David M. Buss | Porn, Cheating, Mating, Sex, Mate Value, | Ep. 195

[Music] foreign welcome to the pretty intense podcast thank you so much for coming you're in for a treat today with Professor David Buss he is a professor of psychology at the University of Texas he is the world's leading expert on strategies in mating and an author with several books his latest being when men behave badly so I'm really fascinated with why people choose certain people what

the psychology of cheating is the psychology of sex The Mating hierarchies they call it mate value women sort of date lateral and up with the status and success and men tend to date lateral and down you know because I'm in this unique position being a woman but yet being successful yeah of course I'm very curious so today was a conversation about that we talked a lot

about sex a lot about why Partners want to have sex the kind of Partners they choose why they want to have sex cheating and why people cheat in relationships Partners choosing Partners we talked about marriage later in the episode about if that's sort of an institution that'll stick around or not super interesting stuff so enjoy this conversation please hit the Subscribe button deeply appreciate that and

let me know what you think in the comments and just thanks for coming by today's pretty intense partner is athletic greens I take ag1 by athletic greens literally every day covering my nutritional basis for the day couldn't be any easier which is why I trust athletic greens just a mix of one scoop of ag1 with water first thing in the morning done I also like that

it costs less than three dollars a day pretty good if you ask me it's a really effective daily habit with the highest quality sourced ingredients win-win if a comprehensive solution is what you need from your supplement routine then athletic greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase go to athleticgreens.com pretty intense that's athleticgreens.com pretty

intense check it out thank you very much for doing this I have like such a burning passion for psychology and like what makes people like they are and patterns and how to break them and um why we are like we are and you know definitely one of my super areas of Fascination within that realm has been around um like mate value and like why why genders

choose the people they choose and what makes it hard because you know like for me I know that like being smart and being successful and various different things make make my dating pool really small because guys usually don't like to have someone more successful than them perhaps intelligent various different things so like I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm eternally fascinated by this topic so um so thank

you for making the time to um appease my burning interests oh my hey my pleasure um it's delightful to be talking to you um and um I share that burning passion for this topic I mean I've devoted my life to studying human mating strategies and right now I'm actually wrestling with exactly the issues that you raised under the the guys under the title of the The

Mating crisis and I'm currently writing a book now with Chris Williamson on that very topic because oh my God so we we indeed have well made in crises but one of the ones the one of the first ones that I actually wrote about which is an essay that I wrote uh seven years ago was precisely the issue that you identified with that that increasingly there are

women who are uh attractive successful uh professionally accomplished uh and their uh uh shrinking pools of men who meet women's standards so women generally uh in my research and others don't like to settle for guys who are they want guys who are at least if not more successful than they are uh and um and this is and this is a problem whereas guys are are more

willing to settle for a less you know um successful less financially uh solvent uh lower in status Etc in part because of the you know evolve mate preferences that that have men men don't places higher priority on those attributes and the they do place a higher priority compared to women on physical attractiveness and physical appearance and of course women also place a high value on physical

appearance but just not as high as as men do and so what it's doing is it's actually creating two different mating crises one a mating crisis in mind you know accomplished successful women but then also at the other end you have the the in cells the involuntarily celibate man A large group of sexless men who are just simply a lower inmate value in women's eyes and

so can't find a mate can't find a sex partner can't find romance can't find a long-term relationship it's growing and that's getting worse right now correct it is um it's getting considerably worse so that you have a an astonishing number of young men who are virgins at age 30. you know and you know and I think there are uh you know multiple causes of that we

get into this the details of this but I think they're a combination of things like one is they're spending all their time behind computer screens uh playing video games um on social media and looking at porn um and so um and so they are to my astonishment they're not you know the stereotypes these guys are living in their mom's basement you know right they're not not

getting onto the real world they're not um setting goals for themselves they're not getting ahead um and so they're not they're not performing uh the the what historically has been what men do um is um you know strive in the workplace and then ancestrally it would have been being uh ambitious and industrious and uh intelligent in in the domain of hunting you know acquiring resources consistently

for themselves for their mate for the children for their families uh which causes them to rise in status uh and then in the modern environment you know getting ahead in the workplace High status and qualities that lead to success are highly valued by women so women value guys and one of the biggest complaints I get from women is like this guy he has no goals he

has no drive he doesn't know what he wants to do with his life you know he's not getting ahead and so you fast forward you know you do that in a few years you fast forward to age 40 and there's these guys who um you know are still living in their mom's basement so against stereotype but a bunch of Truth to that stereotype so is there

is it is it is it that the attractiveness from a male and female perspective has not changed but the reality of what a man and a woman is experiencing and being right now is yes yeah I think that summarizes it very accurately um you know uh you could say like like for example let's take um a financial stability or economic solvency or a decent Financial prospects

this is something that women have valued throughout human history um and you might think well in the nowadays with successful women who are earning their own income and being financially successful they don't quote need a guy right right on the table right they still want a guy they still don't want to settle for a guy who's lower than um they are on these dimensions and so

the way that I think about it is our evolved mate preferences continue to operate in the modern world in women over the last 10 20 years of um gotten ahead gotten the head gotten and and are surpassing the men on many of these Dimensions so so even like in the in the youngest age brackets let's say um uh 18 to 30. uh women are now out

earning men uh in the United States and and in many Western countries and even in Japan and South Korea and they're also intellectually outperforming them too when it comes to school as well so there's been quite a few shifts yeah uh educationally it's been astonishing and this is It's really surprised me because these are dramatic cultural uh shifts that occurred within our lifetimes you know in

a relatively short period of time and so I mean when I was an undergraduate at University um I think there was a preponderance of men I don't know exactly what the stats were but there was no um no one talks about a surplus of women but now for example at my university University of Texas at Austin there's a 54 women and undergraduates and 46 men you

go up to Texas Christian University uh up near Dallas it's 60 women 40 men and every year it gets a little bit more imbalanced um and and then there's the interesting issue of why that's happening well I think that also is mostly determined so one is that on the educational front one of the best predictors of uh success is high conscientiousness the personality variable of high

conscientious the people who are reliable diligent um attentive details uh set goals um meet their goals uh and women are higher than men on this sort of all the way up and you want that with the fact that men are and these aren't intelligence differences as much as personality differences are more likely to be um um on the Spectrum on the autism spectrum so and what

that means is that so in like grades K through 12 um men have more difficulty sitting still they have more difficulty concentrating you know they want to be out doing what men historically did you know you'll get a deer okay fighting they're learning hunting skills they're doing they're Outdoors doing physical stuff they're not used to sitting still in school for six to eight hours um and

