How Attachment Shapes Your Dating Life - with Adam Lane Smith

Today I’m joined by Adam Lane Smith, also known as Attachment Adam, a global expert in attachment theory, author, speaker, and former marriage and family therapist. 

Adam breaks down attachment theory in a way that's easy to understand so if you were ever wondering why a fella acts so all-over-the-place and you simply can't understand him - you might find some answers today. We also chat about some other hot topics, including why women settle for situationships, how women are wired for stability, and the concept of emotional impermanence. If you enjoy a bit of science and understanding what's going on in our bodies, there will be lots of words like oxytocin, GABA, cortisol, dopamine, and serotonin being mentioned. 

No blind date couple this week - sorry guys! More to come soooon. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello. On today's episode of the Dating Orange podcast, I'm
joined by Adam Lane Smith, also known as Attachment Adam.
Adam is an author, speaker, and media personality widely recognized
as a global expert in attachment theory. He is also
a former marriage and family therapist, bringing years of hands
on experience to his work. In this episode, he is
going to talk to me about attachment theory, why so

(00:33):
many women are settling for situationships, how women are biologically
wired for stability, the concept of emotional impermanence, and even
how Adam handles the back at that he gets from
feminists on Twitter all for suggesting that women should be
happy to see their partners at the end of the day. Adam,
thanks Civilian for joining me today.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Very very glad to be here. And I love your accent.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
I love your accent as well. Now, can you give
us some background on yourself how you got into attachment theory, Like,
why do you think it's important?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Absolutely so. I was a marriage and family therapist for many,
many years, working with people who had the most severe
mental health problems. You can imagine. I worked with everybody,
though trust fund families, blue collar families. At one point
they pulled me into the correctional facilities and I was
working with death penalty in mates, and then I ended
up working with a lot of couples and everybody in between.

(01:26):
And what I discovered very quickly was that although in
school they had told us we don't know why mental
health problems start, it seems to be chemical imbalances, so
you need to throw a lot of medication at it,
as is the American way. It turns out that there's
a lot of childhood issues that come in and we
learn painful lessons in childhood that may or may not
be helpful to us, and then we play out those

(01:48):
patterns again and again and again in adulthood. And this
just so happens to be something called attachment theory. How
we attach to our caregivers to give our our needs met,
get love, get safety or not really determines how we
tend to date people as well and the people we select.
So if I'm out there is wondering if this is important,

(02:08):
the research over here in America is pretty bad on this.
It says that sixty five percent of people in gen
Z have attachment issues, only thirty five percent maybe maximum,
And that's an optimistic number. Thirty five percent of people
have secure, healthy attachment. Two thirds of you listening to this,
or probably even more of you, to be honest with you,
depending on what platform you're listening on, you probably have
attachment issues or you're going to date people with attachment

(02:30):
issues and that's going to cause a lot of disaster.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
What type of attachments are There's three? Is it?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
There's three and then a blend of two, which is
the fourth kind of there is secure attachment. I've got
five kids myself, so I'm raising them. When I talk
to them, I say, Okay, if you have a problem,
you talk to me about it. We will solve it together.
If you have a need, tell me about it, we
will find a way to take care of it. If
if you make a mistake, I'm not going to yell
at you or scream it. You'll all work with you
to make it better. If there's a problem, we will

(02:58):
solve the problem together. If there's conflict. In other words,
we will still be a family. If you can work
with your kids like this, or if your caregivers work
with you and teach you that, you will be cared
for and loved and people will be reasonable, not perfect,
but consistent and reasonable. Then you can develop something called
secure attachment, where you believe most people will be reasonable
and consistent, and you go out and expect that from people,

(03:19):
and then you don't settle for less. So you tend
to signal differently, You talk differently, you ask more questions
on dates, You push a little bit more personal matters
to make sure you're compatibility tested. You hold off on
sex and intimacy a little bit longer. You do a
number of things that are different, and you signal differently
to the secure people, So they sort of segregate off
into this pool. They get married a lot younger, they

(03:41):
stay together a lot longer, They sort of distance themselves
the other pool. If you grow up and you get
love and consistencies and safety, and then it's ripped away,
and then you get love and it's taken away and
love and it's taken away your parents. Maybe they three
in daycare way too early and they didn't mean too
but maybe you were in their way too fast and
you barely saw your parents because they were working and exhausted.

(04:02):
A lot of parents are struck with this. Maybe you
were in the intensive care as an infant because you
were born premature for a couple of weeks, and maybe
you were in the incubator sort of thing and afraid
and alone in there. Maybe you had an abusive parent.
Maybe you had an absent parent. Maybe your parents were exhausted, traumatized, stressed, depressed,
distracted endlessly by a phone. Maybe they just yelled at

(04:23):
you a lot and put you in your crib because
they didn't know how to deal with your crying because
they were so messed up, whatever it might be. If
you got love and it was taken away, got love
and it was taken away, you form an addiction behavior
and a learned helplessness behavior to this bonding hormone very
important called oxytocin. Oxytosin is the love hormone that we
release when we feel safe and loved and cared for.

(04:46):
And these children they get it and it's ripped away,
and they get it and it's ripped away, and they
form this terror of something is wrong inside of me.
I am not good enough. No one will ever love me.
I don't deserve love, So I have to earn approval
from other people. I have to find people who need me.
I have to be approval seeking. Have no boundaries make
other people feel good, and I have to look perfect

(05:08):
and be perfect. This is anxious attachment style, obsessive fear
of abandonment. The other side can also be true if
you're around parents who are hurtful, screaming at each other, fighting, distant, cold,
and aloof and you never really get that oxytocin bonding,
not really, or if the people around you are chaotic
and your brain recognizes, no, no, no, this isn't me,

(05:28):
this is you, guys, there's something wrong with you, and
I need to keep myself safe from other people who
are causing problems. I can't let anyone in because they
make my problems worse. Then you can form what's called
an avoidant attachment style, where your sympathetic nervous system, your
fight or flight goes way up. It actually blocks your
oxytocin receptors. You do not get oxytocin for most of

(05:49):
your life. Because you don't get that oxytocin, you don't
get what's called GABBA gamma amminobterriic acid. GABA shuts down cortisol,
So your cortisol is now unregulated because you have no
GABA oxytocin. So you have to white knuckle it and
be a hardcore survivalist army of one lone wolf sort
of person. These people are very very good in finance,

