Welcome. I'm Connor Beaton and this is the Man Talk Show, Training for Men Answers for Women.

On today's show, we are going to talk a little bit about what blocks a man from getting his needs met.

Now, there's a very, maybe some of you know of it, maybe some of you've heard of it, but there is something called a covert contract.

And this is from No More Mr. Nice Guy, Dr.

Robert Glover, an incredible book, talks a lot about Nice Guy syndrome and how to break free from it.

But I want to talk about covert contracts because whether you are a recovering nice guy or you

view yourself as a nice guy or you don't at all, what I have noticed is that a lot of men will

use covert contracts

to try and get their needs met. Now, in a recent group that I was facilitating online, one of the guys

said, why is that? Why is it that so many of us resort to using covert contracts? The reality is

that many young men are not taught to ask for what they want. Contrary to popular belief,

all right? A lot of young guys are not taught to ask for what they actually want, desire,

are wanting within a relationship, or craving from a friendship, or wanting from life,

or wanting from work. Many, many, many, many guys are taught that they are, that they are performance-based

objects. And what that means is that a lot of young boys get validation for their performance.

So what they very quickly learn is I can take care of other people's needs. I can make

mom or dad happy or whoever the caretakers are so long as I am performing so long as I am doing

what they expect of me. So that might mean that I get really good grades academically and then

I receive love. Maybe that means that I do really well in sports and then I get validation or like

a little prize. And so for a lot of men, what they discover when they look back

of their childhood is that love was often performance-based. And this can be the same with women.

So ladies, like, you're probably not exempt from this. But for a lot of guys, love was performance

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