Wow, that's so unpoint and so beautifully said, and I agree with it 100%. And then actually one thing I wanted to ask you is do you think that we need to maintain all of those steps throughout our relationship? So always maintaining the attraction, the commitment, um... Well, and the compatibility, I think that there's in any relationship, it's... You know, any time I post something that suggests that you could... you should continue in your relationship working to impress your partner. I get backlash. Yeah. Every time. Oh my God, it's just... Why does it have to be so much work? I always think, what world are you living in where things aren't work? I don't know what this is. I have a company. I've had that company for the last 14 years. I know that the day I stop caring about it is the day that it will start losing its value. Now, maybe I find somebody else to be the custodian of it and to take care of it and they love it as much as I do and find. But when someone stops giving it love, it will begin its death, its slow decline. That's true of our bodies. Why isn't it true of our relationships? And part of people's frustration is that they are really deeply unhappy with what they're getting, but they haven't found the courage to go find something else or to value themselves more. So there's a deep-seated frustration being in an untenable position where they also don't have the courage to move or the cut of the deep self-worth to move, to go do something else. So now, every day I'm going through this slow torture. I don't want to leave, but I'm not getting what I want here. I've invested too much time. I've invested too much energy. And that's where the sunk cost bias comes in. I've spent all this time, I've spent, and then they do what I call the one day wager. Yeah, one day. One day someone will become what I want them to be. He says he doesn't want to commit right now.

He says he doesn't want kids.

He says, but one day, you know, he never has time for me.

It's all business.

He never has time, but one day, you have to assume

that who they are today is who they'll be.

And you're thinking five years from now,

they're gonna be a completely different person

and that's the thing you're banking on for your happiness. That's the one day wager. God, I love that so much. I wanna ask you something, because you were saying about someone, people saying I don't want to commit, or I'm not interested. How do you know when something's actually true or not true? Because you did a video that basically was like, when you're at dinner on at dinner on our first day or something the guy says to you like oh so how come you're not you know how come you're single and then you give examples of what they really mean and at the end you end it on yeah I'm not looking for a really serious relationship and the takeaway is he actually means that so how right like even what you were saying like but one day he will, one day he will, how do you know? I'm gonna tell you, you're gonna love this. Okay, please. You're gonna absolutely love this. And by the way, for anyone who wants to watch that video, it's called What He Means versus What He Says. And it's on my YouTube channel. Here's the rule. If someone is telling you something that would make their life more difficult to tell you, then it's probably true. We'll say all sorts of things in service of our pitch. All right, what's the pitch? In dating.

For a lot of guys, what's the pitch?

The pitch is, I would like to sleep with you. That's a pitch. That's all I'd like to happen. I'd like for us to sleep together. And if I like you enough, I'd like for us to have something more or whatever. But right now we're on a date, I find you attractive. So anything someone says that helps their pitch.

We don't know enough right now. All we know is, we don't know enough to distrust them either. All we know is that just, you know, I could take up face value what you're telling me right now, but that doesn't mean that after one day, I make a whole bunch of decisions in my life based on this moment. I take you at your word right now, but I'll also see how this unfolds and whether it goes in that direction. By the way, that's generally general principle for anything, right? But if someone is telling you something that isn't good for their pitch, that means it took some effort to say. That means it really took a lot of, you know, what Sean Acre calls activation energy in the happiness advantage. It takes a lot of activation energy to do that. At the end of a pharmaceutical ad, no pharmaceutical company wants to put all of those disclaimers, you know, such and such, that we've just, you know, shown you pictures, we've just shown you footage of old people skipping around a meadow, able to run and jump and dance and sing again, but also remind this may make you so depressed you, you'll kill yourself. No one wants to put that part in the ad. If they had the choice, they wouldn't put that in the ad. So you know the part you can trust, if nothing else, I may not be able to trust everything you're saying this drug can do, but why can trust is these side effects that you're saying it might give me. I know that because you didn't want to tell me that and you told me that. So when a guy on a date says, I'm not looking for anything serious. You can trust that he's either, I definitely not looking for something serious or he thinks that there's a very good chance that he's either, I definitely not looking for something serious, or he thinks that there's a very good chance that he's gonna end up hurting you, because he's done it a bunch of times in the past, and he's kind of sick of being called the villain for leading people on, and so now he's establishing very quickly. I want to see you again. And by the way, that doesn't make him a bad person. It makes him more honest than most. But when he says that, he's saying, I don't want to be the villain again. And I don't want you to keep going thinking this is going to go somewhere. So just so you not. Probably it's not. When he says that, you can trust it because it doesn't help him sleep with you. It doesn't make it more likely you're going to sleep with him tonight when he says I probably won't call. So those things, when someone says something that hurts their pitch, that hurts their motives, that hurts their end game, you can believe that part. That's so strong. Oh my God, I love that so much. Give me a couple of the things that you can trust that a guy does or signals that a guy does that shows you they actually do like you. Well, you can look, how much is this person truly interested in me? Are they asking me, are they genuinely curious about me, my values, what I like, what I don't like, what I'm into. Because that's a sign not only that he's taking the emphasis off of himself, it's easy. Anyone who's achieved anything can sit there and talk about all of their achieved and reel off their stories about how this hard time in my life and this thing and that thing. That's not a bad thing, but it doesn't tell you that they're genuinely curious about you.