(06:10):
in work, in logical thinking and making plans, risk assessment,
but terrible in emotionally intimate relationships because they've never felt
emotional intimacy or closeness. Ever, they have no idea what
it feels like. They can be manipulative, or they can
be much more ethical and like live and let live,
but they just don't understand closeness at all. It's just
terrifying to them. That's avoidant attachment. And then people listening

(06:33):
are probably asking, can I be both? Yes? The blend
of both is called disorganized. Sometimes you'll see it called
fearful avoidant, but disorganized means cannot be neatly organized into
either camp. I am both anxious and avoidant, depending on
who I'm around and how stressed out I am. When
people love me and want to be with me, I
flip to avoidant because I know I'm gonna screw it up,
so I sabotage my relationships and I run screaming. But

(06:55):
if they don't want me, I am approval seeking, craving
and desperate and I will chase that person to get
their approval until the end of the earth. So then
you'll flip back and forth, hot and cold, hot and cold.
So there's an overview of the attachment styles.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Avoidant, anxious, secure, and then the mixture of the yes,
okay for right. I guess youa my friend I was
over in her house the other night and I told
her that I was doing this podcast with you, and
she was really interested in it because she said that
she has recognized that she is definitely anxiously attached and

(07:30):
she's always attracted to men or sticks with men who
are avoidant. Is this like a common thread that goes
on and what is she meant to do?

Speaker 2 (07:41):
One hundred percent? This is probably the most common pairing
is anxiously attached women who feel not good enough finding
men who don't know what love is. Those men come
into the relationship and if they're ethically avoidant, let's assume
they're not manipulative. Maybe she hopefully she picks men who
are at least ethical and not horrible women. If you
if I hope, if not, just if not, you know,

(08:03):
give me a call, we'll work on it. But if
he's ethical, then what's going to happen is he walks
into a relationship. It says, okay, I have I don't.
I don't. His brain doesn't understand oxytocin or intimacy. It
doesn't understand gabba. It doesn't get that there's another bonding
hormone called vasopressin that men have more receptors for. When
we solve problems together, we release vasopressin. He won't have

(08:26):
that because his brain says, hey, I can't. I can't
solve problems with people because they make it worse. So
when there's a problem, I pull away, I solve it
silently by myself. I don't speak to you for two weeks,
and then I come back and pretend everything is fine,
even though I had to solve a problem by myself
and arbitrarily and I made a decision for you kind
of thing. And he won't have much serotonin either, because

(08:47):
serotonin is produced in the parasympathetic nervous system when you're
when you're calm in the rest and digest mode. In
the gut, he is always in his sympathetic so his
serotonin levels are low. Oxytocin gabba everything goes really low.
So then what this generates is just endless cortisol that
just floods. And then he's dopamine dependent. So these men

(09:08):
are hyper dopamine dependent. They need a woman to be
stunningly off the charts gorgeous or dressed to the absolute hilt,
or she needs to be a crazy, you know, lady
of the evening in the bedroom kind of thing. I
don't know what's acceptable to say over an island or not,
but okay, all right, all right, all right, I've known

(09:28):
enough Irish people. I should have done that one. He's
just he's cortisol dependent and dopamine dependent. So what's gonna
happen is he's going to get into the newness of
the relationship. He is flooded with novelty dopamine. It feels great.
She is new, she smells new, those look new. That's new.
Everything is new. It has that new car smell to it,
and he loves it. So he floods her with dopamine

(09:51):
in return, but she doesn't receive dopamine. He floods her
with attention, compliments, kindness, and she gets oxytocin. Now she's
getting all the oxytocin she's ever won. We call this
usually love bombing. He's love bombing. If he's ethical, he's
not doing it on purpose. He thinks he's giving her dopamine.
She's receiving the most love and approval and kindness she's

(10:11):
ever had in her life, and she now believes he's
in love with her emotionally and intimately. He is infatuated
with her temporarily from the novelty dopamine. This novelty dopamine
will burn out at five to seven months. When his
novelty dopamine falls off a cliff, his receptors say, this
is not enough, she's not pretty enough. I work with
celebrities who are dating literal models and supermodels. Even they

(10:34):
are not pretty enough. To make it over that five
to seven months, you have to enhance it. New outfits,
new toys, making videos, introducing other people into the bedroom.
Now it's a group activity, doing all kinds of things
just to try to flood with more dopamine so he
can keep rising to the occasion and performing. Otherwise he
can't even rise to the occasion. And a lot of
men in America now in their twenties and thirties are

(10:55):
experiencing erecked on dysfunction as a result of this cycle
right here. So she becomes more desperate because she's in
wildly in love. At seven months, she feels so connected,
she's ready to get married and have fifty fat babies,
and he is now less attracted her thing's ever been.
Her heart is broken. She's trying to figure out, Please
don't leave me. I knew it. I'm unlovable, I'm garbage.

(11:17):
You finally saw it. I'll do anything. And it begins
this cycle where she chases him. Now he freaks out.
He withdraws because she seems emotionally disregulated. Why is this
crazy lady chasing me? Why are you mad at me?
I gave you dopaminea you gave me some? We should
be equal. Why are you begging for marriage? Why would
I get connected with you when I'm less connected than ever?
He has no concept for the real intimacy that she's

(11:40):
feeling and seeking, and she feels like he's abandoning her
because she's not worthy of him. This is the cycle.
I'm sure I'll pause for breath. You've probably seen this
cycle many times, right.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
The things are going really well and then he kind
of just dropped off a cliff, not giving her the
original attention that he was at the start. Then any
little bit of anything that they do so like, for example,
if he was to like then give her a compliment
or like, I don't know, do something charming, keep a
holding the door open for anything like that, and it

(12:12):
keeps her going.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
It's possible, if it's a two month cycle, that these
men she's selecting might actually be the disorganized type. The
avoidant men don't usually jump out on you at two
months like that. These are situationships, so it's possible she's
only connecting with guys who are the most damaged, really
more manipulative type, men who are really fearful of relationships.

