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Hey ihr Lieben, ich wünsche euch einen wundervollen Tag. Hier ist Veit mit einer weiteren Episode meines Podcasts „Seelengevögelt – für die Rebellen und Rebllinnen des Geistes“. Nicht wundern, wenn es im Hintergrund heute ein bisschen rauscht. Ich bin gerade seit langem mal wieder raus aus Baden-Baden, oben an der Ostsee. Das tut gut. Heute habe ich eine echte Praline für euch. John Gray ist für mich ein wirklich Altmeister der Beziehung. Er ist vor allem jemand, der sehr tief gegraben hat und sich wirklich speziell mit der Biochemie unseres Körpers auskennt.
Was passiert in unseren Beziehungen und was passiert in der Frau, im Mann? Und gerade in der heutigen Zeit, wo so viele Geschlechterrollen aufgebrochen sind und es gleichzeitig so viel Konfusion darüber gibt:
Hey, was ist denn ein wahrer Mann? Was darf man noch? Was ist eine wahre Frau? Was will Frau eigentlich überhaupt? Warum gibt es in Ehen plötzlich keine Leidenschaft mehr? Was passiert, wenn Frauen ihren Mann stehen müssen? Was passiert im Gehirn des Mannes, wenn er sich nicht mehr erlaubt, einen richtigen Ständer zu bekommen? Über all diese Themen habe ich mit John Gray gesprochen. Geplant war ein 45-minütiges Interview, und es sind tatsächlich zwei Stunden geworden, deswegen haben wir es geteilt. Der zweite Teil kommt dann später.
Das Ganze findet in Englisch statt. Für all die unter euch, die gern deutsche Untertitel hätten, einfach auf meinen YouTube-Kanal gehen. Sucht einfach nach Veit Lindau. Dort findet ihr das Interview mit Bild und deutschen Untertiteln. Ich wünsche euch spannende Erkenntnisse und vor allem konkrete Umsetzung in euren Lieblingsbeziehungen. Danke, dass ihr zuhört.
Dear John, thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me. I would like to start with a big, big thank you because you’re really one of the most important people for me concerning relationships, and you have influenced not only my relationships very deeply but also my work with relationships. Thank you very much.
You’re so welcome. You’re so welcome.
Yeah. So first, I would like to ask you personally, how are you feeling in these crazy Corona times right now?
Well, as you mentioned before, two years ago, my wife died, and I’ve been going through a major healing crisis. It’s very traumatic, a lot of PTSD. She died of cancer, and I was with her through the whole process. Many sleepless nights and much pain and sorrow, but I’ve been coming out of it. So this is nothing. This is not a crisis for me. Actually, I feel during the crisis, for me personally, it’s like a great vacation. So I’m doing fabulous. I can’t imagine, I mean, I don’t even know there’s a crisis going on. I drive my car every day, I go out, I have my convertible, and have a fun time. I go out in nature, I get to meditate four to six hours a day. I’m eating very well, my garden is booming, plenty of time. So for me, it’s a vacation, but I know for many people, it’s not. And so I’m very sorry for them, but I’m doing great.
Thank you very much, John. I guess you have a writing book. On this, well, right now I’m not writing a book, but in my mind, I’m writing a book. A big part of my life is meditation, and I’ve never really written a proper book on meditation. So that’s the one I’m writing. But before that, in my mind, I wrote a book on grieving, which I eventually will write. And so I have several books around my head when I’m meditating. I come across my ideas. The truth is, I’m eager to read a new book from you. That’s why I’m asking. I would like to speak with you about the topics of Beyond Mars and Venus. But first, I would like to go back to Mars and Venus, because it was, I mean, it was a huge game-changer, I would say.
Thank you. So begin with the question. Yes. So in my experience, this book and the great ideas of this book have been misused, for example, for a lot of superficial jokes about, you know, aha, women are so, men are so, and today there are a lot of people who are saying there are no real differences between men and women, this is just educational stuff. So is this book still true? It’s still true. Oh, what happened is that’s why I wrote Beyond Mars and Venus. Actually, it’s kind of why I’m not writing another book yet because I feel I need to continue to promote that book Beyond Mars and Venus. It’s always eclipsed by the success of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and that’s okay. The ideas of Men are from Mars, by the way, the book still sells over a million copies a year. There are very few books 30 years later selling a million copies a year. So even though there’s a lot of what you say, people say, oh, we’re not really that different, there are millions of people who recognize we’re having challenges in intimate relationships and this book has helped us make sense of each other. So yes, there are a lot of single unhappy people who think that men and women are not different. They can make all the jokes they want, but they’re not going to get married and live a happy life. And there are some, there’s the in-betweens who are married, who have a relationship and they’re struggling and they don’t know what to do. And that’s why I wrote Beyond Mars and Venus. Because in Men are from Mars, I’m dealing with a more traditional dynamic of men and women where clearly women are dependent on men for financial support. Now that’s not the case most of the time now. Actually, more women are not dependent on financial support, way more than situations where women are dependent. But when a woman is dependent on a man for financial support, he’s the breadwinner and she’s the homemaker, and they’ve got little children at home and he’s out all day long making money and brings it home. Those dynamics present certain misunderstandings and certain challenges and problems and Men are from Mars is magnificent for dealing with that. But as soon as you get the situation where a woman is also making money, many of the solutions of Men are from Mars don’t apply and many of the insights are not directly related to them.