so you know you know on the one hand women being more conscientious and then on the other men being high on this uh Dimension the Spectrum disorders but even short of the disordered end of the spectrum you get many just more distractible you know and they're less able to um sit still and concentrate on one task at those at this early ages then you fast forward

to college applications well um women exceed men on quality of getting in to a good college but you said this is this has shifted so why if this is a pattern within men that they're you know wanting to be up and about moving around and less sort of focused in women or more why is it now that women are doing performing better in school versus men

when this pattern essentially hasn't changed yeah well I think there it's a great question and and there are a couple reasons for that okay one is that I think that the opportunities for women have basically just opened up so it used to be expected that um women would get married at a very young age get pregnant uh have kids and then of course that takes you

out of the um the workforce and the educational system typically right um and so now though you you have uh equal opportunity combined with um a larger segment of the population who are going to college and universities so it used to be you know I don't know I mean go back far enough you know three and five percent then eight percent because women were pregnant and

having children they weren't going to college they were literally having kids at 22. yes yeah whatever it was it's many in high school and then you have also other things like um you know Advent of the pill and reliable contraception meaning that you know I mean young people have sex that's what they do um and um without reliable birth control then you have a higher pregnancy

rate uh so you add the pills so that women can control you know reproduction the timing of the reproduction um and then that adds to it as well so they say no I'm not I want to devote time to my career first you know and then worry about mating uh and getting married and even within college is something it's a stereotype but it used to be

so the only reason women go to college is to get their Mrs that used to be the the joke yeah they're they find find a husband who's going to be uh a doctor or a lawyer and they get married and settle down um and that and that there was some truth that's kind of a cliche but there's some truth to that uh and so now with

the uh men and women expected to be sort of have equal opportunities to do these things some of the natural proclivities of the Sexes and the sex of differences are are showing up in ways that they they weren't earlier when a smaller segment of the populations is um going to college and universities so and and the other thing that kind of adds to that the back

to the mating crisis for women so women are now getting more uh college degrees more master's degrees more phds and then more professional degrees so this is also occurring with um medicine uh more MDS more law degrees uh and that takes time and so then women are older before they're in a um position where they say okay now I'm ready to settle down and made but

then you have this pool of men uh the subset of men who are um ambitious and get ahead and have good jobs and a reliable income uh they are typically marrying women who are younger than they yep it's like a whole catch problem it's like I've thought about this a lot because of my position I'm 41. I I did used to be married a long long

long time ago but I'm basically single and so um you know it's challenging out there and I kind of Wonder because men I feel like seem to not want to settle down for much longer like a woman like myself like a man that's about my age might be trying to find a 20 six to 30 year old woman because now he's ready to commit but that's

the age that they're they're looking for to have children with right like because they're and so like there's this gap for someone like me let's say where I'm a little past that I'm like right at the end of the reproductive years of like deciding to do that or not but the only kind of guy that you're gonna get like not the only kind of guy but

more predictably you're probably going to find someone a little bit older and and the younger guy is not available because they've all of a sudden now decided oh well now I'll settle down it just seems like you kind of there's like a Miss with sort of goals in life yeah yeah absolutely so well so how do you um deal with that so so I I'm sure

so in your case you're you're attractive you're successful you're intelligent you have a lot going for you and I'm sure there are many many many men who would give their right arm to be with you but it's a matter of this says a lot coming from someone who studies why people choose people well it's just I it's accurate I think and but there's but but then

for you they're given that you have made preferences for you don't want to settle for the guy who's um you know on the janitorial staff of you know buildings or what how do you deal with that I guess I'm willing to overlook usually the financial side of things but the problem is then is it's actually far more of a problem for them than it is for

me yeah like someone that doesn't as financially successful or as successful as me they actually have the bigger problem than I do even though mate value would say that I want a man that is more successful has a higher status it's actually them that has a problem because they're triggered by me uh here's why or here's my speculation thank you so why um is that statistically

that is going to create a make value discrepancy right so even though you're you're fine you know with I'm sure you wouldn't be fine if he's like has minimum wage uh but um you know I'm sure so let's say you would you're willing to relax you know he doesn't have to be as financially well off as you are right um that's fine but that what that

means is that um uh that he's going to be intimidated by you still because statistically there's a higher probability uh of you finding someone better and and trading up and trading him out because this is one of the things that that has been remarkable is that um with successful women they no longer put up with a bad relationship or a bad marriage they're they're because they

can they can just get out you know whereas women in the past and some women today still are not in that financial position to do that and so there's a little more stuck yeah they're stuck in these bad relationships or bad marriages and they can't get out but hey if you if you if you're financially independent you're not you can and and then you know and

so and there's also and not saying that this applies to you uh but statistically there's also a higher probability of infidelity by the higher mate value person in general so if the man happens to be higher and make value he's going to be like the probabilistically you know so obviously not in all cases most people don't have affairs uh but something like a third do uh

and um and it's the higher mate value person who typically is more likely to have an affair and is more likely to leave the relationship uh and so so he's so yeah so if he this um let me put it in start terms it's lower mate value guy um feels very lucky to get involved with you but also very insecure uh because realistically there's a higher

probability you might trade them out does it doesn't lead to a man going and sort of conquering someone underneath them so they can feel important and like um of a higher value you're saying that a woman is still going to be the one that's more likely to cheat in an imbalanced mate value relationship because whoever's more successful yeah whoever the more successful one is because I

can see where there could be a spot for especially for the um the the woman being of higher higher success and Status being doing that okay but the man wanting to feel pout empowered and Powerful Again by Me by going and uh cheating with someone of a lower value so they can achieve that feeling that um through history has been their pattern yeah yeah no I

think that that captures it quite well and I mean this gets to an interesting sex difference in motivations for infidelity yeah let's let's talk about that uh so yeah so well so why men cheat mostly theater we're talking about on average you know because people have achieved for a variety of different reasons but on average men cheat because they have this desire for sexual variety and

so you see this in some clear cases like I to pick an older example a Hugh Grant um Elizabeth Hurley drop dead gorgeous um model actress whatever and then he's caught you know having sex with a prostitute on the street and L.A like what's going on he's not he's basically trying to satisfy his desire for sex writing people look at that and think he's crazy because

you know he's he's with this gorgeous woman um what is he doing but that's not that's not that atypical and because a primary reason for men cheating is this desire for sexual varieties it's not because um she's better looking or higher in made value it's just that she's different yeah yeah whereas for women the primary motivation and not the exclusive with primary motivation for Affairs is