(12:39):
Although they would never use the word fearful, that's really
what it is. It's a massive trauma response to human relationships,
so they are preventing it. But if she's settling for
situationships without even asking for more, and she's just grown
used to that and that's all she thinks she deserves,
she's jumping into men who have no boundaries and won't
respect her boundaries, and then she's not playing and expectations,

(13:01):
and the moment she starts to ask for anything, those
men definitely going to freak out. And run. That could
be the more manipulative avoidant men. Or it could be
that they are disorganized type and that she is flooding
them with love and connection and they are getting oxytocin.
Now they have a process it's called an oxytocin phobic
response where if she makes them feel connected and they

(13:22):
feel too good, they will run away from her because
they're afraid of getting too close to her because it
feels like terror. So she might be.

Speaker 1 (13:29):
Agree with that. I would say that she'd be quite
a nice like a girlfriend. She would be very nice
to them and you know, compliment them and give them
really good feedback on their work. A lot of them
would work in the creative industry, so does she. So yeah,
I could see that that would be an issue. But luckily,
now she's realized that she is anxious, anxiously attached, so
she started doing work and recognizing these patterns.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
I wonder a little bit, so this is one of
the limits with attachment theories. It was, I've updated the field.
I've updated it to create eight attachment styles. There's two,
there's two split off from each one. I've split each
one into two, and disorganized has a blend. Now a split.
There's what I call loud disorganized, where it's men who

(14:13):
can't be in relationships. They run extremely hot and cold.
They crave your love up front, and the moment you
give it to them, they run screaming from the building
and jump out the window and light the place on
fire while they're at it. Then they come sneaking back
in later because they're lonely and hurt, so they come
back for more love and approval after a week or two,
and they when things cool down and they get embarrassed.

(14:33):
But there's women who've been largely ignored and they kind
of had anxious tendencies, but they didn't really fit anxious patterns.
They're much more stable than that. They're great at jobs,
very logical, very self reliant. From the outside, if you
didn't see the romance life, you would think they had
everything completely together. But they've experienced a lot more abuse

(14:54):
and so they're used to wild chaos and a lot
of them will settle for situationships. Call it quiet disorganized.
They because they had so much abuse and so much
trauma as a kid, their fight or flight is gone.
They don't have a fight or flight response. They don't
they don't fight tooth and nail. But they also don't
run away. They have a freeze response. They've gone down
to the fawn or freeze, So when someone asks something

(15:16):
of them, they just sort of freeze. They don't know
how to get close. They don't know what people expect.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Is this, is this?

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Maybe what she's done?

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Do you think it could be? It could be that?
And I say, a lot of people listen to this.
It will probably feel very familiar to a lot of
women I think who have Like I hear it all
the time on on my TikTok, where women say, you know,
they accidentally got into a situationship because they thought that

(15:43):
it was going somewhere and then it turns out that
he never had that intention at all. She was two
months in. She thought it was going to be boyfriend
girlfriend and then it's like, oh no, never mind. He
just looks at me like something to write, and that
was it.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
I talked to women who have been in eight year
situation ships who write to me and say, Adam, do
you think he's ever going to ask me to be
his girlfriend? Women are waiting and settling for a lot
of things they shouldn't, and that's that's part of the problem.
If a guy wants a marriage and a commitment, he'll
talk to you about it pretty quick. If it's if
you're just rolling into it, odds are good. He doesn't
want a connection.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, and like the advice that you would give, Like
if I met somebody who was avoidant, I wouldn't work
on them. I just don't care. I would just cut
my lasses and run like there's nothing you can do.
You just need to get the fuck out.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Usually, Yeah, if they're more ethically avoidant, if they're open
to having conversations, fantastic. You can build a secure relationship
sometimes with some people who are ready. But if you're
having to chase someone down and make them have the
conversations with you, it's no, don't don't. You can't be
their parent, and you can't police somebody into being secure
or wanting to be with you. A lot of women
fall into the trap of thinking that men are like women.

(16:53):
Women will change for a relationship. If you give a
woman affection, love, kindness, and you adore her, then a
lot of women will try to micro tune themselves to
be better with you and for you and care for you.
Men don't do that. Men only change for circumstances. Men
look for problems and then solve problems. If you are
sleeping with him, feeding him, stroking his hair, stroking his ego,

(17:17):
and pushing your boobs in his face every five minutes,
his brain's not going to say, huh, something's wrong. I
should improve myself. His brain is going to say, huh,
I'm doing everything right. I should never change ever under
any circumstance. So you've got to provide consequences, quite honestly,
and circumstances that he needs to adapt to. That's what
we're going to show you who he is and what

(17:37):
he's going to do.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
And in Ireland, I would say that there's a common
thing that's going on where women are now just deciding
to not not get involved with men. They're just going
to stay single. They're just like fuck this, and you know,
they'll go on the apps, they'll go off the apps,
they'll take breaks. They're just not going to get involved
unless they find somebody that you know, is obviously good

(18:01):
enough and like it's good. I'm always telling people keep
your standards high, like, don't lower them. But if you're
single for what somebody deems is too long, you're considered
like picky or fussy. And the other day a woman
sent me in a picture of an Instagram chat that
she had so she had put up a picture on
like New Year's Eve and said started twenty twenty four single,

(18:25):
ending twenty twenty four single. Consistency is key, do you know?
It's just a joke, like a little meme. And some
man replied to her and said, maybe the issue is
that your standards are too high, And now she ended
up blocking him. Obviously that was the right thing to do,
But like, what's your advice on that for women who
who you know are either getting told that their standards

(18:48):
are too high and that they need to lower them,
or women who I suppose standards are too low they're
accepting too little.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Question. No, this is a fantastic question. The answer is
dever lower your standards. That is never really the answer.
What the problem is that I have seen is with
the rise of attachment issues with that indicates is that
our society is we are responding as if we are
in a social collapse. Now. Women are biologically designed to

(19:18):
seek safety and stability. For a number of reasons, we
all want safety and stability, but women especially are designed
for their nervous systems to need safety and stability in
their environment, access to good resources, someone that they can trust.
Men have a little more leeway with our nervous systems,
but women really need it. And women who do not

(19:39):
have safety and stability maybe not an adequate father figure
or caregiver system, maybe their parents split up, maybe society
is not working the way it should. If they don't
have that, their nervous system is overclocked all the time,
and they have to fall into a very masculine role
of protecting themselves and making that safety and stability for themselves.
Women are not supposed to have to be isolate and alone.