So let’s take one and look at the difference. One of the ideas of Men are from Mars is that men go to their cave. So men have their cave time. And I’m telling you, even though all these people in the universities are saying we’re all the same, there’s millions and millions of men who all say, John Gray in the cave, I’ve got my cave. Honey, don’t bother me. I’m in my cave, and they’re happy couples because of it. And then there’s the other unhappy couples that go, he shouldn’t go to his cave. And there’s men who go, okay, I’m not going to be like this stereotypical man and go to my cave. And I’m just going to have arguments and fights and cheat on my wife and get divorced. Okay? Because the cave is really, really important. If you have the pressure of providing for your family and you’re working all day long, what happens is you’re producing this hormone testosterone. Now, for both men and women, when you’re making money, when you’re making sacrifices to achieve a goal, when you’re facing danger and risk throughout the day, that kind of pressure of earning a living, which is pressure that stimulates testosterone. If you’re successful, if you’re not successful, then you run out of testosterone. All right? So that’s a very key thing. Now, what’s the difference between men and women always biologically? Is that men, if you’re a happy man, your testosterone levels will be at least 10 times more than a woman’s. Mine are 50 times higher than a woman’s. If you’re very, very successful, you have higher testosterone levels. That success does it. When you approach every situation from the point of view, I’m the man. I can do it. I’ve got the answers. I’m not even driving my Bentley convertible. I’m the man. It’s very funny. I worked hard for this, but I’ve achieved a certain success, which keeps my testosterone up. But even still, when I’m solving problems and being challenged, waiting in line at the airport, being delayed flights, whatever, that’s external stress. That can deplete your testosterone. You’re making testosterone, but you’re depleting it at the same time. Then what you require as a man is you need to step away from working and relaxing, relaxation. Doing anything that you enjoy doing that doesn’t produce stress and challenges you a little. That’s why we have hobbies. A man has his hobby that he does. For me, my hobby is meditation. It’s a major stress reducer. Driving my cars around. I have several cars. It’s so much fun. That’s part of why I like COVID is I just get to go for driving around because it’s beautiful weather where I live, so it’s fantastic. You would think, why would driving the car actually rebuild testosterone? When you’re driving a car, and you’re not in a hurry, you’re just driving your car, you’re actually in danger all the time. A car is one of the most dangerous things you can do. More people die from car accidents than COVID, by the way. We don’t tell people, by the way, you can’t get in your car. This is such an overreaction that we’re having today, but that’s another subject. But driving in your car, you’re in danger, but if you have a good car and you’re a good driver, then you are confident all the time. Confidence is a generator of testosterone, particularly in the face of challenge and danger. And driving in a car subconsciously, your brain knows that you’re in danger. So basically, you’re pumping testosterone into your body the whole time, which is why generally men drive and women sit in the front seat. And when men are not driving and the woman’s driving, quite often you can assess their relationship in that moment. He’s sitting in the front seat. He asks, why is he sitting in the front seat? Because she doesn’t trust him to drive. He’s an unreliable driver. Now, I won’t say it’s true in every case, but in a majority of cases, they’re not having any sex anymore, because men need to have high testosterone levels to desire their wives. If you don’t have high testosterone, what happens is you desire women that you don’t love. See, when you love a woman, your estrogen goes up, and estrogen tends to lower testosterone. So you have to have high testosterone in order to sustain sexual attraction for a woman, for your wife. If you have low testosterone, then you have to have a woman that you don’t love, which is the whole allure of prostitutes, internet sex, fantasy sex, and all of that. A guy cannot get it up with his wife, but he can get it up with a stranger. Why would that be? Because he has low testosterone. So low testosterone, we know that if a man has a heart attack, he has low testosterone. We know that if a man is depressed, he has low testosterone. We know that if a man is angry, his estrogen levels are really high, and his testosterone is too low. This is like, we think of aggressive men as high testosterone, actually not. You could be a high testosterone guy, like very successful guys often do, pout and get angry. But what that is, is when they’re feeling confident, they’re the most wonderful guys. Their testosterone levels are high, because they feel confident. But as soon as they lose their confidence, and they feel insecure about something, that high testosterone converts into high estrogen, and they become angry and aggressive and awful. So this is like an amazing revelation, because people usually associate testosterone with aggression. And actually, it’s not testosterone at all. It’s the estrogen that causes fight or flight. Hormonal imbalance in men is when their estrogen goes too high, and their testosterone is too low. For women, it’s just the opposite. Unhappy women all have low estrogen. And why they have low estrogen, it’s not that they have such high testosterone, but for women, it’s they’re making testosterone. When you’re making testosterone, most of the time you’re not making any estrogen. You could be making testosterone if you’re mothering a child. If you’re mothering a child, you’re like the CEO of the family, but you also love them so much. And there’s a hormone of estrogen gets produced automatically when you’re in this nurturing situation of unconditional love. So when you love and you’re asserting control, that’s your masculine side. You have a, you know, you make sacrifices. Anytime you sacrifice, you’re making testosterone. You’re the soldier going into battle. You’re the hero. You’re the guy that goes to a job that he doesn’t even like doing, but he likes going to work because it’s going to make his wife happy. That’s what we are as men, as these noble creatures, you know, we’re testosterone and we become just the opposite when