And when someone has real intention in dating, they are looking for a real match. They're not looking for you to be impressed. Of course, I got a secured deal. I got a land in the account. But is it the right account? Do I actually want this person? Is this the right person for a relationship? When someone is being intentional about dating, they are asking intentional questions about who you are and what you're all about, because they're trying to figure out. I'm trying to use my time wisely right now. Is this someone I want to invest more in? So that's one of the things to look for. If you're looking for someone intentional. Right. And again, look for those moments where someone actually invests. Are they willing to come to my part of town? Or is it always about coming to, is it always the thing with the lowest activation energy for them? Are they making any kind of a sacrifice? Is the effort equal? When I look at our text message chains, are they actually equal? Or is it, or am I in the blue? Where it's like big chunks of blue. And then a little line of gray, where they gave me a quick response. You have to look at these things because these are the things that tell you, you know, oh there's a genuine back and forth of investment. Yeah, oh God, I so wish I would have found you when I was 16 because I was definitely that person that would go on a day and say, oh he said he liked me. He said it was going to call me back so I I would just take them for their word. And I love you to the post where you laid out like, look if they want to go to the movies after sex, it means they're interested. If they call you when they've had a shitty day and they call you to tell you about their day. But also reading into okay, going back to even what you said right at the beginning, does their actions align with their words? And as you say, it's not about like, we have this real idea of like heroes and villains that we need to let go of. That it's not about that. It's just, there are some really terrible guys out there. There are, but a lot of people, they're not, their intentions aren't bad. They're just different from yours. And one of the mistakes I see people make a lot. Like, I don't think men have a reputation for being liars. I think most, some men are pathological liars. And a lot of men aren't liars. They're just great avoiders. They, they don't bring up the thing that's unhelpful to bring up. They don't bring up the thing that's inconvenient or that would be painful to have a conversation about. The reason I make that distinction is because a liar, you'll ask them a question and they'll tell you a lie. An avoider will avoid the conversation, but when you ask the question, you often get truth.

And so people have to be brave enough, and this is for anyone, but if we're talking about women, women have to be brave enough to ask questions that they're afraid of the answers too. But your fear of the answer is going to put you in the way of so much more pain than the pain of the answer you're afraid of. Because now you have a woman who's a year in, two years in, three years in and continuing with this situation that is meeting some needs but not nearly enough to feed her soul, to make her happy, to nourish her. And she's now not asking the question anymore because it becomes higher and higher stakes. It gets more and more scary to ask because the answer might now show me the last three years of my life were energy misdirected towards a person who shouldn't

have had that energy. And he's not having the conversation because, I mean, it's easier for him not to, right? And he can claim ignorance because she's not asking me and I'm not doing anything technically wrong. I don't see us as long term. I don't see us as ever having a family. I don't see us as ever moving in together. I don't see this as the great relationship of my life, but she's not asking. So let's just keep enjoying ourselves. So you now have this complicit kind of toxic situation between two people and it may not be toxic in the sense that they're butting heads or that they're having a bad time. They could be having the best time ever. And that's the problem. Having the greatest time. And that's fine. You can just have a great time. But when you know that you're telling yourself you're having a great time but there's deep insecurity in you because ultimately you have no idea if this is, if you two are actually on the same path here now you begin conning yourself and now that great time that you have and that connection that you have the stage two that becomes the great kind of the blanket we put over everything to hide what's underneath which is that you and I have very different ideas about where this is going. I want a family and you don't. I know I want to marry you and you are seeing this as just something nice for this point in your life. We have to have the courage to ask those difficult questions, to say to someone and it doesn't have to be aggressive. It can be very loving. It can be extremely compassionate, extremely kind. How do you see this? You know, I really like you. Or you know, I love you. You know, I'm in love with you. And that makes me excited about what we could have, but not if we're not on the same page. Where do you stand with it? Or if it's earlier in dating and you're trying to figure out, you don't even know if you're exclusive or not. Hey, I really like you and I want to give my attention to you. I have other people asking me out and right now, I don't really know what to tell them. I don't mean to make things heavy, but I just want to know if you feel the same way because right now, I don't really know what to tell them. And I don't mean to make things heavy,

but I just want to know if like, you feel the same way, because right now, I'm in a mode where I just want to give my attention to you. And I would rather say to people, no, I'm seeing somebody. How do you feel about it? It's a loving, compassionate way to bring it up. It's also there's a little, there's some stuff going on there too

because even though it's honest, right?

There will be other people asking you out

and you don't want to tell them. way to bring it up. It's also there's a little, there's some, there's some stuff going on there too

because even though it's honest, right, there will be other people asking you out and you don't

know what to tell them. But you're also introducing an element of like, I, you know, I'm not going to be

around forever. So that is, and I always say to people be kind in your tone but ruthless in your

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