(20:01):
That's not how hunter gatherer brain works and nervous systems
are supposed to operate. So a lot of women quite frankly,
are very terrified and alone and exposed. Then they're looking
not necessarily for a good partner, they're looking for someone
who's gonna help keep them alive. And so their standards
go up because they get hurt so many times by

(20:22):
people that don't do their job and are not an
adequate loving partner, but also because those women are so alone,
maybe they don't even have very many friends, their family
hasn't been there for them. They are so they they
need so much, and not in a bad way. It's
not unreasonable for them to need that much. It's it's
basic biological, neurological needs. One man could not possibly fulfill

(20:44):
all of those needs. Number One, women need each other.
I'm glad that you and just seen have each other,
but women need each other a lot more to be
honest with you and family and safety and connection, and
then men like man is supposed to come in and
add to that.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
I would always say, work on yourself first. If you
find that you're you know, like I would talk to
a lot of people who now I'm no professional, I'm
not anything. I basically went on fifty five first dates
and I documented them on TikTok, and then from that
I got a bit of a following, and now I
have a boyfriend for the last year. He's lovely, he's great, perfect,

(21:20):
But people would ask me for advice, and I'm always saying, like,
you know, fucking hell, Like you know, They're like, oh,
he he hasn't texted me back in a day. He's
he's posting stories on his Instagram, but he hasn't replied
to me. He's I asked him, you know, when are
we going on our second date? And he's like, oh,
I'm a bit busy. Next week, well maybe wednesday, we'll

(21:43):
see how it goes. And I'm like, what are you doing?
What are you doing? Like end that block him? Get rid?
Like there's so many shite men, well and women, But
that's I'm not going from that perspective. I just don't.
Obviously I'm not wasn't dating them, but like, there's so
many shite men. You need to like respect yourself.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yep, it's a man. A man shouldn't be cleaning up
after your emotions if you're hyper vigilant and obsessed. But
at the same time, if a man's interested in you,
he should pursue you. You should not chase you, but
pursue you. You should be a priority. He should be
interested in you. He should be contacting you, talking with you.
He should be eager to see you. Do not settle

(22:25):
for a man who does not act like he's excited
to talk to you, because that's not a man who's
gonna be excited to talk with you. That's fifteen years.
Today is my sixteen year wedding anniversary with my wife.
And she's half Irish, thank you. She's have Irish red
curls all the way down and all my my daughters
all have red hair and it's it's lovely. So I
love Ireland.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
It's I'm gonna have to visit you guys.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Is it now? Is it now? Okay? Well that's that's
my mother's people. I'm half Scottish on my mother's side.
So there we go fight across the aisles. But but
if you want to get to sixteen years, he'd better
be excited to see you. He'd be better be excited
to get that second date going. He shouldn't be like
a poppy dog seeking approval. He should be like a

(23:11):
man who's interested says, look, I've had a great first
date with you. I would love to talk with you again.
Are you available next week? If Wednesday is open for me,
does that work for you? He should be stating his
interest clearly and confidently, and then asking when you are available.
This is what this man should be doing.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
If he's not, then yeah, no, get rid, I always say. Then.
You know, there's a lot of women who I suppose
with every date or every conversation on Tinder or everything
that goes on a little bit of their confidence chips
away a bit more, and I say that you need
to delete the apps, stop dating, and like, take up
a hobby, go running, Like just literally do anything, make

(23:52):
some friends for yourself, go to the cinema, literally, do
anything at all. Then being so obsessed about finding a man.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
You know how women use to find men in a
much better way. Do you know the buars?

Speaker 1 (24:04):
No, that's how we met with bars.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
No, no bear traps, they would use bear traps. No.
For all of human history, women have found men through
their family and friend network, even back as far as
nineteen ninety five, you know, ten thousand years ago, they
sixty five percent of couples, at least in the US,
were we're finding partners through family and friend connections. Now
it's only twelve percent. Twelve percent of women find connections

(24:28):
through family and friends. And this is part of the
problem is when you don't date pre vetted men, you
don't know what you're getting. Number One, you have no idea,
You have no data on this random guy. He's some
dude that you found in the forest, and you're like,
I guess you could be my husband. That doesn't work
that way. You have no information, so you have to
figure out everything from scratch. Women should not have to

(24:49):
deal with this. You need somebody that's come through your
family friend network, so they have five, ten, twenty years
of data about him and they can talk to you
about his patterns, his behaviors, his tendencies, especially when he's
stressed out. How does the act? But number two, when
he knows the people in your network and they know
him and his friends and family, he is now pressured
to treat you with some level of politeness. Not all

(25:09):
of them will, but he is pressured to or he
will be shamed by his community. These are the men who,
at least they're not you know, they're not pulling their
pants down on the first date in the parking lot
kind of thing. These are not the guys sending you
in appropriate pictures that you don't want. These are not
the guys you know, calling you every bad name in
the book just because you won't have a second date.
These are not the men ghosting you usually either. These

(25:30):
are the men who at least will be reasonable and
polite because everybody knows them, and they will have social
backlash if they don't do it well. The problem is
that a lot of women don't have family friend networks
number one, and if they do, they don't know how
to talk to them about. Hey, please find me somebody,
blind date right, blind date match, make me find me

(25:50):
somebody somewhere. And if their network is not healthy, then
they just say, well, I guess it's doomed. You need
to be expanding that network. Everybody out there, please expand
your network, because if you're lonely or afraid, your friends
and your family networks. If your family's not great, then
your friends, your friend and community is what determines a
lot of your quality of life, a lot of your happiness,

(26:11):
a lot of your safety, a lot of your stability,
your biochemical, neurochemical safety. As women especially, you need a tribe.
You don't need one dude. You know, if you're a
hunter gatherer ten thousand years ago running from sabretooth tigers
in the forest, you don't go find some random dude
and be like, please protect me and I'll do anything
and everything for you. You go to your tribe and

(26:31):
they are protective and safe, and that's where you can
rest with the people that you trust, not some radom.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, I'm matchmaking and setting up friends like it's definitely
not done anymore. I don't know why people don't do it.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
I match making, Yeah see there, okay, everybody out there,
she will help you, just just the assistance. But no,
it's family and friends. It's because people don't have family
and friends anymore. They're disconnected from the attachment issues. They're
shy about it, and they're ashamed to ask. They feel
like a failure if they have to ask for help,