our testosterone levels go down. And that’s what’s happening today with the gender-neutral culture of men and women is men’s testosterone levels, and you can measure them, are all low. It’s the common feature now for men that even have puberty two years later. That’s when their testosterone goes up five times. It’s a phenomenon which is happening in our culture which is feminizing men and it actually makes men passive and makes them vulnerable to addiction. So what we have is a massive addiction society. Another form of addiction is ADD, attention deficit disorder, same phenomenon in the brain, it’s inhibited dopamine function. All of this starts all around the subject of men are no longer needed to be men anymore. See, when a woman was making babies, she needed a man to protect her and take care of her. If you need me, my testosterone goes up. If I’ve got a job to do, my testosterone goes up. If it’s life or death, I remember when my wife said to me, I feel like it’s like 30 years ago, but I feel like it’s the day I grew up. As my wife said to me, she said, you know, John, I need you. I depend on you. This is the real thing now, but it does something to you. It’s a pressure, but that pressure feels good if you know you can do it. I remember a time in my life, I feel like I think it was like three years after Men from Mars, for the first three years of Men from Mars being number one on the New York Times, and around that time. I did Carnegie Hall, and you know, that’s a big, it’s a status thing. I did Carnegie Hall in New York City. It’s a big theater that famous people do. And so I remember I’m walking out on stage. It’s a sold-out event. The police are outside because the whole traffic situation, there was too much, everybody trying to get in. It was a big success, well publicized. And I’m walking out on stage, right before I got on stage, my sister says to me, she says, John, are you nervous? And in that moment, I remember at that moment, I went, not at all. And then I said, this is what I was born to do. That’s a moment of great accomplishment for anybody. For me, I guess it started late. Some people, they never get it. But it was around 45 for me when I really clearly got this my mission. And there’s no fear, nothing. I’m in the zone. So I went right out in the zone. That’s mission time. That’s the best testosterone stimulator for men.
Anyway, so Men from Mars says that when men are out there making their testosterone, they run out. So they need to go to their cave to rebuild their testosterone. That means to detach, to detach from estrogen production. That’s the way you can rebuild your testosterone the fastest is to detach. Now let’s look at some historical context for this. Because there’s this huge wave of all these women and educators and university things. Oh, John Gray is just making excuses for men to be lazy. I said, no, you don’t get it. You don’t get it at all. Look at the great Buddha, you know, popularized all, you know, learning to meditate. We now know all these people teaching, you know, what are they teaching? Be present, breathing techniques and all this stuff. It’s become scientifically proven that you perform better if you practice meditation. Now, what is meditation? Well, the way Buddha taught meditation is to forget all your problems. That’s what you’re supposed to do is forget your problems. That’s called cave time. Forget your problems. No, no responsibilities. Disconnect, declutch, detach, let it go. Forget it. This is the best thing to rebuild testosterone. Now, interesting, Buddha’s teaching of meditation was rarely taught to women. And I’ve been in India and, you know, I learned, well, I’ve been there 28 times or something, studied with all these teachers and whatever. And generally speaking, meditation was not taught to women then because women were more in their traditional role being on their female side. When women are on their female side, they don’t need meditation. Now they do, because they’re on their male side. It can help them a lot, but it’s a different kind of meditation. And so meditation is more morphed. But in the past, meditation was for getting your problems, for getting your problems. Now, these wonderful meditations are available online for women particularly, but also help men. They’re guided meditations. So there’s someone guiding you. Now you’re going to notice your breathing and now we’re going to go on a journey and now we’re going to feel this and now we’re going to call in the cosmos and we’re going to, all these different people are guiding you in meditation. Well, actually what that is, it allows you to de-stress because it’s producing estrogen. If you’re a woman, it’s producing estrogen. If you’re a man, it’s allowing you to forget your problems and think about something else. But actually, there’s a powerful meditation for men. It’s also just like Transcendental Meditation, which I’ve done for 50 years. I also do many levels higher than that, but that’s a good beginner, is just simply repeating a mantra over and over. What are you doing? Nothing. That’s what cave time is. Do nothing. It’s a non-doing doing. That’s the cave. One of the most beneficial things we can do to reduce stress, and for men, it’s rebuilding their testosterone. Here we have it. Age-old answer is the cave time. I just popularized it, really, the idea of taking time for yourself and also took a religious aspect of it, because you don’t actually have to be meditating. You can do any hobby. You can have exercising as a meditation. Any type of activity, playing a game, if it’s a playful game with guys, where you’re not having to worry about taking care of somebody else. That’s a problem. See, with your wife, our job as men is to take care of our wives whether they admit it or not. They’re the ones who complain the most. Let me say that again. In traditional relationships, women are the ones who complain the most, but now we got these men who are feminized. They complain more than women. They want to talk more than women. They’re like, the women are saying, I don’t get this Mars-Venus stuff. I don’t want to talk and he talks all the time. Makes me not want to talk at all. See, that’s the role reversal and that’s what’s happened today and that’s why I have Beyond Mars and Venus. You know, in Men from Mars,
