. Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No, no, no, no.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Are you familiar with Buckminster Fuller?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yes. The OODA Loop?

The Trim Tab Philosophy

ALISON ARMSTRONG: The OODA Loop. Most of them will say the geodesic dome. Well, he’s one of my heroes and incredible inventor, philosopher, humanitarian. It’s called the Einstein of our time back in the ’90s. My dog’s name is Buckminster, so he’s the one who distinguished trim tab.

And so take a, let’s take a ship, a relationship, right? So you’ve got a huge ship, and you want to change its direction. It’s off course. You want to get a better course, right? To retain its direction. So you got to move the rudder. But a huge ship, the rudder’s ginormous. Takes so much energy to move it.

Well, the trim tab is on the rudder, and if you flip the trim tab, it uses the current that the ship is moving through to move the rudder to turn the direction of the ship. So that’s my addiction. Trim tabs.

Small Changes That Transform Communication

Like women who want men to share more, to open up. Don’t interrupt him when he pauses. Count to 30. Most men will come in at about 18. Unless you’re asking about feelings. Could be three days. Don’t ever ask a question that isn’t worth waiting for the answer.

The women start waiting for the answer, and lo and behold, men start talking, which is amazing. He’s opening up. Then they have a new complaint. “Well, I listened to him for an hour and a half, and then he didn’t listen to me.”

Understanding Different Forms of Appreciation

Reciprocity. Men show appreciation by take and use. You know, they appreciate their listening because they’re talking to you. They know. They appreciate the sandwich because they ate it. They know. They appreciate the nakedness because they went, “Ooh.”

Women show appreciation by direct reciprocity. “I listened to you for 27 minutes. Now you listen to me for 27 minutes.” And women are profoundly aware of this. We know this. “Okay, it’s your turn. I’ve been talking this whole time. Now it’s your turn.” It’s like a little ticker going, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

So, yeah, so women, the men will open up, and then they’ll complain, “But they’re not listening to me.” Well, that’s a whole other thing. Get listened to by a man. He’s not going to do it in return. He’s not built that way.

The Power of Details in Intimacy

So anyhow, so that’s what I’m addicted to. If you just change this little thing, like, instead of saying, “Let’s do it.” When a man says, “Let’s do it,” he’s completely present to the value of sex. And she expects him to be instantly present to the value of sex. The wonders of it, the fun, the pleasure, the release, the peace, the connection, all that. No, she’s not. He just has to spare a couple details. Just, that’s a trim tab.

“I’d like you to feel. I want to make you feel things you’ve never felt before. How soon can you be in the bedroom?” “Let me turn off the faucet.”

But it’s just a trim tab. Just a couple little more details. We’re good to go. Forget the laundry. Right?

Speaking the Language of Action

So those are all the little things I’m always looking at. If you just shift that. If you just, if you don’t say, “Chris, we really need to take some time, probably every week to talk about this issue.” Why would I want to do that? Women don’t know. Issues, by definition are unsolvable.

“Honey, could you help me with a problem?” What? That’s what the hero language is all about in the Queen’s Code because women avoid using the words that are the most actionable of men.

The Process of Transformation

Okay, so your question was where. So alisonarmstrong.com is where I get to talk to people. And it’s part of what we call a process of transformation, which starts with become aware of the cause of the results you don’t want. Like for women, emasculating men is giving you what you don’t want. Stop that.

Then new information or new point of view. What if there’s a good reason for everything men do? What if no one’s misbehaving? What if there’s a good reason for everything you do? So a new point of view.

Then there’s making sure the new information, the new point of view exists in an empowering context. This is why the Queen’s Code is the way that it is. So women can’t just glean the information out and use it against men. It’s a, I call it a fairy trap. The story that everything about it is just, just bring you in and transform you. That was the point of that book, to transform the way women relate to men.

Now I love it. Transforming the way men relate to themselves. Finding out the good reason you have to do things.

Building New Habits

And then the last part is a new good habit. So an empowering context, a new good habit. So I spend all this time talking to my students to make sure that they’ve got the new information. They really get it. It’s clear to them. And it’s in an empowering context, which for me is the context of partnership. It’s my passion. Partnership.

And then they have the awareness which causes we have to celebrate noticing when we f*ed up. “Oh. Oh, shoot. I emasculated him yesterday. I noticed. I noticed. I’m aware of it. Thank you, brain. Thank you, brain.” We have this thing called the notice dance. It’s funny how many times you lose your pen.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I like to play with it. What’s up with that now?

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Ticket, ticket, ticket. Then it flies. Yeah, okay.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Okay. So YouTube website alisonarmstrong.com. Alison, I really appreciate you.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: Thank you. I appreciate you. I love what you’re up to. I totally love what you’re up to. It’s very exciting to me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Thank you.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: You’re welcome.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Until next time.

ALISON ARMSTRONG: I’d like it next time. It’ll be fun.

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