“The One And Only Thing That Unlocks Love, Attraction, & Fulfillment” | (#049) The Masculine Psychology Podcast with David Tian

Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast, where we answer key questions in dating, relationships, success, and fulfillment, and explore the psychology of masculinity. Now here’s your host, world-renowned therapist and life coach, David Tian.

David: Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast. I’m David Tian, your host.

In the last episode, we went into the alpha myth and the dangers of obsessing over whether you’re alpha or beta, and how, if you are seriously asking yourself that question, not only is it a sign that you are not alpha, but it actively prevents you from becoming alpha and actively blocks you from becoming more attractive to women. We ended that episode with a promise of revealing the one thing. [00:48.2]

I revealed the one thing, the one thing that unlocks everything else, and if you just focus on this one thing, then it will not only lead you to dating success and is not only necessary for relationship success, but also success in life, including, most importantly, love, joy, fulfillment, happiness, and meaning in life, which are far more important than what most guys focus on, the money, the power, the babes.

What they’re not aware of is, what they’re hoping those things will get them, which is a sense of self-worth, of being enough, of finally being enough so you can rest, of happiness, lasting happiness, not just temporary happiness, and meaning and a deeper calm in life, and joy and love and connection. All of those come from focusing on this one thing, and if you don’t focus on this one thing, it’ll be a complete accident that you get any of those for any length of time, but it will definitely not be the case that you’ll be able to hold onto of those good things that you’re looking for and they won’t last, unless you have this one thing. [01:58.0]

Okay, what is this one thing? If you stay to the end of the last episode, you know it is non-neediness. It’s a big surprise because non-neediness is not a sexy word. It’s actually a negative. It’s a non-something, but it’s the lack of neediness and that comes from meeting or being able to consistently meet your own needs yourself within your own power on a frequent basis. That’s what creates non-neediness. I’m going to go into a lot more detail on the whys and the whats and the hows of that in this episode.

I also wanted to point out that if you focus on the wrong things, such as whether you’re alpha or beta, or whether she’s attracted to you and what you can do to make her more attracted to you, especially asking that on a date or while you’re in front of her, focusing on these wrong things, could either mess you up even more in terms of making you more nervous, amplifying your neediness, thereby making you less and less attractive. [02:54.0]

Even worse, it undermines your mental health in the long term, because the wrong questions will have you focusing on doing the wrong things, and those wrong things add up and they will eventually make you even needier, and, worse, create habits of thought and behavior and emotion that, over the long term, create a character or create a personality that makes it harder and harder for you to actually experience love, real love, connection, intimacy, courage, freedom.

But the good news is, if you just focus on this one thing, if you just focus on meeting your own needs and learning how to do that within your own control on a frequent basis—a daily basis, not once every four years or once a year, but within your control and frequently or daily, and is healthy and sustainable in the long run—not only will you have mastered how to meet your own emotional needs of significance and worthiness of love, of connection, of intimacy, of play, of spontaneity, of growth, of contribution, of variety, and of security and certainty, you’ll have met all of those needs and learned how to meet those needs consistently, frequently, within your own power. [04:18.0]

Not needing anyone else to do it for you, not relying on anyone else to meet your needs, but that you’re able to meet your needs at a high level on your own. Therefore, not only will you be experiencing and having your needs met at a high level for love, connection, security, significance, worthiness, fun and play, but in addition, you will be the most attractive you that you can be, because your neediness meter will be at the lowest because you’re able to meet your own needs.

When it comes to trying to make yourself more attractive, if you’re focusing on anything else other than meeting your own emotional and psychological needs, then you’re focusing on the wrong things. This is not to say, of course, that getting a fashion makeover and getting a haircut and taking a shower, or getting fit and getting a fitter body, it’s not to say that none of those things will matter. They will help, but none of those things will matter if you are needy. [05:18.8]

I covered this in the last episode where the obsession that a lot of guys these days have over whether they’re alpha or beta or any of those other things that I brought up, and on their own, the ones that I brought up with fitness, of fashion, those things were great. They’re fine on their own, but they on their own will not make you more attractive if you were not attractive to begin with. They will just increase your attractiveness a little bit in comparison to how much your attractiveness varies by your neediness.

Your attractiveness tracks or inversely tracks your level of neediness. I take this formulation from my friend, Mark Manson, who worded it as cleanly as it gets, which is the more needy you are, the less attractive you are. Then the less needy you are, the more attractive you are. They’re inversely related. [06:09.6]

In this episode, I’m going to go into a lot more depth on the whys and the whats and the hows of that, but, hopefully, you can just see it just from that, those two sentences, how they’re related, and if you’re focusing on anything else like whether you’re alpha or whether you’re beta, you’re focusing on the wrong things.