I said, women need to talk. Men, you need to learn how to listen. Ask questions. Tell me more. What else? All right. Let me understand that. Listening without giving solutions. So that was one of the cliche results that in Men from Mars that became popularized. Now I talk about Men from Mars and people, people go, oh, I don’t need that book. I already know women need to talk. Okay. So that that’s one of the ideas. But then there’s this whole other movement of experience of so many women who are on their male side. They don’t need to talk, but they really do need to talk and they don’t know it. So this is a more difficult challenge. I’m telling people if you’re not happy, you don’t know what you need. You see people sometimes accuse me, how can you tell me what I need? I say, because you’re not happy. If you’re happy, you know what you need. If you don’t know what you, if you’re not happy, if you’re not fulfilled, if you’re not in love, if you can’t grow in love, if you’re not having great sex, boom, it’s not your partner, it’s you. You don’t know what you need. It’s like, I think of it in terms of, you know, at my website, I have a whole wellness section. I have a whole Mars Venus store of nutritional supplements, you know, for better sleep, for better mood, for better blood sugar, for energy, for taking away anxiety. You know, there’s natural solutions for all these things that will help. They don’t do it all. You have to have love, of course, but you have to have relationship skills, but you also have to respect the body. And if you’re already unhappy, you’re nutritionally deficient. If you’re unhappy, you don’t know what you need nutritionally, just like you don’t know what you need emotionally. You think you do, you don’t. And why can’t I say that? Because you don’t know, and I know, because I do it and I help people do it every day. So let’s look at nutrition for a moment. We know for vitamins, you can usually get all your vitamins from your food, right? It’s the problem is minerals is the big problem. But the vitamins, vitamin A, B, C, D, E. Okay, so we’ll talk about all those five vitamins. Let’s say somebody’s sick. It’s because they’re missing a vitamin. Do they know they’re missing that vitamin? No, otherwise they would get it. Done. They’re missing vitamin C, they’ve got scurvy. So you say to yourself, what’s your problem? They say, oh, I’ve got scurvy. I’m bleeding in my lungs. They’re terrible. I said, no, that’s not your problem. You’re deficient in vitamin C. What’s that? I don’t know what that is. Well, I have to teach them what that is. So if you’re not happy, if you’re not fulfilled, if you can’t fall in love, if you keep finding so many women today, just that no man is good enough for them, like they’re so great. They don’t see themselves. When you humble yourself down to your own imperfection, you’re grateful to have somebody love you. But when you think you’re so great, everybody’s no good. Women are so picky today. Now, I’m not saying all women. Oh, my wife’s not at all. But so many women are happy and fulfilled, but so many more women, they don’t even want to get married. You find why you don’t want to get married? Why don’t you want another child? Oh, such a negative point of view. So men are unreliable. Can’t find the right man. You know, no man, you can’t trust them. You can. So many people are happy and fulfilled. What’s wrong with you? They always think, oh, I’m so great. That person’s no good. No, you’re not so great. So I have to humble people down in a gentle way because their egos are so fragile by pointing out you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s kind of like the Christian message, which was very brilliant, which is Jesus on the cross after they persecute him. He says, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Okay. That’s ultimately the easiest way to forgive is to realize they didn’t know what they’re doing. They really don’t know what they’re doing. And that’s because little children are so easy to forgive because they don’t talk. As soon as they talk, it’s harder. They don’t know what they’re doing. Women don’t know what they’re doing. Men don’t know what they’re doing. The first step is to recognize the other sex doesn’t know what they’re doing. But then the higher level of real mastery is to realize if you’ve got a problem, you don’t know what you’re doing. And that’s what Beyond Mars and Venus is about. It’s telling you the solution doesn’t feel natural. When I tell people, you should do this. The people who resist these good ideas, they say, well, that’s not authentic. That’s not real. That’s not what I feel like. I go, oh, you know, so the next time I see some ice cream, I feel like eating that ice cream. I should just keep eating it as long as I feel like eating it, right? Yeah. Oh, I’m so mad at that person. I want to beat them up. I feel like it. I should just go beat them up. You know, oh, that woman’s sexy. Oh, I think I should go say things to her. You know, you know, authenticity is when you’re loving and respectful and appreciative. That’s the authentic self you want to find, not this what I feel thing. So feelings have destroyed relationships today, although when you have a good relationship, feelings save your relationship. When you learn to regulate feelings, you don’t just walk up to anybody and say what you think about them. You don’t walk up and with your partner, you don’t just share whatever you feel when you feel it. You wait until the right moment, you communicate it in the right way, and how dare you, I mean, this is having fun with you. You’re such a good audience. I should stop and have more of a conversation, but you’re smiling so much. But let me just finish this last one. I let you run. Yeah, you let me run. But here’s one, which is, oh, I almost had it. It was really a funny one, which is how dare you not listen to me? You know, it’s nothing, we’re so great, you know. How dare you to ignore me, you know? How dare you criticize me? How dare you have a complaint about me? And summary, and then I’ll let you take back control with the real interview. I’m talking to this guy, and I really, I wanna make sure I’m doing a balanced presentation. And there’s this guy, he says, oh, I’m so positive, you know, I meditate. I’m a positive thinker. I read all this self-improvement books, you know? And I think I wanna get a divorce because my wife, you know, I love her so much, but she’s just so negative, you know? She’s the opposite of me. It’s like a black cloud always brings up the negative. She never does this. She gets upset about stuff. She, you know, complaints like crazy. And I’m so positive. I go, you sure sound negative to me. You have zero love in your heart. Zero empathy, zero compassion, which would drive anybody crazy, which would drive anybody to be negative. Because