because they're unhappy in the relationship and they're looking to either get out of a bad relationship or an unsatisfactory relationship we're looking to trade up in the mating market so this is the the mate switching hypothesis is it true that of saying that men cheat to stay and women cheat to leave then um well uh I would say the second is definitely true women women cheat

to leave it now we're talking about like about 70 to 80 percent of women this is what studies of women who have had affairs this is what their primary motivation is is to get out of a relationship or trade upwards or segue back into the mating Market um whereas men it's more like um Chris Rock had this quib of like men are only as faithful as

their opportunity now that's an exaggeration um opportunities who don't act on them um uh and it's true of men and women we have opportunities and we we choose not to act on them for a variety of reasons it could be don't want to jeopardize the marriage don't want to um sacrifice my reputation in the eyes of other people don't want to um you know variety variety

of reasons why people choose not for religious reasons or moral reasons or whatever yeah let's hope that let's hope that uh Integrity comes into that yeah yeah well so that's a prime example was um uh and you may be too young to remember this but there was uh with uh President Jimmy Carter uh he did an interview at Playboy magazine a long time ago and he

said he had uh lust in his heart and that he had committed many adultery many times in his heart but as far as we know he never acted on that um but he confessed to what I think most men have is they have this ferocious desire for sexual variety um and but some act on it when the opportunities are there or the costs and risks are

low but many don't act on it and his case as far as we know he never acted on it and was always 100 percent monogamously faithful to his wife Rosalind I don't think it's the right question to ask why do men want variety I'm gonna ask instead what is it that uh each gender um wants sex for and what does it mean to them like what

what is the sexual psychology for a man versus a woman that would lead to then of course why men want variety well that's a great question and um a deep question because I mean it gets to the heart of our our evolved sexual psychology the reason that men have this desire for sexual variety and it's different from for men and women and it's not that women

have zero desire for sexual variety but it's just that it's low on average compared to men and and there are so many examples of this so just descriptively a man can walk down a city block and pass half a dozen women and have thoughts about sex with that woman within a span of two minutes um and and I don't think women do now women do become

attracted to you know so I hear you know even women who are in stable relationships you know that uh John uh Jon Hamm playing Don Draper you know people become infatuated Don Draper or uh or George Clooney um or I don't know who I guess some younger uh Ryan Gosling uh and and I can think of a few yeah yeah we're historic I don't know where

Brad Pitt stands but he used to be a sex simple and women just like would croon over uh Brad Pitt and perhaps have sexual fantasies about Brad Pitt but um but it's just like uh it's a it's it's just still a massive difference uh and this shows up this this sex and friendship shows up in things like a number of sexual thoughts per day uh men

how many more than women a number of different people you have sexual thoughts about men much higher than women um consumption of pornography about 80 of the pornography is consumed by men then women and even the nature of the pornography is very different you know with men it's just there's no plot you know there's like maid comes into the hotel room to clean up the room

and within 10 seconds they're having sex uh you know whereas women's pornography tends to be more have some some plot some context some romance um and uh so it's even the nature of men's and women's sexual fantasies are very very different and this shows up for example in I don't know if you've ever read the stanika but like the the romance novels like the the they

should be called bodice rippers you know where you have on the covers it's like rugged uh handsome dashing on some man who happens to be a uh wildly successful businessman or a prince or whatever he's like off the charts and status women desire him uh many women and but he finds himself uncontrollably drawn to this one woman sort of against his will and then it's the

modern day Fifty Shades of Gray guy Christian Gray yes yeah yeah exactly and um and you can bet who's I mean who's it so these these romance novels it's actually the largest uh selling book category in the publishing book publishing industry I mean it's a multi-billion dollar industry uh and um and it's a 95 of the consumers of those books women are women because men like

to watch it and women like to read about it yeah and and and yeah it Taps it an entirely different I mean it highlights the difference between male and female sexual psychology and and is it an imagination thing because like as like a low-level example like you can say to a guy like oh what should I wear and he might not be able to kind of

picture he's like I don't know put something on and I'll tell you like and a girl can go oh I don't know like maybe like a cute little black dress with you know like um some shoes some like kind of boots you like what do you have for like a girl might have this vision of what something should look like and a guy's like I don't

know I need to see it yeah yeah no I think that's exactly right and um all the studies point to exactly that that with men the visual sense is overwhelmingly the primary sense whereas women it's uh it use a much wider range of senses that are involved in their sexual attraction you know so touch sound mood context setting up and then to your point about these

different um imagining different dress scenarios I mean women are just more uh they devote more uh time attention and effort to even thinking about those things and have a most people don't know this they have a much richer color vocabulary oh um than men you know it's a man it's like well there's there's like green and red you know or and and for women they have

like six different words for green the weather's teal and there's 14 and there's you know it's mint yeah and then yeah Christmas tree red versus emerald green yeah and yeah yeah so um so even women have this much richer um sensory vocabulary for colors uh so um so that's another that's another really interesting sex difference um but but anyway so yeah so you get these these

fundamental sex differences in our sexual psychology and then that they play out in the real world um and sometimes catastrophic ways um and they also even they can they play out within relationships themselves because if you figure so men have and this is again this is maybe Politically Incorrect say this but all the data show this is that men have a higher sex drive on average

now there are women with very high sex drives but men on average have a much higher sex drive this is another Miss because men's sex drive tends to be sort of that it's called 20 range 25 like 18 to 25 feels very high but then for a woman it's like later 30s yeah but yeah for when for when it Peaks right another myth and like yeah

which men and women are miscalibrated yeah so so in terms of sex drive ideally what you want you know is a 35 year old woman with an 18 year old guy who uh who's the pool boy with with her 18 year old fertility level or whatever if they are wanting to move forward in that direction wait well and that's another interesting thing is that we found

in our research that uh as women's biological clock starts to take down they their sex drive does go up and they become more interested in um you know acting interesting in in in in in in correspondence to this internal biological clock that is running out essentially is that there's I think that's actually a real life scenario that plays out to try and mate because perhaps a

baseline human nature is survival and survival means procreation I would reverse that and just say the bottom line of evolution by selection is is reproductive success uh and so survival is really only a means to that very important means okay but but here's another interesting thing we have to add to the mix here and that is that uh if you look at let's say a um