(27:05):
which is stupid because this is the number one thing
humans have always done. Or their family and friend networks
are not healthy, and they don't know that they can
go make more friends and more connection and network. They're
afraid to do that or don't think they can, so
they just say, oh guess, oh well, I guess I'm doomed.
So it's a helplessness. Go go make community, like you
said a moment ago, brilliantly, Go out, get a hobby,

(27:27):
build a community, talk to people, engage, grow learn. As
you do that, you're going to either find that like
amazing old lady who sits in the corner and adores
you and then has the perfect grandson who is your
your dream man, that all he does is work, and
he works, he takes care of his grand and he
loves her and like he will never go to a

(27:47):
bar or tender, so you will never meet him. And
he's been waiting and get married, but he hasn't talked
to women like she will. She will help you find him.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
Are you thinking that women should go to meet or
to get these kind of communities? And I would say
there's a culture between America and Ireland there. You would say,
I feel like the church is a big thing over
there where people will meet other people through the church.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
I say religious groups, but not necessarily the church itself.
If you join like a Bible group or something like that,
a Bible readings group, but honestly, discussion groups. Go to
discussion groups, those are making a big comeback. Go to
hiking groups. Go to places where you can learn skills,
but their group skills. Those are usually very useful. What's

(28:37):
fascinating is volunteering. Volunteering areas where you are putting in
time to help other people. Maybe it's a cancer volunteer group,
something for babies who are born premature for their health.
Over here in the US we call it March of Dimes.
Getting involved in organizations like this number one not only.
I mean, maybe you'll meet a gorgeously hot guy right

(28:57):
there who's like, man, I wish I could just find
a wife and get married. Maybe, but maybe you meet
his mom, maybe you meet his sister, Maybe you meet
his best friend who's married but has this great guy
on the side to connect you to go there and
make connections with people and just meet these people. Number one,
you're gonna make friends. Number two, these probably are gonna

(29:17):
be people who share some of your values or your desires,
your beliefs, your hobbies, so you can connect with them.
And number three, as you put the word out that yeah,
I'm single and i'm looking for I'm looking for a husband,
don't say I'm looking for a man to date. I'm
looking for a husband. If you know somebody, please let
me know. I'd be happy to connect with somebody. When
you meet five, ten, twenty people and you have twenty

(29:39):
people matchmaking for you, that are good people with good
hearts who share your values, your hobbies, your interests. Now
you've got an army. Now you've got help.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Like run clubs, they've made a big comeback. That's another thing.
I suppose anything like sailing rowing, there's all sorts of
clubs that people could join and like you're not. I
believe you're not a great fan of the because I
had heard on one of your videos before. High quality
women are not on Tinder and are not on social media,

(30:08):
which I find very interesting.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
Now, high quality is a very specific term because people
ask me that and they say high quality meaning ready
to get married, and a lot of women out there.
You probably are sweet and wonderful and you're on Tender
and you bristled when you heard that, and that's fine.
I'll say it again. You probably are not ready to
get married, and that's one of the reasons you're on
Tender looking for that, because you probably don't have a community.

(30:32):
You are probably looking for a man who's going to
adopt you like a puppy and save you and try
to make you feel safe and comfortable. And you're looking
for a man who's going to regulate your nervous system
for you. And you have nothing going on in your
life except him, So if he marries you, you will
collapse into depression and be miserable as you're married, because
you're going to be eaten away by confusion, fear, and insecurity.

(30:53):
You are not a bad person, by any means. This
is not to criticize you, but you probably are not
ready to get married. You usually the case.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
To be able ready to get married, like you'd be
assuming that you'd be going out dating this person for
two or three years or whatever before you would actually
get married.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Maybe to get married, meaning if you're married. Okay, that's
not the finish line, that's the beginning, that's the starting line.
What do you do next when he go? If he
goes to work, do you go to work too? Do
you have separate jobs? Are you going to be a
stay at home wife or a stay at home mom?
Do you want to do that? Are you going to
if he goes out with his friends? Are you going
to wrap yourself in a shawl and sit by the
window sobbing until he comes home because you have no

(31:33):
one and nothing? Are you going to go out with
your friends? Well, you have a thriving wife. Do you
have hobbies and interests outside of him? Do you regulate
your own nervous systems so that when you are upset
and sad, can you manage yourself a bit? Or does
he have to manage every feeling you have for you?
Are you constantly consumed with fear, in security, sadness. He

(31:53):
didn't hold my hand in the last twenty minutes, so
it must mean he doesn't love me anymore. He hasn't
complimented me. He's sitting at the other end of the
couch watching the movie with me. But I texted him
something and he didn't check it. That means he doesn't
care about me. He hasn't responded yet. Is he just
at work or does he not love me? It's getting
married is believe me, It's the beginning of the beginning

(32:14):
of the race. It's not the yet.

Speaker 1 (32:15):
Those are the type of women who would be on Tinder,
that they go hand in hand, that a normal woman
couldn't possibly be just out there trying to cast her
net as far as possible to find a decent man.
I think that that's like a cultural difference again, because
especially with COVID, we with people not going out and

(32:38):
I would say bars, in nightclubs, like pubs, like the drinking.
There's a big drinking culture in Ireland and lots of
people would have met each other in the pub and
that all kind of disappeared after COVID. It was like
people weren't used to approaching each other anymore and confidence
kind of went down, and then there was a huge
spike in the use of dating apps during COD So

(33:01):
I just feel like it's it's just looked at as
another avenue. But I think that for you or a
lot of people maybe in America would look at it
as the type of women who go on here for
the streets.