you have to realize when you resist someone, they will continue being that way and increase. If my wife is being negative and I resist the negative, I am now causing her to become more negative. If she’s trying to change her husband, like you should do this, you should do that, she’s causing him to not do those things. She’s actually bringing down his testosterone. He’s bringing down her estrogen when he doesn’t create a loving space. So we want to give up control in our relationships, but we want to get more, and the way you get more is give up control. This is back again to an ancient Buddhist teaching, which is, let it go. It’s not a big deal. It’s not a big deal. We make it a big deal. I’m talking to women now. I’m saying that if you want your husband to listen to you, preface, anytime you have a little complaint about something, let him know it’s a little complaint. Just say, now I just want to talk for two or three minutes. That immediately he’ll start to relax a little. Then you say, and it’s not a big deal. His stress level will go down completely. As soon as you say it’s not a big deal, but as soon as you raise your voice in order to get attention, are you giving that look in your eyes of disapproval? How could you do that? He goes into fight or flight. As soon as the man is in fight or flight, his testosterone is going down. He cannot hear you. He cannot penetrate. He cannot empathize. You’re taking away his power. You’re kryptonite. Your complaints are kryptonite to Superman. He’s all fired up there. The life I’ll talk with you. Thank you. So John, let’s point it out again, because I think it’s so important in our times. So, so many men in Germany are trying to become a kind of better woman or become a kind of neutral person. You know, like my higher self is it’s not a man. It’s not a woman. So that means if I try as a man to go to the female side, then my testosterone is going low, right? Unless it’s very high. See, if your testosterone goes very high, then you go to your female side, it starts to balance. Okay. But you always have to have a predominance of testosterone. If you’re a man, if you’re a woman, you have to have a predominance of estrogen or progesterone. If you’re a woman, if the testosterone pushes, when testosterone goes down, when a woman goes into fight or flight, she pulls out her sword. She’s on her male side. Her estrogen goes down. Estrogen is produced when you feel, and this is science. We measure that when women can depend on someone, their estrogen goes up. And that’s a dirty word today. Women go, I don’t depend. I don’t need anybody. I don’t need a man. Well, let me create a context for women to need a man. Okay. Like romance. I opened the car door for my wife. I say, no, honey, I know you can open the door yourself, but I’m going to open the door for you and take care of you tonight. Let me do that for you because you do so much for me and everybody else. This is your night to just receive. That’s romance. You see, yes, she can open the door. Yes. Women can do everything a man can do, but you’re a woman. You’re not going to be happy unless you also allow people to do things for you. That’s what femininity is. That’s the part of us allows other people to do things for us. Do I let people do things for me? All the time. Are you kidding? That’s why I’m so happy. I got a whole army of people helping me all the time doing stuff I don’t want to do. That’s my female side. I got that figured out, but I also work hard. See, I do both things. You got to do your male side and your female side. And I want to let you talk. What do you think about that? So that means as a man, I need a certain level of achievement and success so that I can then integrate my female side better, right? Perfectly said. Better than I would say. And a woman needs to develop her female side so she can then integrate her male side without it overwhelming her. Yeah, so I see that a lot of women today have the problem that society is pushing them to stand their own man. So I completely agree with you. There’s a push that women feel like they’re betraying other women. Other women feel betrayed if a woman is happily married and raising her children. My neighbor, I live in a scale neighborhood. My neighbors are two doctors next door. And she went to a very prestigious medical school, her husband’s a doctor, she’s a doctor. She went through all that training and then she had a baby and she quit to raise her child. Now she’s a doctor again, her children are grown up, she’s a medical doctor again, but she quit. And all her girlfriends, all these women who gave up their personal lives to become doctors are mad at her. She said, I lost all my friends, they feel I betrayed them. There’s so much pressure on women that you have to be this strong, independent person. And it’s just too much pressure. So what kind of advice can you give to a woman who is raising her child alone? So we see a lot of cases like this. Yes, so what happens is, there’s no question, women will say to me that the quality of men just aren’t out there. And I go, yeah, there are a lot more feminized men. And so they don’t have jobs, they’re out of work, or they wanna play, or they don’t wanna make a commitment. They have addictions, these are all qualities that happen when men are too far on their female side. Now, what happens to women then, is women are on their male side, they end up being along with children. And overwhelmed and stressed. So I wrote Beyond Mars and Venus for those women who are part of the audience for that, which is if you’re on your male side, if you’re single, whether you have a child or not, just a single woman today, having to earn a living on your own, that puts you in testosterone land. So what you have to do if you want to find balance is understand clearly what it thinks I can do and attitudes I can work on that will bring me back to my female side while I’m also being this man every day and being independent, being on my male side. How can I balance the two? And the answer to that is, since you asked the question on your single one with a child, let’s just address that for a moment. Many women, when they have a child, they feel like, okay, we don’t have a father for you, so I have to be both parents for you. So I have to be even more there for you than I would have been. No, that’s not that. You need to find a man in your life so your child gets the message that they don’t have to be there for you. Because if you have children and you’re a single parent, they go, oh, mom needs my love. The child should