20 year old woman in a natural hunter-gatherer group she looks like a 40 year old woman in our society and so and so I'm looking at you and if and if someone just said like how old is um uh how old are you I I wouldn't um I I would say something like well maybe 30 32 or something like that um and so part of that

is that we live in a modern environment where we're not subjected to the you know the Hostile forces of nature we're not spending 12 hours a day in the sunlight and you know uh you know tromping through the woods and you know Gathering berries and so forth and uh and so you go to these hunter-gatherer societies younger women do in fact look older and in our

society uh well older women look quite young you know so um and so that's another um that's another interesting feature of um of modern living which I think is is great actually everybody can stay younger looking um for longer yeah historically it's true what is the true significance of cheating then because the women are more emotional men tend to be more you know about variety so

so yeah elaborate on the emotional side of sex from each perspective a wonderful question and again there are these profound sex differences so let's take uh Affairs for example so so in studies of like why do you have the affair or what would be if you were to have an affair what would be the reason so what what the studies show is that 79 of women

have a fear is um fall in love with their Affair partner and become emotionally attached to or emotionally involved with their Affair partner for men the corresponding number is about 30 percent uh so there's this huge difference there um and another indication is just even people for people who don't have affairs um sex and emotional connection are more disjunctive in in men they're like more separate

things so like a study that was done so uh they had this was done originally on a college campus so they had male and female um Confederates as they were about this doesn't mean people from the South but it's just members of the experimental team who were judged to be moderately attractive walk up to members of the opposite sex on a college campus and say hi

I've been noticing around campus lately I find you very attracted would you and they ask them one of three questions would you go on a date with me uh would you come back to my apartment with me would you have sex with me and they simply recorded the percentage of individuals who agreed to these three different requests and of the women approached about 50 agreed to

go out on a date with the guy six percent agreed to go back to his apartment and zero percent agreed to have sex of course um women typically needed a little more information about the guy of of the man approached by the female Confederate also about 50 percent agreed to go on a date with her 69 percent agreed to go back to her apartment and 75

would have secular how you're a man how do you answer yes I'll just go back and have sex with you let's just start there let's start there it's a great question and well first of all um uh one qualifier is that um these Confederates were judged to be moderately attractive but and equally equally so um for a man um sexual opportunities are very rare now it

may not seem that way in the modern environment with Tinder and college campus hookups and everything but historically um sexual opportunities were very rare and even in the modern environment so you go on um Tinder for example and or OkCupid is another dating site and there's studies on a just a rate how attractive members of the opposite sex are and Men rating women that chose this

normal distribution where some women are very attractive some of them are not so attractive and they're you know as a large number and kind of in the middle or different range you ask women how attractive men are only about 20 percent make it up above threshold um and most women find most men just to be below threshold on attractiveness and so what that means is that

men find women on average more attractive than women to find men uh and so um and so these guys who are approached by a woman this has probably never happened to them in their life I mean who of course it happens to uh movie stars right because it's a very small amount of men that are actually getting the action yeah in the ranking of it all

because there's so many so much criteria and so much judgment on a a woman wants to mate with that or have sex with him or connect with him so there's just the pool is Tiny of the men that are actually having sex with women right right exactly and and it's gotten tinier in the sense that um uh the men who are having sex let's say the

top 20 percent are having a lot of it a larger number of women um and then in essence monopolizing us leaving a larger and larger share of men who are sexless and and that's why you have these phenomena now the inso is an extreme example um but there's this pool of men who just um uh can't find women who are attracted to them and and this

is where this gets back to our earlier discussion of the mating crisis where um these guys are spending all their time on uh on watching pornography on social media uh playing video games uh and so they're not interacting in real life and how do you develop mating skills you know skills of Attraction skills of social interaction so you actually have to meet people and interact in

real life and these guys are not doing that and so there's has been a rise of um anxiety and I think it's actually anxiety of several different sorts one is simply social anxiety where men feel awkward and when they especially when they made an attractive woman they don't know what to say what to talk about or they you know and they get kind of paralyzed with

anxiety uh and so they tend people tend to avoid things that they're anxious about so it's kind of is a vicious cycle um and then fear second one is like a subset is men fear rejection yeah and which is um you know when they approach a woman if they did and they fear being shot down um for good reason because they often are shut down um

uh but the um the fear of rejection has this paradoxical ity where even though we're supposed to live in a sexually egalitarian World 90 of women still expect the guy to make the first move right another catch so they're expecting the guy to make the first move he's paralyzed with anxiety and doesn't want to risk being shot down uh and so they tend to avoid interacting

with women and so don't develop the kinds of mating skills that they need there's a whole movement around men becoming more vulnerable right men men breaking this old pattern Paradigm of women come home and clean and cook and they go to work and they don't have to be emotionally available or tell them a damn thing and women are like we don't want that anymore look it's

not connected I don't feel connected to you I want you to show up for me in an emotional way I want you to share with me I want you to be more vulnerable I want to hear about your feelings I want to know about those things so now you're talking about how a man is so scared to be let down just rejected um he doesn't want

to deal with the the anxiety or the pressures and so there are so many opportunities to go into um a solitary land of pornography and of video games where they don't have to interact they don't have to be they don't have to be on they don't have to be have the potential of getting disappointed so it feels like actually really part of this package of what

women are expecting men to be and their men are just getting squeezed so hard there's so much temptation to not have to deal with it there's so many opportunities to not have to deal with it but it's actually making it worse for men and they're becoming even more unavailable because they don't even know how to they don't even show up let alone know how to talk

to someone so it kind of feels like part of that that expectation level that I believe women really do want now like we're just not okay with you being emotionally unavailable because one thing that women traditionally can sense more than men is energy and the true feelings of what's going on and we're not okay with pushing that down because we have options to leave now so

we we don't have to just put up with disconnection we can go find it yeah yeah and I think that's a great set of points and um but I would had a a Nuance to what you just said and that is that women do want guys who are emotionally available not just to you know talk about their emotions and feelings but also to be genuinely interested

in a woman's emotional life as well okay but women don't want a guy to be emotionally weak you know so tell me what the difference is then what's the how do you how do you be how do you become an emotionally vulnerable available man but not weak well I think the week the week is um falling apart under pressure or you know as we we all

experienced stresses and strains and problems and Road bumps and you know uh difficulties that we have to cope with and so women want a guy who can talk about those but not fall apart under stress not curl up in a ball in the bedroom and you know um be beaten down by those you know because in fact it's a sign of strength you know and resilience

to be able to face the hurdles and problems that we all face and make it through them and figure out ways to solve them and get past them um and so um and so there is that issue and I wonder I wonder and this is I mean I haven't thought about this deeply but your your set of points raises this issue of how do men develop