Those wrong things are a sign that not only that you’re needy, but actually feed your neediness. It increases the neediness. Right there and then, your neediness meter is going up as you’re asking yourself these questions, and the more you focus on these questions, the more you’re obsessed about trying to be alpha or trying to be attractive, the less attractive you become.

This is a principle that you find in ancient wisdom for thousands of years, this concept of trying not to try. When you focus on something else that’s more important, then you get that thing that you were aiming for along the way. It just comes as a byproduct and that’s what attractiveness is. When you’re focusing on meeting your own needs, your attractiveness shoots up as a byproduct. [07:14.2]

The very act of asking needy questions to yourself, increases your neediness and a very needy question is obsessing and worrying whether you’re alpha or beta. If you’re asking yourself these questions, if you’re focusing on them, not only are you beta, but you’re becoming more and more beta by the minute. If that doesn’t scare the guys who are obsessing whether they’re alpha or beta to stop thinking about that, stop asking yourself this question, I don’t know what would.

It’s sort of like the example I gave. When you’re driving, if you keep looking at the construction obstacle that you’re trying to avoid, you will increase your chances of hitting it. Focus on the other thing. Focus on 10 seconds ahead down the road, 15 seconds down the road, whatever you need to do to not focus on the obstacle. Focus on the right thing. What’s the right thing here? There’s only one thing. The good news is there’s only one thing that you need to focus on at this juncture, which is how to meet your own needs and practicing that. [08:11.5]

Then it comes down to what are these various needs and how can I meet those needs? So, now we get into the whys and the whats and the how, which is the focus of this episode. We’re going to get into the “why”, the “what” and the “how”. Those are the three points.

For the why, it hopefully is pretty obvious why being able to meet your own need, for instance, for love is already awesome. It’s already an intrinsic good. You would just want to be able to do that. But then the why question, I think, for a lot of guys is, why would that make you more sexually attractive? Because especially for a lot of guys who haven’t had a lot of success with women or dating, they’re seeing from their resentful lenses. [08:52.8]

The guys who are successful as bad guys or bad boys, or evil or manipulative, and they don’t want to be that way, but then they’re caught in this trap because they think that in order to be successful with women, they have to compromise their ethical standards or something and they don’t want to do that. But then the way they are currently isn’t sexually attractive to the women that they like, and so they don’t know how to change because they don’t like what they are seeing as a direction to change.

Here’s the good news. You don’t have to be a jerk. You don’t have to be a bad boy or any of that, though your judgment of some of these men and your judgment of sexual attractiveness from this moral standpoint might be skewed and warped, so you’re not actually seeing things accurately, very likely because you don’t know the bad boys that well and why they’re attractive.

A big part of why the bad boy is attractive sexually to women in the moment on the spot is because, in that moment, he’s not needy. He’s not needing her to fulfill him, to complete him, to do anything. He’s just amusing himself with what he’s saying and he’s just acting naturally with what he’s thinking and what he wants to do, and that’s an example of non-neediness for that person. [10:07.4]

Now, if you were to hang out with that person for many days in a row or weeks, you would probably find out that he’s actually very needy, but he’s just really good at hiding it and that it’s only in those moments, those quiet moments when he is sitting with himself and he’s able to access or that loneliness comes up, or his lack of meeting his own needs come up, that you’ll discover some of that vulnerability there.

But, very likely, he’s the bad boy and, in these examples, they’re really good at repressing it even to themselves. They’re not even aware of it. Neediness and non-neediness are very much at play, even with the bad boy, and can easily explain why he would be attractive in a way that you would think, Oh, these girls should be turned off because of the things he’s saying or doing, or maybe his tattoos or maybe his hairstyle or his Harley Davidson, it’s just all dangerous or something. And can’t she see this guy is a dangerous guy who does dangerous things? [11:07.0]

But, actually, for him, he’s not needy in that moment and that’s why he’s attractive, and she would have to consciously resist that because that would just be attractive, just as you can see that there might be attractive women physically and men would respond to that visually, but they would have to resist it consciously to not look or not engage.

There might even be things about this guy that still turn her off, but just like a physically-attractive woman would say things or maybe sort of the sound of her voice or something that would turn you off, but there would still be a physical attraction there naturally as a result of her being attractive in that way, and for a man it’s his level of non-neediness that functions in that way or that’s the foundational level of attractiveness, which is his level of non-neediness in that moment. [11:58.0]

Then, of course, if you’re in a relationship, then you’re not just thinking about that one moment, but that you’re now looking at over the length of the relationship, which could be 50 years or more. Your fundamental level of neediness, your core insecurities, will definitely come out, will definitely get triggered, the more intimate you become in your relationship, because it would require vulnerability.

All that neediness that you’re shoving down under the surface, pretending not to notice or actually not noticing because it’s unconscious, will definitely come out, the more intimacy there is, right? Because, right now, you’ve got this facade, this mask, this mask or this persona where you’re repressing your neediness and your vulnerability in that moment.