not feel responsible for you. So you have to do something that’s counter-nature. I mean, it’s instinctive. You feel like, oh, the child doesn’t have a father. I need to be the father and the mother. I can’t go out and be having fun with another man. I need to be there for my child. I have to give up on that. No, the best thing you can give that child is the child sees mom is dating a man because already you want to give that child a message that men are good because most of the time when you’re a single mother, you don’t have an idea. Your ex is not that reliable, isn’t that good or whatever. That child is made from a man and a woman. That child has a male and a female side, whether it be a boy or a girl. They need positive messages about men. She makes sure that she doesn’t ever blame her ex for any unhappiness that she has. Otherwise, that’s giving a message of negativity towards men. The next thing, she needs to work hard on her relationship skills in order to have a good relationship with a man. That’s the best gift you can give to your child. Children need to have a positive view of masculinity. If you’re the mother, they don’t have any view of masculinity except that it abandoned you. That’s a weakness inside of that child that will happen in a trauma inside of that child. I could talk for hours about the different ways that that could happen. The bottom line is that a child needs to see mom and dad are happy together. If mom and dad aren’t happy together, then that child needs to see mom happy with a man. A man provides certain emotional needs to a woman that a child cannot provide. As soon as there’s no man providing that for a woman, the child will start to feel, I’ll be your man. I’ll take care of you, mom. I’ll comfort you. I’ll be your best friend. I’ll do these things. She needs, as adults, we have all these different needs. Those vitamins again, A, B, C, D, E, and there’s certain vitamins a child cannot provide, but they will try to. It puts a pressure on them so they lose their childhood trying to be your spouse. Although it seems like you’re being selfish, actually it’s the greatest gift to your child, which is to take the time to date men. The dating process. This is for all the single women. That’s in Mars Venus on a date. In that book, I talk about the bottom line is when you date, don’t look for the ideal partner. You’ll just be disappointed because you’re not yet the ideal partner. You’re not going to find the ideal until you become the ideal. You just failed in your other relationship. Let’s upgrade your skills. What you do when you date is you stop looking for the perfect person because that’s desperation. It’s like you have to be perfect, otherwise I won’t be happy. We got to get out of that mode that ruined your first relationship where you depended on someone to be happy. Let me underline that concept. We should never depend on our partners to be happy. We have to be happy ourselves. Then we can depend on our partners to make us happier. So that’s what you need a man for women. You need a man to make you happier. You don’t need him to be happy. You don’t need him to make money, but you do need him to be happier. And because you want to be happier, you’re dissatisfied with him because he doesn’t make you happier. But he can’t make you happier unless you’re already happy. Because if you’re happy, it’s easy to make you happier. But if you’re not happy, you can’t make you happier. So let’s take a lot of those kind of philosophical ideas just into practicality, 80-20 rule. All a man can provide for you is 20% of your fulfillment. You have to provide 80%. And if you don’t have the 80%, his 20% is never enough. You’ve got to provide your 80%. That’s our responsibility. I need to be happy. Then my partner’s job is to make me happier. My wife’s job is to make me happier, but she can’t make me happy. But we think our partners can because at times when we’re happy, all they have to do is something little and we become happier. So we go, all right, you’re supposed to make me happier. And if I’m not happy, oh, you didn’t do your job. No, your job is to be happy. And so if we don’t realize all this stuff, all we do is blame our partners. And instead of like blame yourself, but with love because you don’t know better. You don’t know better. Nobody teaches you this stuff. We’re not trained to do this. My parents didn’t do this. They didn’t have to do this. You know why they didn’t have to know this? They depended on each other. My dad was a good wage earner. He had a good job. That’s all he had to do. That’s all women needed in those days. Now, women don’t need men for money. What women need men for is to be happier, not to be happy. But when you’re looking at him to make you happy, of course he’s unreliable because you’re not feeding him the nurturing and the love that he needs, which is different from the love and nurturing you need to become happier. So this is all new knowledge. And that’s beyond Mars and Venus, is how do you create an intimate, beautiful relationship with great sex if women are more on their male side, which automatically puts men on their female side. You poison a man by having sex with him if you’re too far on your male side. You make him lazy. You make him passive. You make him grumpy. You make him go to his cave longer, all because you’re on your male side and you can’t go to your female side. Men, if you’re on your female side and you’re lazy and you’re immature and you play games all the time and you don’t work hard and you’re pouting and you get angry, you push her to her male side. We have that effect. If you have sex with somebody, you now affect them, who knows, 10 times, 100 times more than anybody else. The energy balance, if I have sex with my wife and I’m on my female side, I’ll make her more on her male side. It’s not the sex that does it, it’s because we have sex, we’re more intimately connected. So if I’m feeling lazy, then she feels, oh, he’s not doing anything, I have to do everything. You see how that energy is? Now, if I as a man felt I can do everything, it raised my testosterone. Well, a woman feels, okay, he’s lazy, I can do everything, but it turns into I have to do everything, and she doesn’t want to. Ironically, that one phrase, if people watching this could take away that one phrase for women, you’re a single woman, you have a child, that’s the question you ask. If you say, I have to do this, you’re making testosterone. I get to do this, you’re making female hormones. Just that one little thing. Now, yes, there’s many things you have