the ability to be emotionally available and communicative but not also show emotional weakness because that's part of what men are afraid of is you know that they they don't want to appear weak and then the question is what is weak how would you define that yeah falling apart not having the Psychological Resources to be able to cope with the challenges that everyone has to face in

their day-to-day life okay so it feels to me like a man wants to have the answers he wants to solve problems but the thing about being emotionally available and vulnerable is that is that you don't have the answer right right that's like the dichotomy of it the the Paradox is that that the vulnerability is like I don't know what to do I'm lost I'm scared I'm

sad I'm whatever I feel I feel this negative energy and I don't know how to fix it which is the vulnerability that right otherwise it's not a vulnerability it's just a damn solution and you just go to work like you wouldn't be sharing your sadness if you knew exactly how to solve the problem at work or to solve the problem with your partner or with your

parents you wouldn't be on you wouldn't be a wreck because you'd have the solution and you'd just go do it yeah yeah well and that's that's another um sex difference right there is that sometimes uh and I encounter this so often in in couples is let's say the woman let's say the woman wants to talk about some difficulties she's having at work you know with a

co-worker or something like that and the guys there were like okay you're here there's a straight line to solving the problem B now let's let's uh let's get dinner you know and the woman doesn't necessarily want you know a solution provided she wants the guy to listen to her describe what the nuances and nature of the issues are and so there's a but but I think

guys are typically more solution solution oriented and so that and then that upsets the woman because she wants the guy to listen to her and listen to her nuances and details and so forth you can see this in conversations where um and I've seen so many of these where a woman's talking to another woman and she says exactly they're talking about a date that they went

on date that one of them went on the night before and so they'll say well and then I said this and he said that and I said this and he said that and the other one will say well now what was his facial expression when he said that and so to go into the the nuances in details in minutia of their interaction and guys don't do

that I said like well how did the date go um yeah well great uh we had sex it was wonderful or I wanted to have sex she didn't want to so I was frustrated so it's it's a very different nature of um male and female communication and and create and create some problems in in relationships because they're communicating using very different styles yeah true but I

will say as you were describing the scenario of you know there's a problem here's a solution I'm like the guy like I am practical rational you have a problem I want to help you fix it so do you think that there's also a problem with the kind of woman that a successful female is becoming by being more in charge creating more of those rational salt you

know problem-solving techniques because that's part of the nature of being someone successful as you're usually managing people you're usually directing things you're in charge and so that then trickles down into regular life and then this sort of soft emotional oh what and there's becomes this what happened today oh do this and it's like maybe a man really wants to be heard too or not like is

there a evolutionary sort of issue with a female becoming more successful or having more status more some more of a working woman and the kind of woman she's becoming not being what a man really wants anymore well yeah I mean that's a it's a great question and I just I could speculate on that so so I I don't know but my guess is from the woman's

point of view she wants a guy who is also good at and talented at those kinds of decision-making abilities and the women don't want a guy who's so wishy-washy or um doesn't know how to solve problems in that in that directive way um and uh and so again we might get back to that issue that you first brought up Danica and there are early part of

our conversation which is that some of these guys would be intimidated by women who have those capabilities so yes I've thought about that a lot and the word that comes up when I when I go into that space of being intimidated is is really triggered because a man wants to feel powerful and this is my understanding a man wants to feel powerful he wants to feel

um accomplished successful he wants to have that mate status value of being higher he wants that he wants that status situation and so when a man comes across a woman that challenges that he now has to see himself in that scenario he now is actually getting that mirror to you're not that and he he's triggered because he hasn't reached higher right you know challenged himself enough

or been lucky enough to be in the right scenario to work for the right person to climb the ladder to get the salary to whatever it may be like I I don't know is there intimidated Feels Like An Unfinished thought to me yeah well I mean intimidated um in the sense that we talked about earlier that um you know so so one I mean in The

Mating world so there's there's mate selection there's made attraction so uh there has to be mutual mate selection mutual attraction but there's also the problem of mate retention uh so attracting someone is not enough you know you have there's mate retention as we know there's you know high high breakup rates and uh with guys they they want to be successful mate retainers so they they don't

want to lose the one and so again if those are indication indicators that she's higher in mate value then statistically she's going to be more likely to defect and and leave the relationship uh and so um and so that's why so and triggers sexual jealousy by the way the lower lower guys uh get triggered in terms of sexual jealousy because they realistically I think um a

praise that the woman has other options and those other options might be better than the option better than he is and so again it's sort of a a realistic um so you can say it's well it's due due to the fragile male ego and he just can't handle it um but there's also a real component the woman in reality is more likely to trade up if

she's with a guy like that um what about the this whole well let's start with monogamy first because we've already identified there are differences in why a per why a man versus a woman has sex and or cheats that there's different different reasons for that so is monogamy completely natural I get asked this question a lot of humans fundamentally monogamous or are we fundamentally religionous or

promiscuous or polyamorous right is marriage and mating just to do with now like back in the old days with uh keeping uh family land in the land and the family or you know riches or things like that or you know the way I think about it is that we have humans have an evolved menu of mating strategies we don't just have one long-term mating pair bonding

and attachment and I think that is part of our mating strategy so if you go to our closest primate relative who's the chimpanzee with whom we share more than 98 of our DNA they don't have anything resembling a long-term mating strategy or a pair bonded mating strategy they have the female comes into estrus female chimp males mate with that female when she's an asterisk she doesn't

conceal it she is you get the bright red genital swellings and the over fact Factory cues and then after she the estrus phase the males are indifferent and they don't interact much with the females anymore uh and they don't um and they don't do anything for The Offspring either so but in humans you have these three things that have co-evolved so you have one is the

evolution of long-term pair bonds right and it's one of the mating strategies um I missed this menu two you have relatively concealed ovulation so compared to our chimps you men can't tell when women are ovulating or not and a lot of women can't tell now some women are very sensitive to their bodies in the modern environment you you can get that information but three you have

the evolution of very high male parental investment so in contrast to the male chimps men do invest heavily in Australia not always of course we have deadbeat dads and guys who abandon their families and all that but but compared to all other primate species human males men do invest uh sometimes a couple of decades or more in their children they protect them they feed them they

provision them they they put a shelter over their heads Etc and so um so so so we definitely have long-term peer-bonded mating now that doesn't necessarily mean monogamous mating because we also have short-term mating we have a fair mating infidelity uh as I as I mentioned uh we have serial mating which is very common in our species so you made with one person for a while