That’s what successful pickup artists can do. That’s what I did for years, to myself even. I wasn’t even aware of it to myself. I did it to myself. Of course, that helps to sell it to others because you’re not even aware of it yourself. You fully believe your own bullshit or that you’re all the shit and everything. It takes quite a long time for that narcissistic persona to crack and for it to collapse, and for you finally to see the neediness under the surface, but it’s there. [13:07.3]

For the guys who are envious and resentful of the bad boys, very likely, they’re just as needy, but they’re just really good at repressing it and hiding it, and then in that moment, their head space is not there. Their head space is in having fun, enjoying themselves, getting a kick out of life, and as a result, in that moment, they’re more sexually attractive.

Now, let’s get even deeper into the why of why being non-needy would be sexually attractive. I guess I use the entrée of the bad boy here. I wasn’t planning that, but there’s an even deeper reason, which is just evolutionary and I credit this as an idea that, again, Mark Manson brought up and I’ve asked him quite a bit about this.

It was sort of just an intuition of his just through reasoning that following the status point, that status must be the thing that women are most attracted to, but way back then when we were evolved for the evolutionary lag for our adaptations, it was somewhere like 50,000 to 100,000 years ago that it generally takes our species to adapt. [14:13.7]

Once a mutation is introduced, by the time it becomes widespread, that species will be 50,000 to 100,000 years. So, you’ve got to look back to why. Why do we have this? Why do we have no natural defenses against Krispy Kreme donuts and yummy delicious food that’s really bad for us? The reason is we’re not adapted for it.

What we were adapted for it was 50,000 years or 100,000 years ago, and back then, if you found a Krispy Kreme donut, you should probably eat it because you probably won’t find something like that again. It’s the same when it comes to attractiveness and attraction. To understand what it is that men and women are attracted to unconsciously, you’ve got to look back to that time back then. [14:55.7]

Back then, there wasn’t a huge disparity in resources and status like there is now. The Gini coefficient was not high and the most you could do was stockpile some food, but it would go bad pretty quick, so if you made a big kill, the food would probably go bad. You might as well share it because you can’t eat the whole thing just sitting there, if you took down, I don’t know, a big mammoth type of animal. I mean, you could salt it, I suppose, and you could throw it in a cold cave, but it wouldn’t keep that long.

So, it’s hard to stockpile resources unlike right now where some people have the net worth of entire countries stockpiled and there’s this huge difference, right? We’re not evolved to compute that at an instinctive level. Not only that, but there was no easy way to show how many resources you had stockpiled in your cave when you’re out on the Savannah and that was the big question, because a woman, a female, had to make a choice pretty quickly whether to engage with a male because there were consequences. [16:03.8]

If she made the wrong choices, she would be saddled with nine months of a pregnancy, whereas if he made the wrong choice, he could just move on and have sex with another female and there’s very little consequence to him just spreading his seed. The risk was much higher for the female, so she had to be a lot choosier. Hopefully, this is obvious.

But then, because of that big disparity on the risk side of things, it was easy for a man to just lie or pretend to front that he could take care of her and her children, their children, if she spreads her legs and lets him have sex with her, because there was no wait for her to check. There was no bank account back then, and it’s part of the reason why women don’t just ask for your bank account. That doesn’t make their vaginas wet. It doesn’t sexually stimulate them. [16:53.0]

It might stimulate other parts of a gold-digger’s brain, like, like, Chi-ching, time to go shopping, when she sees a rich dude. She’s not getting wet. She’s not getting sexually aroused. She’s getting … what would be the term? She’s getting shopping aroused. Oh, there’s a guy I can use to get some more Prada bags or whatever, Hermès Birkins, but she’s not getting sexually aroused. That’s just something she’ll do in order to get the shopping and the other perks, so there’s a different pathway.

But going back to back then, 50,000 to 100,000 years ago and meeting on the Savannah, there’s very little in terms of clothing and accouterments you could have to show off, and everything else is relatively easily procured. But what she needs to see is, not only do you have stuff now that can help, but that stuff, whatever you have now, won’t last for more than a week or whatever. You might have some jewelry, some shell jewelry or something, but that’s of relatively little consequence because that can’t help her and her children survive and thrive, unless you trade it for someone else’s food, but there’s only so much you can carry on your body. [17:55.5]

Instead, what she’s seeing, what she’s looking for is whether you have the ability to make more, whether you have the skills and the qualities that would ensure her survival and her offsprings’ survival, and how can she detect that. It would be through your behavior and what she’s created. Women, females have evolved to detect male bullshit. There’s a male bullshit detector in looking at their behavior, and they have this instinctive meter inside them of a neediness meter because that’s the best sign of whether a guy either has enough stockpiled to last him and/or how much he believes in himself that he can go and create that.