Speaker 2 (33:15):
Well, it depends, it depends which app specifically, because here
in America, tender is known as the go on there,
sleep with people app and that's not all. It's force, certainly,
and a lot of the women are not on there
for that at all. But the women who typically are
more connected and more looking for a deeper experience generally

(33:37):
use more apps in America here like Hinge Hinges are
really good who in America Bumble is In America, Bumble
has a connotation of being the place where women who
have the most trauma go because they're afraid of men,
they want to control the experience, and they're more avoidant.
So a lot of the avoidant women will or traumatize

(33:58):
women will use Bumble more. And Bumble is actually having
some massive difficulties in America where they started off being
the place where women have to make the first move,
but women won't. So there's no very few connections happening
on Bumble. So Bumble is now having to change their
entire model over here in America because it isn't working
so here in America. Typically Hinge is the good one

(34:19):
right now, where a lot of women who are marriage
minded go to Hinge, a lot of women who are
looking for look, I just want someone to pay attention
to me, and everybody seems to be on Tender, So
I guess I'll try it. Or I just got out
of an eight year relationship. Maybe I'll try tender and
see because it's real fast, it's super easy. It's not
that they're for the streets. I'm not gonna certainly say that,

(34:40):
but I will say I will say I've met plenty
of women. Plenty of my coaching clients come in and
they're like, Yeah, I was on Tender. I found my
last boyfriend. Some of them got married from Tinder. But
they are consumed exactly like I just described. They're consumed
by anxiety. It's not that she has slept with every
man in America. It's she is a very sweet, kind,

(35:02):
wonderful woman, got on Tender hoping someone kind of will
like adopt her. Marketed herself on Tinder, almost like an
Amazon product. He picked her up, and then they got
married fairly quickly. And now she's just consumed with unhappiness
and doesn't know how to live her life in any way,
shape or form. She jumped into the marriage. It's like
a dog chasing a car and now she caught the

(35:23):
car and now she doesn't know what to do because
the car is about to back over her. So again, Tinder,
the connotation of it here in America is different. The
pub thing exactly, the bar thing. Here in America, you
do not want to go to bars to meet a partner,
because bars is where people go when they are depressed.
They want to get really drunk, they want to have
sex in the bathroom. It's gonna be a different person
every couple of nights, and you go there, like you

(35:46):
don't go to bars to find a quality partner in America. However,
the pub scene over over overseas is very different. You
guys have a thriving cultural experience of pubs and everything
very very different from here. So I would I would
never apply that standard over to Ireland.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Yeah, things can be different, Like I suppose I I
met my boyfriend actually through my social media as in
the dating orange social media, not my real one, and
he had been he was on all the dating apps
as was I at the time, well Tinder, Hinge and Bumble.
But yeah, I suppose people do think that Tinder is

(36:23):
the one that's more for meeting somebody to have sex.
But I always kind of looked at it as actually
the most men are on Tinder, and I think if
there's people, if there's men who are feeling a bit
uneasy about joining apps and they want to make the
first step into it, it seems that Tinder was always like,
there's way more people on Tinder, So I always thought

(36:43):
that the chances were greater, but actually probably the chances
of finding.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
It's too easy, though, That's that's the problem. You make
it too dang easy, and then any any guy can
get on there. You need to make it. Ladies out
there need to make it a little more difficult for
a man to to date them. Women make it way
too easy for men to date them. And I don't
mean have sex with I mean date the women who
are like, Okay, you just want to sort of have

(37:09):
me around and we won't even discuss relationships, it'll be
a situationship. Okay, I won't even mention it. Women make
it so dang easy for these men, and the guys
that will do that with you are not usually the
men you want to be with. The men you want
to be with are waiting for you to say, hey,
I'm looking for a relationship. Are you looking for a relationship,
because that's all I'm going to settle for. And he goes, hey,

(37:31):
that's what I want too. Sounds like you take a
relationship seriously. I do too. And those guys it's refreshing
to them when you have a boundary like that. It's
refreshing to them when you know what you want and
you say it. My wife very quickly. We got engaged
at two weeks because she was so clear and direct
with me about what she wants. Yep, two weeks we
met through friends. We met through friends. Her best friend

(37:53):
was dating my best friend. I said, this someone.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
They know each other before that, though, had you been
around at all?

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Not at all? Two weeks our best friends knew each other,
knew us, they were dating. They said, hey, we have
someone for you. We got connected. I said, look, I
got out of a bad relationship a while ago. I'm ready.
I want to get married. I'm not going to play
any games. She said, wonderful. I want to find a
husband and start having babies. I want to start my
own business, and I want to have a husband for life.

(38:21):
And I said, hm, let's talk about our values. Talked
about our values, talk about life goals, our religious faith.
Everything clicked. I said, you are too good. I am
not letting another man scoop this up. You are going
to marry me. I didn't even ask, I told, and
she said okay. So two weeks we got engaged. We
married at eleven months, so we dated for eleven months total.

(38:43):
We did. Yeah, definitely, we dragged it out, but we
just hit today as our sixteen year wedding anniversary. We
have five kids, so I know that this system works.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
We are indeed, are you both of you very good?
Can one person change from one to the other like it?

Speaker 2 (39:04):
You must. I grew up with really bad attachment myself.
I fixed it when I was about twenty before I
met her. I married her when I was twenty two,
so really really good twenty.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
Two you're only small babies?

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Well it made it work, but yeah, no, I was
not securely attached growing up. You must fix your attachment.
And that's why, that's why I'm not here to judge
anybody when when I tell women you're not ready to
get married yet, it's it's not that you're never going
to be and it's not that you're bad, it's not
it's not that how you grew up has messed you up,
and you're and you're you're worthless, not by any means,
not at all. You could be quite spectacular, but growing

(39:41):
more secure where you can tell a man, hey, no,
thank you, I'm not interested. Where you can tell a man, hey,
I'm only going to spend my time and attention on
you if you're willing to commit to me the way
that I want you to. If you're willing to just
tell a man what you want and ask what he wants,
you could be polite and wonderful. No need to be
mean about it. A lot of women think that it's
either doormat or be mean a raging bitch. Dormat or bitch,

(40:03):
that's the two most So they're like, I don't want
to do that, so I guess I'll do this. Then
they settle for situationships no be the woman who knows
what she wants but is polite and friendly about it.
And and that's where you'll find a husband and Joe.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
I hear as well women talking about narcissists, and I
feel like that where it has really spiked everybody. If
you meet an arsehole, everybody's calling them a narcissist, Like,
can you clarify what exactly it is. It's actually a
bit of a pet peeve of mine because it is
like they're horrible, like actual narcissists. It is a thing
that can be like diagnosed.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Yes, listen, I used to work with death penalty inmates
who would kill people and tell you that it was
their fault or her children and tell you it was
the kid's fault. These are narcissists. These these are brutal,
savage narcissists. And not all of them are murderers, but
all of them are awful. So real narcissistic personality disorder.
It's only maybe one to two percent of the population
unless everyone on the planet is dating the one to

(41:00):
two percent people, which is not happening. But you can
have avoidant attachment style that is very manipulative and you
have a negative view of other people. Then you view
that other people will hurt you if they got a chance,
so you can justify doing hurtful things to other people
in defense proactively, but not fall into a full personality disorder.
It's not about viciously brutalizing other people. It's about gaslighting behaviors,