break up and then mate with another person for a while break up and so worth it that's a very common pattern especially in the modern environment um and then we have people who mix and match and then a small minority of people do polyamory um and then historically there's also been polygyny which is one man multiple wives and that is um against the law in this

in in this country but we have sometimes what you might call effective polygyny you know which is that top 20 of the men sometimes engage in you know not necessarily simultaneous wives but maybe one long-term Aid after another after another after so an extreme example might be a Leonardo DiCaprio you know who uh I'm sure you've seen those charts where as he gets older the age

of his girlfriends stays the same yeah lucky him but he's he's an extreme example um of that but I guess I mean you know I mean some I mean there are other examples um I mean George Clooney I think sort of did that for a while before he settled down to what seems like a very happy long-term uh marriage right so what triggers that what triggers

settling down to a happy long-term marriage um I don't know that's a great question um I know one guy and I don't know if this is a general answer but his view is he he's gonna mate um as much as he can with different women until his mate value uh kind of plateaus and then he's gonna try to lock in a high maintenance best you can

find woman so I I mean I don't I don't know I mean I still have a I mean another example of that in the Hollywood arena is Warren baby you know who is a notorious um ladies man in his day but then met uh Annette Benning and and settled down to uh like I don't know 25 year 30-year relationship with four kids and so forth so

probably good not to count on a guy in his 20s um settling him down if he's in that top 20 percent oh that is the catch right there if he's in the top 20 be careful of that explain more because they have more options yeah yeah yeah and like Chris Rock said you're only as you're only as loyal as your options yeah yeah an exaggeration but

there's some truth to it as well um that men who who can who have the opportunity so and that's why you get um I mean that's why it becomes problematic for you know and I know I mean you've your involvement in in racing and the Sports World and you're familiar with all that the the star athletes um and sports figures and rock stars I mean they

get they get a huge amount of attention um from women you know I mean oh yeah the women definitely make it obvious for the men I can't say that from the other perspective being a female athlete the men don't make it as obvious to women I mean they can but I think it's much more it's a much more dangerous situation for a woman wanting one of

those top 20 men who especially are Elite level performers and celebrities to to imagine that that's going to go well if you want right and and the you know and the problem is that it it doesn't stop so even after uh let's say um Leonardo DiCaprio let's say he settles down and gets married you know does that mean that they're no longer going to be any

women interested in him well I think the women will continue to be interested in him um so uh so and that that that you know offers a set of temptations that you know men are tempted to act on some do and and but as we talked about earlier some don't you know some don't want to jeopardize their relationship and choose choose not to act on those

things so you mentioned polyamory which is something that I'm curious about um because it does seem like the relationship realm is shifting somehow it's shifting so polyamory is one of those things that has become more popular for sure so what have you come across any studies data um on polyamory working long term is or is this merely a phase of trying to figure out because I

feel like when there are shifts in culture and patterns the pendulum kind of can swing a bit and like we're not always in a place that we're going to stay but we're trying to kind of find where we can settle but it's not where we were so is polyamory really a real option emerging in the dating market and in relationships or is this merely a phase

on its way to something yeah well that's a great question and um I don't know the final answer to that I mean it's talked about more it's written about more there's more open polyamory than they're um used to be I don't know if the actual rates have gone up I guess it wouldn't surprise me if they have historically open relationships which is another term for it

there's all these different terms so there's consensus swinging historically they have tended not to work one form of polyamory is you have one primary partner but then you have an open relationship where you allow the other person to do X Y or Z at The X Y or Z is typically worked out in if it's consensual in an explicit kind of way where you allow the

other person to do X and Y but not Z and I know I've talked to many people who are not many but I've talked to let's say a dozen people who are polyamorous who are friends students Etc and I think that um I think it's my intuition is that it it can work but only for a very small minority of people I think most people are

not cut out for it and the reason is is that once you introduce other people into the mix then there's always the danger of um let's say uh jettisoning the primary partner and switching to one of your parent Wars but there's also sexual jealousy and this is an emotion that we've we've touched touched on earlier but I wrote a whole book on sexual jealousy infidelity and

sexual jealousy and it's a very powerful emotion and it comes online when people fall in love and they form a long-term peer-bonded attachment to the other and so um and so this is one of the they even call it the monster figure in the polyamorous Community like how do we cope with this jealousy because it's not like it goes away yeah and um you know so

sometimes has sex with other women sometimes other men and when I talked to him he says um that he really he doesn't bother him very much if she has sex with another woman but it really bothers him when she has sex with another man uh and then what she says is she she says well it doesn't bother me if he has sex with women but one

time I saw him walking down the street holding hands with one of his paramours and that really triggered her jealousy yeah exactly that is the emotional dimensions of infidelity or involvement with other people are much more bothersome to women than to men in the sexual aspects of the infidelity especially in this case heterosexual aspects are much more bothersome to men and that's reflective of there's a

large literature on sex differences and the triggers of jealousy those who choose a polyamorous lifestyle always have to struggle with um with jealousy with sexual jealousy and they find ways to get around it and ways to minimize its negative impact on their relationship but um the short answer to your question is there haven't been long-term studies to see whether these things actually work out over the

long run and I'll mention one other sex difference in that so I know this one woman who was in a polyamorous relationship um and it was and and this I think is often the case that it's the guy who is wants to drag the woman into Napoleon's relationship for the desire for sexual variety I think is the motive behind it and women sometimes go along with

that because they they want to keep the guy that is his mate retention tactic even though you know they're willing to go along even though it's not their preferred option they're afraid of losing him so they go along with it so there's a there's an on average sex difference in that um but this woman that I'm thinking about she was you know visited she was extolling

all the virtues of polyamory or whatever uh and then um then she got divorced from her primary partner they were married and subsequently she got remarried uh and had a kid and it's no longer at all from that moment of the divorce is no longer involved in the polyamorous Community right so my guess is that that's that's more typical but we don't really know sir there

haven't been in a good long-term studies of polyamorous it requires them to be honest too it requires people to be open to talking about it honest about their situation and it's also a much more new pattern in society that is available that is you know something people are sharing more about like what's the reason for someone to have enough discipline to choose someone and stay with

them and stay monogamous and loyal part of it might be that people have to adjust their mate preferences so um so the things that people select on are not necessarily the things that lead to long-term stable happy relationships so so the other side of it just to add a a wrinkle to your question is that there are people who do stay married and do stay monogamous