to do. So you need to balance that with I get to, I get to, I get to. And you also have to change your thinking. You know, part of this is psychological, is the thinking is a habit. I have to, I have to. If you catch yourself thinking and feeling, I have to, stop for a moment, ask yourself, why do I have to do that? Because if I don’t do that, my children won’t get fed. Okay, and what do you want? I want my children to get fed. So I want to do this, because I want to feed my children. At least get back to what you want, and that I do want to do this. Get out of that pattern of I have to do this if you’re a woman, because it just builds resentment. For me, it’s good to feel I have to, I have to do this. Okay, that gets you up in the morning, gets that testosterone going. And if you resent feeling I have to do this, you can also do that little process. And why do I have to do this? Well, I want that outcome, so therefore I want to do this. That’s at least get into the positive spirit. But what we have to recognize, fight or flight is for women is I have to do this. And when they go into that I have to do this thing, they need to realize that fight or flight is addiction. Whenever you’re in danger, the brain produces dopamine and dopamine is a pleasure brain chemical. And therefore, when you’re not feeling happy, you create drama to feel pleasure. It’s like, what happens is you get into this loop of complaining and focusing on negativity because it produces dopamine. So this, you gotta understand the way the brain works is that the brain gives us more alertness and more pleasure and rewards us for taking action when there’s danger. Okay, so if there’s danger, fight or flight, dopamine gets produced because it says, okay, get out there and do that. You gotta act fast, you gotta do stuff, gives you energy. So if you complain, you’re focusing on negativity, then that rewards you and now you do it more and more and more. So you have to focus, you have to retrain your brain and practice positivity. Every day, even for me, I spend at least 30 minutes a day remembering 15 to 20 minutes remembering the positive things of the past. Soaking myself in positive feelings of the past, amplifying them up, and then imagining those same positive feelings that happen today or tomorrow and what I’m gonna do. So I’m resetting my brain to go to opening the neural connectors to positivity rather than this cross-wiring where as soon as something happens, we immediately go to fight or flight. Because this is what happens to people is once they’re in fight or flight, fight or flight is addiction. We just, it produces dopamine. When life gets a little boring, let’s create drama. Let’s create danger. So let me explain why that happens. And that happens equally for men and women but more for women, and I can explain that as well. But the fight or flight center is called the amygdala. Danger, okay? Danger means we gotta act fast, we can’t think. You gotta act based on conditioning. It’s like, I told you one of my fun things, I drive around my Bentley in the convertible, but it’s a big car and my garage, it’s hard to fit it in. Okay, so it can knock off those little windows. And so when I drive in is that moment of having to get in, having to get in. That’s fight or flight. Now, fortunately, my body, I’m conditioned. I don’t even think to do it. Sometimes I sit back in the morning, how do I do this? I just, my body does it automatically. You know, it just glides right in there. But the first 20 times, it was like very slow until I got a, the connectors were all set up and now it’s automatic. So that’s automatic. When we’re in fight or flight, we go into automatic. Now, what is our automatic, human beings, whatever our parents automatic was when they were in fight or flight becomes our automatic when we’re children. All of our brain circuits are set up the way they did. So that’s one aspect of this whole thing. So when there’s danger, perceived danger, the amygdala fires and blood flow goes to the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a part of the brain that is kind of like a library, it stores all the memories and it’s got two stories. Story one is the first floor is all of your good memories. Life is wonderful. Life is great. There’s so many good things happen in my life, but I’m not thinking of anything negative. But when fight or flight happens is blood flow goes to a surge of blood flow goes to the amygdala and you get in the elevator to step to second floor. And the second floor is all of your negative memories. So everything comes up in front of you of all your failures, all your partners failures. And for women under moderate stress, now this we’re talking biological studies, under moderate stress, women will have 10 on average, eight times increase of blood flow to the amygdala, which now activates the hippocampus. Eight times more blood flow. So suddenly she will experience, what I playfully say, temporary amnesia. And she will forget everything on the first floor and remember every mistake you’ve ever made. And this is what you have to recognize as a husband. This happens to women. Don’t argue with her at that time. She’s completely forgotten any good thing you’ve ever done. And you can’t remind her. If you remind her, it’s another source of stress. So she will stay on the second floor. So you have to wait it out. It’s a hurricane has come, you know, hunker down. It will pass. But if you make her wrong, it only makes it last forever. So this is, now for men, men can also get stuck on the second floor, but only when their stress levels are much higher. The first reaction a man has is actually to decrease the blood flow to the amygdala under fight or flight. That’s adrenaline. Adrenaline is just simply a disconnection from estrogen. He will start to disconnect from estrogen to rebuild his testosterone. So men tend to detach under moderate stress. We tend to forget things under moderate stress. Whereas women will try to remind us what we should do when we’re trying to forget what we do. And women always complain, how does he forget? How does he forget? Because men forget problems when they’re stressed at a moderate level. We have to just focus on getting the tasks done and forget all possible problems. But if cortisol elevates, if adrenaline stress level increases because he doesn’t have confidence, then adrenaline turns into cortisol. And cortisol causes him to go into role reversal. That’s where men become high estrogen and their testosterone starts going down. And for women, that’s when their testosterone