(41:25):
stonewelling behaviors in relationships you refuse to cooperate. That's manipulative,
avoidant attachment style with narcissistic traits, and a lot of
people see that, but they're coming from the anxious side,
so it makes it feel ten times worse because they're
used to getting brutalized by this side. They're used to

(41:46):
being told they're unlovable. They already feel unlovable. Now it's
confirmed to them in their eyes, and they are hurt
over and over and over. And when I started talking
about attachment theory years back on the Internet, no one
would talk about it. So I started teaching about it
and about it, and now everyone everywhere wants to talk
about it, which is cool, but unfortunately a lot of
what they do now they learn just enough about attachment

(42:08):
theory to get in trouble. They go on and then
they talk to these injured really wounded women and say, look,
you're not the problem, which is good. You're not the problem.
He's the problem. And then that's the problem right there.
He's the problem. He's an unlovable monster who is incapable
of love or affection at all. And you are a

(42:28):
sweet victim, you've been a saint all your life, and
he is an unstoppable nightmare and he is the issue.
And then they ally these women against these men and
start throwing terms like narcissists even though he's here on
the spectrum narcissistic personality disorders here, they're coming from way
over here, so it looks extreme. That's what I think

(42:49):
is happening. It's just enough attachment theory to get in trouble,
and everybody's screaming about it. And the guy's over here
who are avoidant but ethical, they're in the middle getting
whooped on by both sides, and they just don't want
anything to do with anybody anymore because they're so used
to getting demonized.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
There was something else that you said that I found
really interesting, emotional impermanence. And I feel like that's something
I've come across loads in just like friends or men
that i've my boyfriends, and even I've noticed it in
myself when I was I would say teenager twenties. As
I've gotten older, I feel like I've been able to

(43:26):
kind of balance myself out a bit more. But can
you explain that to people, because I'm sure.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Absolutely the absolutely so the best way to describe it.
Emotional impermanence is this, when we are born, when we're babies,
we have object impermanence. A baby does not know that.
When you take their you know, their little teddy bear,
and you hide it in your hand, they don't know
it's still there. They think it's gone. Then when you

(43:51):
show it to them again, it still exists. So we
play Peekaboo to teach them. We put a blanket over
the bear and the baby pulls it off and learns
the object is still there. This is called object permanence.
When I don't see it, it still exists. We also
can develop emotional impermanence if our caregivers didn't give us
consistent love and care. If your mom was hot and

(44:14):
cold all the time, your dad was never present, you
felt like you had to fight for love and approval
all the time and get attention, And if there was
always something slightly off and you had to just be
on guard all the time. You could develop emotional and permanence,
which is if someone is not in front of you
giving you love and affection, and especially if there's a
circumstance where they're not paying attention to you and you

(44:34):
want them to. You text him and he doesn't text
you back for half an hour. It turns into an hour,
it turns into two hours. You don't know where he is,
and you start worrying if he goes out with his
friends and now they're gone and they're at some maybe
some event where he could meet a pretty girl, and
now you're afraid and you're concerned if you haven't seen
them in a couple of days, and you start to

(44:55):
really worry. Do they still love me? Do they still
care about me? Did I set them that I say
something wrong? You see your boyfriend, he just looks irritated
that day, and you think, what if it's me? What
if it's me he's mad at and you ask what's wrong?
He says nothing, and he won't talk about it, and
you know something's off, but you assume it's you. This

(45:15):
is emotional impermanence. The idea is that people are falling
out of love with you all the time, they are
a moment away from abandoning you, and it is it's
the belief that feelings don't last and that you're not
worthy of ongoing love and consistency either. So you have
to constantly make people like you. You have to constantly
refill that bucket all the time of love and approval,

(45:38):
and you need attention to prove that you deserve love
or else you are not being loved. It's a terrible
thing that a lot of women and some men struggle with,
and it's just heartbreaking. It's fixable, very fixable, but heartbreaking
that people struggle with it.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
And they're flipping out. So if they feel like somebody
boyfriend goes out with his friends and you text him
and be like, oh hi, what time are you coming
home or whatever, and then he's hasn't replied and you're like,
what's going on? And then he hasn't replied, and then
you're sending message after your message, then you're saying, actually,
you know, fuck this, don't even bother, don't bother coming home?
And then you're like, God, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.

(46:14):
Will you please ring me? So this constant kind of
spiral ing and then he's like, sorry, I had no reception.
I'm on the way home, and it's.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Like, right, yep, now you have really stepped in it.
Now you're embarrassed. Now you have to apologize. Now you're
even more terrified because now it looks like he is
going to leave you. Because he's gonna leave you, he's
gonna stop on the way home and find a new
girlfriend at the store because you were so awful you
sent him these messages. He's gonna come home with the
new girlfriend in the trunk of his car and say, hey,

(46:44):
I don't need you anymore. Already found a replacement by
and that's how that's gonna go. So now he gets home,
you are super approval seeking. Now you need reassurance that
he loves you. And the problem with emotional and permanence
is that you're suffering. But now he has to constantly
check in and reassure you, and you look exhausting and
needy to him. And if he's avoidant and afraid of

(47:04):
intimacy anyway, then his dopamine is dying and he's less
attracted to you. Now it looks like you're a constant project.
It's not that you're bad, it's that you have created
a self fulfilling prophecy. I am too much for people.
They don't love me. They're falling out of love with me.
Oh no, it's happening right now. Oh no, he's out
of love with me. He's exhausted, he doesn't like me.

(47:25):
I knew it. I'm unlovable. It creates this endless cycle
of women being abandoned over and over and over and
believing that they don't deserve love and that this is.

Speaker 1 (47:36):
So.

Speaker 2 (47:36):
This is anxious attachment style. And this is why I said,
if you're feeling this way, you're probably on tender and
you're probably like, please adopt me, Please don't leave me.
This is usually what I see. So fixing this number one.
Usually becoming aware of it is crucial, so that you
can understand that this is not a real thing. It's
your brain freaking out because you're afraid of being abandoned.
Number two, you'll fix it with friends and family more.