but they live lives of uh the proverbial quiet lots of quiet desperation where they're and they feel unhappy or unfulfilled or unsatisfied but it's not bad enough for them to leave the relationship and and you know go out back out in the making Market dangerous place to be for it to me not bad enough but also not good enough yes yeah and I think there's there's

a chunk of people who fall in that category uh uh and so they they stick it out even though it's you know and then they get to the end of life yeah they were monogamous they were loyal but I didn't necessarily lead a very fulfilling um life in the in that respect but in terms of selecting like one of the one of the most important predictors

of um marital happiness to studies of married couples is emotional stability and this circles back to another theme that we talked about earlier and um one way to think about emotional stability is um I mean there are other words for moodiness or emotional labability or emotional reactiveness uh or whatever but um the demand it's a very important personality to mention and one way to think about

it is that we all experience challenges and problems and stress and and what happens with emotionally unstable people is they get their equilibrium gets knocked out of whack and it takes them a long time to return to that stable psychological equilibrium whereas emotionally stable people they might get upset or they make you angry or whatever but then they return to Baseline much more quickly and so

that's one key Hallmark of that and what I found so I've studied newlywed couples and married couples and looked at well what predicts conflict in relationships and what predicts you know marital satisfaction and whether they're going to stay together over the long term and this is one of the most important personality herb was that predicts that so if you're if you're with someone who's emotionally unstable

um then you're in for all kinds of problems in conflict and and uh and they're just a net drain they what I saw a high relationship load you know it's um so we have things like um mutation load uh parasite load um you know different different types of loads and there's a concept that I've turned relationship load where someone just is you know it's costly to

deal with this person uh because they're always upset they're always you know raising problems they're just like uh uh you know and that takes time and attention and effort away from other life tasks that people need to do but anyway uh nobody very few people prioritize this personality Dimension when they select mates they they go on or is this person attractive you know are they uh

do they have hot status are they respected by their peers uh maybe in in long-term parabundum mating are they a kind person or a generous person you know do they have a you know a good Suite of personality characteristics but emotional instability is not something you can assess accurately um very quickly and so that's why I tell people you know if you're getting serious about someone

go on vacation to a foreign country where neither of you speak the language and where you have to you know face stresses and strains and get by in different ways and I'm not talking about going to a resort where everything is included and everyone does everything for you I'm talking about like come on that's the only way I do it well uh but but that's not

the way to find out what the personality characteristics of your partner are and and I think that that's it's just one way to very quickly fast-track getting an accurate assay of these personality characteristics um and so um but but very few people place a priority on that in their mate selection and so I think what one way to think about it is we need to prioritize

things if you want a long-term stable happy monogamous relationship you need to prioritize things that are actually going to lead to that um and the things that we prioritize don't necessarily lead to that they may lead to other things um excitement you know you marry someone who's um high in status and gets invited to all the celebrity events or whatever it might be the very exciting

life but it might be a very short-lived life or in terms of the relationship well what's let me ask you what what's the longest relationship you've had um not almost 10 years 10 years actually this is how it's gone 10 years almost five years two and a half years one year two months okay wow wow okay what does that say I don't know yeah I I

laugh and say that the next one is totally the one or it's a week you know yeah well that's that's a very interesting pattern um well so what what do you think accounts for the shift in the longevity of your relationships I think it's putting up with less knowing myself better having more self-awareness and not being willing to uh deal with not being happy always having

options I've always had options you know like you talked about in the beginning that some some women especially more in the past when there was less Financial stability upon both parties you know I've said from the beginning I'm not stuck I don't have children with anyone I don't I can I there's multiple houses I'm not stuck if I'm not happy I just I deserve to be

happy to I don't have to stay okay so so do you think that there has been anything in your pattern of mate selection that has resulted in these shorter time periods or is it are you selecting for the same qualities but they you're just less willing to put up with the that's a good question I I think that um yes is true to the second part

where you said I'm less willing to put up with things but I also think and maybe you've kind of researched around this too but I also think that we we date with a pattern and so this usually is derived from our from our familial situation where in my scenario I learned that you know I was attracting guys that were like my dad because the original wound

of trauma and relationally came from my dad so we moved forward in life and we try and write the original wrong with each relationship but we never can because we're picking a pattern that's just a pattern and it becomes less and less tolerable to us because we like as a as as a being we become more and more aware of it and we're trying to get

to the point where we don't now seek that pattern anymore and that's not a wound to heal it is healed or it is acknowledged and learning that I acted like my mom which was ultimately the most important piece of the puzzle not the dad Dynamic but actually that I acted like my mom that then allowed me to be in these relationships was what gave me more

keys to be able to go okay I can't do that like for me it was being emotionally unavailable for me which meant the way that I treated myself was I was emotionally not taking my care of myself and completely ignoring my emotions myself like I was treating myself the same way my mom was treating me and that was the same way I'm sure her mom was

treating her and you know because it's a pattern and so now my work is to go I am not going to emotionally abandon myself minor child whatever you want to call it because it makes me unhappy and I want to be happy so I have to treat myself with emotional presence and availability so how so how do that how would that translate into your made selections

so have you have you altered the qualities that you look for in a potential mate it created boundaries so you know those boundaries get delayed down pretty quickly and pretty solidly like I'm not going to put up with this this isn't going to work for me as opposed to in the past just moving through life and just going not stating what I needed didn't even know

what I needed and was way too afraid to say what I needed because it might not fit and then they might go so codependency being a part of that too so um I wonder how much of sort of the The Mating mating world is derived not only from sort of the status situation that we've talked about a lot but also trauma yeah well and so but

it sounds like given that emotional availability and expressiveness is very important to your happiness how do you identify those that quality or that set of qualities in a potential mate uh you go through some trials and you go through some challenges and also their ability to share and ultimately share things that are Unbecoming yeah I think that's a good indicator of when someone is emotionally available

is that they they they want your help they re they ask for assistance in some way they they share that they don't have the answer as well as um that they're willing to share things vulnerably that are not so becoming but it's honest and part of their story yeah well and that's a sign of psychological strength someone who's willing to do that invulnerable and chair um

weaknesses if you will yeah yeah so I can't say I have all the answers I'm not I'm by no means uh but it's not like I'm like yeah and all of a sudden I figured it out and I've been married for 10 years super happy uh marriage do you think that this is an institution that is necessary that is um going to remain or be changed

different and have a different opinion of pretty substantial decline in marriage rates over the last even the last 10 years or so I'm inclined to think that it will will remain um it maybe not as um uh at high as high levels or as frequently or with as large a share of the population as has been true historically but I think that what marriage is is