That’s why neediness makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective and has become uncoupled or decoupled in the modern world, because guys are focusing on the wrong things in trying to make themselves more attractive. They’re focusing on stockpiling more stuff in their cave. [19:00.4]

But women aren’t evolved to go and look for the stuff in the cave. They’re evolved to look at your behavior because that’s how they’ve evolved to detect, whether not only you have stuff in your cave, but whether you can get more consistently and whether you have the qualities to ensure, in the long term, not just the survival, but the thriving of her and her offspring.

It’s also a major consequence to their survival and the thriving of her offspring’s offspring. In other words, we would’ve evolved this instinct that whoever we chose to mate with would be half the genetic endowment of our children, and so this is also for her own sons and daughters’ wellbeing, because she can’t just, for instance, if you have just a ton of meat and other good stuff stockpiled in your cave 50,000 years ago, but you didn’t have the qualities to get it—maybe they’re ill-begotten gains. Maybe they were just given to you because somebody died and you stole it or something—this is not going to bode well for her children, unless they just become thieves as well. [20:09.0]

But what she wants to know is that her children’s children will thrive, and this is because of our selfish genes, citing Richard Dawkins there. We’re drawing here on the field of paleoanthropology, which is the study of human evolution through fossil and archeological records, and the study of the societies of early man.

So, what is neediness? Neediness, from a psychological perspective and from a psychotherapy perspective, is whether you’re meeting your own needs or whether your needs are being met, and when you’re needy, it’s a sign that your needs are not being met and that you’re depending on others to meet your needs for you. When it comes to sexual attractiveness, it’s usually that you’re hoping and trying to get the other person, the woman, in this case, to meet your needs for you, because you’re unable to meet them yourself. [21:03.4]

Now, even though that definition is really straightforward, I realize that for many men, this is too abstract to understand, because for many men, they are un-self-aware emotionally. They are not consciously aware of their own emotional needs, when they’re being met, when they’re not being met. Instead of being aware of the roots and the trunk of the tree, they’re only conscious of or aware of whether there’s flowers at the end of the branches.

What does that look like? Let’s look at the signs of neediness, signs basically whether you’re able to meet your own needs in yourself and whether you’re dependent on someone else to come along and meet them for you. First of all, we can see that a baby is needy and rightly so, because a baby is taking it easy. The easiest one, the newborn is literally incapable of meeting his or her own needs for food and shelter, and, of course, for love and connection, and physical touch and all kinds of other things. It can’t even communicate. [22:07.3]

Of course, it’s needy and so that’s understandable neediness. There’s nothing wrong with that neediness, but it’s neediness. You can look at that as an easy and extreme example of what neediness looks like. When you are feeling needy, you are crying. You’re trying to get somebody else to come and pick you up, give you a hug.

I tell you a lot of guys, many of them who are otherwise very successful in their career or whatever, when it comes to women, when they’re really honest with themselves, the feeling that they have of that level of neediness, of needing a woman, of needing a relationship, of needing to be told that there are enough, and that sign, that desperation is like a baby crying, like, Oh, I just need to be held. That’s actually there under the surface, if they can sit with it long enough, many of them can’t and they just busy themselves with coping mechanisms, and one of those is obsessing of whether you are alpha or beta. [23:06.0]

An example is the very fact that you are focused on asking the question of whether you’re alpha or beta, because you’re worried that you’re beta, and you’re trying your best to not be beta because you are convinced that being alpha is required to be attractive, and you need to be attractive. Why? Because you need to get a woman. Why? Because you need a woman to fulfill your deep needs for love and for connection, and for being enough. You need woman, a woman—or women, for the pickup artist, to a percentage, a certain percentage of women, attractive women—to tell you you are enough, to show you you’re enough by having sex with you or granting you the keys to their kingdom, so to speak, and then you’ll feel like you’re enough and you can relax.

But, of course, the truth is that it will never actually fulfill you in the long run or for more than a moment. But that’s what you believe. That’s what these guys believe, and so you trace that far back enough and you get to the branches and to the end of the branches, and you have them obsessing over whether they’re alpha or beta. [24:07.0]

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That’s an example, that’s a sign that you’re needy. That’s a sign that you’re needy, just as much as the guy who is constantly checking his phone to see whether she has replied to his outpouring text message of his emotions to her, confessing his love for her, or maybe even just asking her out. He’s constantly checking his phone. He’s feeling this kind of anxiety coming up. That’s neediness and it’s just as needy. [25:13.6]

I would say that depending on how much you’re obsessing about whether you’re alpha or beta, that could be even needier depending on the intensity of your obsession. It’s the needy man who obsesses over whether he’s alpha or beta, hoping that he will turn out to be alpha, not beta, and that he can do enough to ensure that he’s not beta so that he can attract women so that the women can meet his own needs that he’s unable to meet for himself that could be of worthiness, of connection, of course, of love, being good enough, any or all of those needs.