(47:59):
You don't fix it with a man, not first, Not
at first. A partner is way way, way too much
stress and the pressure is too high. You fix it
with friends first, And I have books, I have courses
everything on fixing this, but honestly, it's opening up to
the people around you about your feelings and experiences and
sort of outing yourself as being overthinking and anxious, letting

(48:20):
them know you're not going to do it anymore, and
then asking if you can check in with them if
anything ever goes a little bit sideways, so that you
can just check in and say, hey, you know, I'm
feeling a little worried that you're out and I haven't
heard from you. Please give me a text when you
get this, just so that I can calm down, because
you know how I am being able to send a
text like that to your boyfriend super easy. That's way easier,

(48:41):
Like just shoot me a text when you're good and
then all feel good and he could just say, hey, babe,
I'm good, don't worry, Okay, thanks done, and as he
can do that and be consistent. Number one, he's accepting you,
and you're showing him your imperfections and he's accepting them.
So you're gonna flood with oxytocin. You're gonna learn over
time that you're safe. And then checking in and getting
consistency with with a friend your mom, whoever. All of

(49:03):
that that connection, it feels safer and it begins to
heal you. So that is absolutely crucial that you start
getting that with people.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Stock and X's profiles is something I'd say ninety nine
percent of women have done. Yeah, how are we meant
to get over it?

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Oxytocin is meant to linger. It's a bonding hormone that
is meant to keep us wanting to be with someone.
When you have an oxytocin bond as mammals, you're going
to stay together and raise your children together most likely,
which gives your kids the best chance of survival. So
when you're having a bunch of sex with a partner,
you're oxytocin bonding with them. This is a basic survival thing.
It's normal to stay connected to a partner emotionally. It's

(49:48):
not normal to have the massive breakup cycles that we
have and be so disconnected and alone and fearful all
the time. So Number one is that understand that that
desire is normal. But so when we experien and those
oxytocin breaks, what we are meant to do is get
that oxytocin connection with friends and family. Like I said
at the beginning, and I'll say forever, for as long

(50:08):
as I live. Most women are so alone and so
isolated that they cannot get their needs met through their community.
Women are not supposed to get all their needs met
through a man. Some needs, sure, but most women use
a man. I don't mean use like in a bad way.
They use a man to fulfill all of their safety,

(50:29):
all of their approval, all of their connection. A man
is everything to them, and that is not how a
man should in your life, not at all. And that's
the reason most women are stalking men and excess is
because her life feels so empty without him that she
is unfulfilled. She is emotionally starving, and now she wants

(50:51):
to see what he's up to because she's just so
I can't stop thinking about him. I need a fix.
And then she goes and gets her fixed by stalking
his social media profiles, understanding more about where he's at.
It's it's a process.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
The answer to a lot of women's issues would be,
you know, take a look at your life, have a
look at what's around you, who's around you, and what
you have involved, and don't concentrate completely on having a
man or thinking about them twenty four to seven. But
I'm going to finish up on this next one because

(51:25):
I thought it was quite funny. You got a bit
of hate, was it? On Twitter? From feminists? That happens
all the time, But this one I saw was you
put up a video about this is how all women
should be and it was a woman greeting her husband
at the door, and it was like ring doorbell or whatever,

(51:47):
capturing a few times that this woman was at the
door when the husband pulls up and she smiling and
gives them a hook. So what was what was the
feminist's take on that?

Speaker 2 (51:57):
The feminist take was that her greeting her husband and
joyfully every day when he comes home was essentially emotional slavery,
that she was responding like a mindless dog and a pet,
and that she shouldn't be forced to respond joyfully to
someone who's probably mistreating her anyway. That was the approach
that feminist skid. Well, yeah, a little bit brutal. The

(52:21):
other side of the coin, of course, is that for yes,
I think a woman should be joyful to greet her
her man when she reconnects with him, whether he's coming
home or she's coming home. I think a woman should
be joyful and throw her arms around him and be glad.
I think that a man should throw his arms around
her and be glad to reconnect with her. And I
think he should be worthy. He should be worthy of

(52:42):
that kind of joy. He should be worthy of inspiring
that kind of joy so that when he's around, she
is that joyful. I think that that's what couples should
be to each other.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Like, first, when I look at that, and now I
am a staunch feminist myself, but when I first looked
at that video, I was like, God, that's so typical.
The man comes in and the woman who was not working,
and just like as in it's the you know, the
typical roles here the housewife and the man comes home
and she has nothing else to do except stand on

(53:12):
the doorstep and smile. But then I was like, right,
calm down, calm down, right, I if you just simplify it,
you should always be you should be happy to see
your partner, Like when they come through the door, he'll
be like ah, Like I would want my boyfriend to
be happy when he sees me, Like I understand that
there's times where we're totally stressed from work. Sometimes he

(53:32):
comes in and I'm on the laptop and I give
him a kiss, and I'm like, I'm like, great, that's it.
Back on the laptop, but like I'm happy to see him.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah. My wife when we when we first got married together,
she ran a business and helped put me through psychology
school and graduate school. I worked a job. She worked
Renny whole business, amazing. She went. She got a full
ride scholarship to Harvard Business because she was valedictorian and
her school brilliant, brilliant woman. When we when I got
through my graduate school, when I started building my business,

(54:03):
she retired completely and is a stay at home mom
and now raises and homeschools are five children. It's not
that she doesn't work. Her job is to raise our
five children. They keep the home. But she ran her
own business first and put me through school. So when
I would when she was working, I'd happily greet her
from that work and connect with her. She would go

(54:23):
out and work. I was at home doing the studies.
And that now when I'm working, she happily greets me.
She throws everything aside to come greet me when she
goes out, and I send her away to be away
from the kids for a oud. She goes out for
a couple hours and get coffee or ice cream. When
she comes home, I go to the door and I
greet her because I'm happy that she's home. We should

(54:43):
be joyful to meet our partners and see them again
and reconnect. Animals have what's called the reunification ritual. When
wolves separate from each other in the pack, when they
come back together, they reunify and have a reunification ritual.
They all wag, they lick, they play. It's a reunifyation ritual.
And that's what that woman was doing, was she was
practicing a reunification ritual with her mate as he was

(55:06):
coming home from work. It just so happened that he
was the one going out, she was the one at home.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah. No, it is a nice idea. It's something that
we can all kind of strive for that those will
be the type of relationships that when we see the
other one at the end of the day, that we're
life looks nicer, brighter, where everybody's happier.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Tails should be wagging. That's right, exactly,