part of that um pair bonding long-term mating strategy Where You Are um sending a signal of public commitment that's what marriage has always been a public commitment you were it's it's less for you than telling the the social world that you are in this committed relationship with this person um and uh and I think that public commitment is is an essential part of of marriage you

know so I mean yeah you can have a happy long-term mateship that no one knows about or you know that you don't public broadcast or we're just we're just dating um but um I think that making that public commitment helps people to want to work through some of the trials and tribulations that all relationships go through I mean you you know and so I think it's

um I think it's here to stay uh I think that it used to be the expectation was that everybody will get find someone and get married and live happily ever after or miserably Ever After as the case may be and I think that you know there are there are more different Lifestyles uh that are available and permissible and so it used to be there's a huge

stigma associated with getting divorced for example yeah um and now there isn't you know I mean everybody's everybody's got married not divorced and so um so but I think it's it's here to stay but but not for as large a share of the population perhaps due to the availability of alternative lifestyles okay well what about the idea that um or the potential that marriage which implies

something legal what if it becomes commitment ceremonies of public awareness right like so you go get married essentially you do all the same things but it's just not a legal thing like it's a ceremony there's Rings there's the sign that you're with you know it's sort of like the the Eternal marker that you were taking there's people there there's there's pictures there's the whole thing it's

just like marriage but it's not legal because that seems like you know like you know there's that sort of saying like can't believe that you know we take this beautiful relationship and then get the go you know get get get the legal team involved like is that really necessary yeah yeah I don't think it is necessary as long as it has that kind of public signal

interesting uh yeah I don't like that I'm not a big fan of the government getting uh involved in personal relationships uh myself so um so but I think the public aspect of the commitment is what's critical interesting yeah I I I um I like that I think that makes sense what ends up leading to like with the study of evolutionary psychology you're essentially you know you're

looking at these patterns of history and how they evolve and I'm sure I'm not articulating at all perfectly for like the correct definition exactly but what I'm really just wondering is how does it change like how what is it that creates a shift in culture and in society that is then something that you go and look back on time and go it changed like this like

what is it that creates those those shifts in culture well that's that's a that's a that's a huge question oh shoot um I mean that we could spend at least an hour talking about that but I think the way that I think about it is that we have this evolved psychology which is just like we have an evolved set of mate food preferences you know this

we we all have taste preferences for uh sugar fat salt and protein and in the modern environment we're just kind of activating our taste preferences um but the modern world is so fundamentally different and is changing at an increasingly accelerating rate especially in the mating Arena where 10 years ago you had a little bit of online dating now everybody's doing online dating or or it's gotten

totally destigmatized is that everybody I know one uh student of mine she said she's literally never been on a date with anyone that she hasn't first met online and this is to me this is crazy because you know I mean you want to meet people in real life uh but but so uh the dramatic shift toward online dating I think is creating a massive cultural shift

um the availability of online pornography and the consumption of online pornography has created a massive shift I think um social media and the um design of social media to capture our attention and absorb our attention and and uh all these things are changing so we're living with this um evolved ancient psychology that evolved for a world that we no longer live in and so there's a

mismatch or Suite of mismatches between the circumstances in which we evolved and the current environment which we live uh and so I think some of these things are are having detrimental impacts like the the huge proliferation of just social media for example um there's some evidence at least that it's resulted in increases in depression and anxiety um uh you know in part because we evolved in

social groups where social relationships are critical to our survival have always been proven to our survival but also to our happiness and sense of well-being and now people have you know a thousand Facebook friends who they've never met but they don't have any real relationships you know where they feel someone is deeply involved in their welfare I think that's actually what's characteristic of a good long-term

mateship is someone who is deeply involved in your welfare and you're deeply involved in their welfare and we don't have that as much nowadays with so much superficial social interaction that occurs through messaging and online stuff and less and less real life interaction and real life relationships so I think that recognizing uh some of these mismatches is critical to solving some of the problems we're facing

with the current changes in in our environment in cultural evolution I love that to care about each other like it's um just really feels like a a macro solution to so many things right now yeah another phrase that I use is deep engagement you know you want to have deep engagement with another person and that's how you know who your true friends are as well as

who a true mate is for you and in the modern environment we have like a million superficial quote friends but a lack of deep engagement so what would signify that deep engagement could you give us all just a couple couple bullet points of what what that looks like so that we can try and go achieve that well that's also a complicated question but one thing is

um what I call uh and this is in the terms of evolutionary psychology and it's kind of a clunky phrase but an altruistic welfare trade-off ratio and what welfare trade-off ratio is is you know say we're in a relationship do I how much value do I place on my welfare relative to your welfare and so a successful relationship is one where um I place a tremendous

value on your welfare and you also place a tremendous value on my welfare so what that means is I'm making sacrifices so instead of let's say I don't know um going to the bar to have drinks with my buddy you need to talk through a problem or whatever that I'm willing to sacrifice going to the bar and having drinks with my buddies because you need me

now and someone you are willing to make personal sacrifices at times for for my welfare and so I think that that that an altruistic an altruistically skewed welfare trade-off ratio is one of the keys to that as opposed to a selfishly skewed welfare trade-off ratio where someone says no I have my needs my wants or whatever and so I'm just going to do whatever I want

and you know who cares about the effect on you if it makes you unhappy then just get over it that's not going to work that's my two cents on on that question perfect I'm sure thank you for deducing it down to something that we can grab onto in this conversation and hopefully someday we have another conversation maybe when this book comes out I'm so excited you're

writing with Chris Chris is obviously super fascinating with evolutionary psychology as well he's um super smart guy he's great with Statistics and loves to dive into the science and the uh you know all the research on things so you guys will be a great team on that yeah I think so it's it's kind of a we have very complementary skills you know more of the basic

scientists who's studied human mating for years and years and years and he is uh super smart and also um well good with Statistics but he's also a very good communicator um he can take findings and studies and communicate them in a succinct and Powerful way that people get the the message and so uh so I have a lot of respect for him and become friends with

him he lives here in Austin yeah everybody you live in Austin yeah everybody lives in Austin so well it's a good place to live well thank you so much for this time and all of this information I look forward to exploring in the future how we've evolved and more solutions yes okay terrific and best of luck between now and F1 the best of luck and and

your amazing life thank you very much okay thanks everybody for listening to the pretty intense podcast today I hope you enjoyed it if you like what you heard today and you want to hear more please click on the Subscribe button