The man who is not needy, who is, by definition, therefore, attractive sexually in terms of his personality would not give a damn whether he’s alpha a beta, because that question would be moot. It’s irrelevant because he’s able to meet his own needs in himself already so that that question would be uninteresting. It wouldn’t even occur to him. He’d be much more interested in knowing whether it’d be raining that day so he can know whether to bring an umbrella out. [26:11.3]

Another example of needy behavior is a man who’s searching or pining for a relationship, and men in this situation don’t understand how they could possibly meet their own needs for a relationship. It doesn’t even compute for them. How could I meet my own needs for connection, for love? If you’re very immature or just really young, you might confuse the point of a relationship with sex, like you need a relationship so that you can have sex.

I understand this if this is a religious issue, where you’re not permitted to have sex outside of a marriage or something, so sucks to be you. I don’t want it to be the cause of you going to hell or anything, so maybe you should stop listening to my podcast. After all, I am basing all of this on science and we started with paleoanthropology, but maybe this would be a good time to specify that we are talking about psychological and emotional needs, not physical needs. [27:07.5]

Of course, food is needed to satisfy your need for nourishment and nutrition. Same with shelter. You would be better off having something to cover you in cold weather or inclement weather, right? That’s obvious. We’re not talking about physical needs. We’re talking about psychological and emotional needs, and neediness, of course, is not physical. It’s psychologically emotional.

Some guys are just so horny, so sex-obsessed. That actually is a whole separate need you should meet on its own and you might need to just get it out of your system, so to speak, and there’s a confidence in that, just as being able to get your own food or afford your own food. You don’t need her or anyone else to pay for the meal. You can take care of it yourself and there’s an assuredness to it, and notice how that brings already a level of confidence to the interaction, to going out into the world. [28:03.2]

Same with whether you can afford to stay at a hotel or pay your rent. That also gives you a level of comfort and confidence in yourself that you can handle things in this level of independence, and it’s similar to any time you can meet a need in yourself. You have that sense of self-assuredness that you can take care of it.

When it comes to these emotional, psychological needs, needy guys don’t have that. When it comes to the universal human needs of love, connection, of security, of worthiness, of play or adventure, of fun, of excitement. They need a woman to complete them to give that to them. Their lives feel empty and lacking enjoyment and meaning. They are wanting a woman to do that for them. They’re under the illusion that a relationship will make their lives complete and whole. That relationship will never do that. If you enter into a relationship with that mindset, that relationship will fail. [29:06.4]

This is why every single relationship counselor, anyone worth their soul, right, any good relationship therapy is going to tell you, you are the one you’ve been waiting for, that a successful relationship can only happen between two whole complete individuals who then come together. 

I’ve covered this in so many episodes and other content, other videos and courses. My courses walk you through how to create this type of relationship, and one that will actually last, and that’s one where you are able to meet your own needs and you don’t need her, but you want her and you contribute to each other.

It’s like you have all the food you need, drawing from Richard Schwartz’s analogy, the magical kitchen metaphor in his book, You are the One You’ve Been Waiting for, who is drawing from Don Miguel Ruiz’s metaphor from The Mastery of Love that you have all the food you need, and let’s say you go on a picnic together and you have in your basket everything you need. Then she also has her food and all she needs, and now you have doubly and maybe you can enjoy each other’s food and you contribute to each other. [30:11.0]

That’s how it works, not that the guys who are coming with an empty basket or a basket that’s lacking necessary items that he wants desperately and he’s going to her and her store of stuff to rob her, to raid her kitchen. That relationship will not last, though that’s how many people get into relationships, two needy people, and they end up triggering each other after the honeymoon period.

It’s like a lot of guys still seem ignorant about the honeymoon period. They’re like, I’ve fallen in love. Everything’s fine. No, that’s just called the honeymoon period. That is guaranteed and scientifically explainable why that will dissipate that initial passion, the infatuation, and then the reality will set in and then all those repressed parts that were hidden away when you first met because you were on your best behavior are now getting triggered and all the shadow parts are reacting to each other, yours with hers, and that creates all of the triggering and the mess. [31:07.6]

I’ve covered this in a lot of different episodes and I’ve also done a whole course called “Rock Solid Relationships” that’s 10 weeks, and then there’s a bonus week, that walks our guys through exactly how to create a loving relationship that lasts, and there are guided meditative exercises there and there are also kind of written exercises of reflection exercises that guide you through the process of becoming the man who can create that. Also, women have taken that course to great benefit and couples have taken it together. 