level starts shooting high and their estrogen levels go low. And today, women can just go, you can have your test done on hormones, you’ll see your estrogen levels and progesterone levels are off. You don’t even need to take those tests. If you’re not feeling good and love, your hormones are off, period. And the tricky thing about the tests is that all you have to do, for example, if I want to show off, all you have to do is stand straight for two minutes with your hands in the air like this and it will temporarily double your testosterone. So I do cheat, I put your hands in your hips and look proud. For the test, I can double my testosterone if I want. So it’s really, testosterone levels are fluctuating all the time. If you’re watching TV and your team is winning, this is proven, your testosterone goes up. If your team is losing, your testosterone goes down. We, men, are so simple. It’s rather, if we’re feeling successful, we’re great. If we’re not feeling successful, we go down. And if we feel successful, what can happen, this is, there’s a paradox with testosterone, okay? And this is also true. And I should address this because there’s all, you know, life is complicated. So the paradox is testosterone makes men loving, makes them feel good, makes them confident and strong. But also, there’s another psychological principle, is that whenever you feel free, that I can be myself, feeling good about yourself, will always bring up all of the underlying subconscious traumas where you didn’t feel good about yourself. So simply put, love brings up everything unlike itself. So when you feel, as children, we have to adjust ourselves to get love, and that’s a trauma. You can’t be yourself, or to different degrees for different people, depending upon how much love they receive as children, how safe they were as children. But when somebody has a traumatic childhood, because a parent is an alcoholic, unpredictable, dangerous, divorce, problems, parents arguing, that means a child is really in fear all the time, whether they’re aware of it or not, they have to be careful, you know, and push down, push down, push down. So that pushing down becomes a, you know, a suppressed part of us, our aliveness is suppressed, our enthusiasm is suppressed, our innocent feelings are suppressed, our creativity is suppressed. So this is pushing things down. And then later in life, we’re no longer these powerless children, we achieve a certain level of success for men, that means their testosterone goes up. Then what happens is you feel really good about yourself, then you feel like now I can be myself. All these little parts of us that said, I can’t be me, they come out and we behave like children. And so if there’s unresolved emotions and feelings, cause a little boy has the same emotions that a little girl has. Our estrogen levels are, until 13, we have about the same estrogen levels as little girls. So we have strong emotions. So when a man goes very high in his level of feeling of success, it’s like a trash can opens of suppressed emotions and they come up and he becomes really arrogant, asshole, violent, terrible. But again, it’s still consistent with the truth. At that time, when his testosterone went very high, suddenly his estrogen levels shoot up even higher. All these child-like emotional feelings make him into a really awful person. So you see a lot of successful people, not all, are really awful people. And the same thing with successful women. I’m so good, nobody’s good enough for me. I just did a whole show on famous women who are so beautiful and so successful, and yet the hell they have is divorce and they’re single. Why? Because I think they’re so great. If you think you’re so great, then no way is good enough for you, as opposed to feeling vulnerable and realizing that we all make mistakes. And if people could just get the biggest mistake we can make as civilized human beings is not loving. And we pride ourselves in being loving by what we do, but not by how we feel. And that feeling love is compassion. It’s empathy, it’s forgiveness, it’s generosity, it’s kindness. These are all these wonderful feelings of love. And we lose them. And whenever we lose them, we always say, but I’m only this way because he did that, or she did that, or she’s that. And that’s why I’m this way. And don’t you get it? You’re responsible for you, but they don’t know how to be responsible for them. That’s why I wrote the book Beyond Mars and Venus. So that answered the question for the single woman. She needs to take responsibility to have a good relationship. Don’t look for the perfect person. Look to have a good time. And then all of your fight or flight is not gonna be activated. If you were to visit my house, you’d say, oh, what a beautiful house I have. But if you were wanting to buy my house, looking for a house to buy, you wanna look to see electric bills, gas bills, cracks in the foundation, moles, rats, does the plumbing work? You wanna, what are the noises who are the neighbors? A lot of different factors you’re gonna look at. So if you’re in fight or flight, your brain always has a bias towards the second story of the memory. Okay, what are the problems? What are the potential problems? So if you’re not looking for a mate, but looking to have a good time, then your own saboteur inside won’t get activated. Because we already know you have one because you got a divorce, period, you failed. And that’s what it is. You know, sometimes people just married the wrong person, there’s no doubt about it. But along the way of being married to the wrong person, you messed it up. Big time and you always see it as the other person messes it up. There’s never been a case in my 40 years of marriage counseling where I didn’t see both people responsible for their problems. The only time it later on it becomes one or the other because once the problems are building up then drugs get involved, then violence gets involved and affairs get involved. But long before that you got two people, the little things build up into the big things and it’s always two people when it’s the little things. There’s no victim here. We’re all responsible for our lives and we’re all victims at the same time.
Das war ein Follow-up vom Podcast für die Rebellen und Rebellinnen des Geistes. Danke, dass ihr eingeschaltet habt und bei dieser Episode dabei wart. Dann seid von Herzen auf den nächsten Teil willkommen. Wir verlinken unten in der Textbeschreibung direkt den zweiten Teil und wünschen dir ganz viel Freude und wertvolle Erkenntnisse beim Hören. Bis gleich!