Okay, besides taking the “Rock Solid Relationships” course, what can you do? Hopefully, you understand now the theory about why obsessing about whether you are alpha or beta, or searching or pining for a relationship to complete you, why those would be signs of neediness and why neediness is unattractive. It is fundamentally “the” most unattractive thing in a man. Okay, hopefully, you understand the why and what it looks like to be unattractive because of neediness. [32:09.5]

But then, the next question is how. How, David, do I meet my own needs? How can I become less needy? How do I become non-needy? Of course, there is the course I mentioned, “Rock Solid Relationships”. I actually have other courses, like “Freedom U”, and other courses, many of the big courses, like “Invincible”, “Lifestyle Mastery”, all help to address this directly.

I’ve also, I should tell you, I’ve devoted an entire episode on how to become less needy, how to overcome your neediness, and this is episode eight of the Masculine Psychology podcast. In that episode, I go over the universal human needs, how to meet them in a healthy way, and so on, and I break it down from the perspective of how do you meet your own needs? In this episode, I’m going to give you a story to illustrate how this has worked for another client of mine, and maybe from there, you can understand it better. I find that people follow stories a lot better than just ideas, so let’s go with the story. [33:06.3]

This is a story of my client, Thomas. Thomas started out typical, wanting to get better with women, and he started with my course “Invincible”. What “Invincible” did for him in Modules 3 and 5 was bring up this point of needs. He had never considered this before, and in addition to needs, even more important for him were the conditions.

In other words, what are the conditions that are necessary for you to get these needs met? He looked at the current conditions, the conditions he had currently for having his needs met, and they pretty much ensured that he would not be happy and that he would not be confident in himself, and that he would not have that self-assurance and that he basically just won’t be happy on a regular basis.

He went about rewriting these conditions and then practicing these conditions in himself. For instance, he discovered that one of his needs for connection was that or one of the ways that he met his needs for connection in his old life was that he needed his friends to call him and ask him out, to make him feel connected to them, and, of course, that also met his need for significance and certainty of against uncertainty. [34:12.4]

When he wasn’t being invited out, he just felt awful, and so he was completely in this passive position requiring others to invite him for him to get his needs met. When he realized that he rewrote those, he asked himself honestly and sincerely what it would take to have these different needs met in these different ways. One of them is significance. One is connection.

The connection was the easiest. He discovered that if he went out to the bar himself to a bar he really liked and enjoyed the music and the ambiance and the food they had there, and he sat at the bar because he liked the bar staff, that he had a good time, even if no one else was there, and he was able to watch the games that they had playing on the TV. For the first time in his life, he discovered he could enjoy himself at a bar alone, going alone. 

Then he ended up making friends there among the staff who worked there who were always going to be there, and because his friends knew that Thomas was at the bar on whatever day, on the Sunday afternoon, he was probably going to be there, they started showing up and it became a thing. [35:11.7]

Then it wasn’t limited to that. He started then branching out to all these other areas of his life, in areas that he knew that he would enjoy, even if none of his friends came along, and he started to actually plan out his days like that and his free time, spending it in ways that he knew was going to be good for himself and not needing others to make it good for him. That’s how he, very quickly, was able to get his need for connection met on his own, by changing the conditions that he required in order to get those needs met.

Significance was another one and this is one that boggles the minds of many achievers who probably haven’t achieved that much that they’re dependent on others telling them that they’re good, and he discovered that he had this and part of the example, one of the ways that he gets his need for significance met is when others invite him out. [36:06.3]

He realized that he shouldn’t need others to tell him he’s good enough, so he started practicing inviting himself out. Just the very fact that he decided, “I’m going to take the 3:00 p.m. on a Sunday to go to a place that I enjoy, because I enjoy it and I’m worth it,” he was able to meet his own needs for significance, because he was constantly, by doing that, he was priming and conditioning himself and his unconscious, telling his parts that enjoyed this that they’re worth it and he was to prioritize them. Regardless of if anyone else invites him or comes along, he’s important enough to put himself first and do what he wants, and that also meant his need for significance, and it’s an amazing thing.

This is all relative and subjective, so you’ve got to have enough self-awareness and be sincere and honest with yourself of what would do this for you, and we have a whole exercise for how to do this in “Invincible”, the course “Invincible”, and that’s a big part of it, and that was just the beginning of the process for Thomas. [37:02.2]

Then he started to create a lifestyle and he joined our “Platinum Partnership”, so he got access to “Lifestyle Mastery”, a lifestyle that allowed him to enjoy the things that he enjoyed and he didn’t depend on anyone else to enjoy those with him. He could enjoy them. These are all things that he would enjoy on his own. 

Now, if other people came along, then he would enjoy it a bit more, but he didn’t need any of those things. These are things that he wanted. He would like to have a friend come along, but he didn’t need to have a friend come along for that need to be met. If he did it himself, for instance, if he wanted to travel to another part of Europe or to Australia, and these were places he was going to quite a bit, he could just go on his own and he would have a great time.

He picked out places that he would like to see and he started to do that. Because he was just having fun in the moment in that venue because he was relaxed and enjoying himself, he found it quite easy to connect with others, to just start conversations with other people there who were also having a good time, or he discovered through my attraction mindset trick or technique, which is very super simple. [38:10.0]

Wherever you go socially, if you want to meet new people there, the first thing you do is to have fun yourself. The second thing you do is to make others have fun. If you found somebody there who looked like they weren’t enjoying themselves as much, he would see if there was a socially acceptable way that and a way that they would invite, that they would accept, for him to increase their enjoyment of the venue, maybe cracking a joke or maybe giving a compliment or something like that.

Putting a smile on somebody else’s face helps him to feel even better, and he enjoyed that, so he was spreading good vibes everywhere and that made his day. He discovered that that was totally within his control. Even if they were so grumpy, they didn’t accept it, no big deal. He put himself out there and tried to make the others have a good time. Because he was having such a good time, it was just a natural extension of it. [38:58.5]

Before you knew it or before he knew it, Thomas was actually getting his day job to let him work remotely, and then the pandemic hit, so they made everyone work remotely, which really worked out for him, and after the quarantines were lifted, moving from that period where he basically bunkered down and read a lot of books and meditated, then when as soon as travel restrictions were lifted, he was traveling. I was quite envious of this.

He couldn’t go to Australia, but he was going around Europe quite a bit and he was going to places where, and this is one of those things because he was socially free—he was dealing with his sexual shame with a therapist, because of his religious upbringing. Because he had very intellectual parts, he was able to overcome it pretty quickly—and didn’t have a hang-up about sex. He was in countries where prostitution was legal and he was making sure that, if he was feeling horny or if he needed to get off or whatever, rather than going to porn, which he felt didn’t fulfill him very much. He would just get off, but he didn’t feel like he had much of a good time. [40:02.8]

He wanted to connect with a real human being, but he also didn’t need a relationship because he loved his lifestyle of travel whenever he wanted, of doing whatever he wanted whenever, going to whatever restaurants or bars that he wanted to. It would’ve been great to have a companion, but he wasn’t about to change himself just for the sake of getting a relationship, so you can see already his level of non-neediness here. He didn’t want to force anyone else who didn’t already want to be living this lifestyle to conform to his lifestyle just because, so everyone was free to make their own decisions in his life. 

In these countries where prostitution was legal, he told me he always checked to see whether she was happily in this job, this line of work, and he would go for women who seemed to be more mature in their mid-twenties or older to really make sure he wasn’t dealing with any kind of forced servitude or sex slaves, and he was going to all the high end establishments. [41:00.5]

These are all the various ways he told me that he ensured that he wasn’t going against his moral conscience, and he was going to happy prostitutes and he would make sure that she had a good time, too. He was actually, for this period of his life, practicing various to tantric techniques and practices that would very often put her needs sexually before his own, practicing that and getting her off and that sort of thing, and just having a wonderful hour or whatever it was, and not just getting off and not just using a woman as a substitute for his hand, but actually connecting on an intimate level within the confines of the no-strings attached sexual gratification or mutual sexual gratification of the arrangement.

By that method, he was able to meet his sexual needs on his own, because he was able to pay for it and schedule it, and choose the providers that he liked, and this is how Thomas just realized that he could meet his own sexual needs and, in the There’s Something About Mary parlance or terminology, he wasn’t going out with a loaded weapon and he wasn’t going out with a loaded gun when he did go out on dates. [42:12.8]

He wasn’t getting girls on Tinder or whatever and trying to persuade them to meet his sexual needs. He was, instead, going on dates fully with presence because his sexual needs were being met and he didn’t need her to meet his sexual needs, and so he was there to connect. He was fully able to not have the sexual need of a young man invade the desire for intimacy and emotional connection, so he was able to separate those.

As a result, he was incredibly magnetic, even just meeting him, the level of his eye contact, that unwavering eye contact, looking deep into your soul, so to speak, because he had no other agenda but to be there with you present and connect with you. He didn’t need you to meet any of his other needs and he was there fully available to connect, and he was also able to meet his own needs for connection, like I explained, by being out in nature, by traveling with himself. [43:12.8]

Even through meditation, he said he was meeting his own needs for connection, but also by just going to the places that he enjoyed and his inner child enjoyed, and doing the activities that he and his inner-child parts enjoyed. He was telling them, not only were they significant, but he was also connecting with himself, his inner-child parts, by doing those activities. So, he was coming to these dates, these interactions with women, as a fully lead non-needy man.

Now, Thomas, believe it or not, is engaged. He met this woman on one of his trips and he said that they really hit it off and he didn’t know when he would be back in that country, but they hit it off and he extended his stay. He was working remotely completely, so he had total location freedom. More or less, he needed internet connections to be on for certain meetings at certain times of the week, but, otherwise, it was quite flexible. [44:07.2]

The first date extended to three days, extended to I don’t know how long and he was there for, until his visa ran out and then he had to do a visa run, and he kept that going and they just really hit it off. He was telling me that there was a time when he really didn’t want to be attached. He didn’t want to be tied down because he was enjoying his sort of nomadic life so much that I kind of helped through “Lifestyle Mastery” to teach him how to do it.

He thought that if he settled down, he would have to stay in this one place where she was. But then he started showing her how he did some of these things and, lo and behold, she too was able to work remotely and they are now traveling together all through Europe. I’m not sure exactly what their schedule is, but they seem to be traveling quite a bit and enjoying life together, while still able to maintain their jobs, working remotely. [45:01.3]

I’m not sure how long this arrangement will last, but he said he’s happy with settling down at some point geographically, but this relationship sort of crept up on him because he was already completely happy with his single life and he wasn’t actively looking for a relationship. He enjoyed connecting with people and being fully present with them in that moment, and he surprised himself that even though he didn’t need a relationship anymore, he found that he wanted to see her again and again, and again and again, so they ended up in a relationship and now they’re engaged to be married.

What are the principles that we can draw from Thomas’ story? The first is the therapeutic process. He began that in “Invincible”, continued it in “Lifestyle Mastery” and “Rock Solid Relationships”, the therapeutic process in which you not only are able to meet your own needs or you learn how to meet your own needs, but you learn the parts of you that have these various needs and develop a relationship with them. I mentioned, in passing, his inner-child parts and so on. I’ve done a lot of episodes on the therapeutic process, so that’s the most important part of it. Begin the therapeutic process and stick with it. Do the therapeutic work. [46:13.5]

The second is lifestyle. A big part of it is not only meeting your own needs, but having a lifestyle that meets your own needs frequently and consistently.

Then the third is you’ll notice that when you’re ready for a relationship is when you don’t need it. This is the ironic thing, right? When you’re ready to succeed in a relationship is when you no longer need it. If you actually feel like you need a woman to complete your life, then you’re actually not ready for a relationship. You won’t succeed in whatever one you end up in, until you don’t need it.

But, obviously, there’s a difference between needing something and wanting something. There’s a big difference between needing ice cream or needing alcohol versus I don’t mind the drink, wanting it. The “I don’t mind” is pretty minor. Wanting it, yes, this would improve my life and I would be willing to go through some trouble to go in and get it, but you don’t need it. [47:08.2]

That’s a big, important distinction, and if you can’t tell what the difference is, that’s a worrisome sign. It’s very likely that you do need it and you need to start with therapeutic work. Along the way, you’ll make those lifestyle changes, and then, as a result, you can test, kind of a litmus test as to whether you’re ready by how you need it. If you still feel like you need it, then you’re not ready.

This is a totally ironic thing for a lot of guys who are like, So you’re telling me, to be successful in a relationship, I’ve got to the point where I don’t need one? Yes. It doesn’t mean you won’t want one or that your life wouldn’t improve with her in your life more often or sharing your life together. But there’s a big difference between going to the picnic empty-handed, hoping that she will fulfill you or bringing only those things that don’t fulfill you. [47:58.6]

Yeah, you’ve got the money, you’ve got all that status and power, but you’re still needy, right? Your picnic basket is actually empty of food. Maybe you just brought a whole lot out of technology along or something. You brought your drone or something. That’s a bad example because you could fly a drone in a park, but I don’t know, you brought a whole bunch of stuff that you can’t use there. But you’ve got that and you’re hoping that she will have brought all the good stuff that will make the picnic worthwhile or enjoyable, versus you brought everything. You’ve got a full picnic basket and you’ve got everything that you need. So does she and now you can share. You can share in each other’s picnic and make each other stronger, as a result, or make each other better or have a better time just because you’re able to contribute to each other. That’s what it’s like when two non-needy people enter into a relationship and that’s really the only way the relationship will work in the long run.

Okay, to recap, we went over the “why” of neediness, getting into paleoanthropology. We went into the “what”, showing you the various symptoms or signs of neediness that may not be obvious to some guys, hopefully an obvious sign now if you’re obsessing whether you’re alpha or beta. That is very much a sign of neediness. [49:14.8]

Then we went into the “how” by way of the story of Thomas and his ongoing journey in discovering himself and the various parts of himself, and now discovering that in a relationship. Hopefully, you can see how this can benefit you and how you can follow this path of the therapeutic process of lifestyle change, and of discovering the difference between needing a woman to complete you and complete your life versus having it be a really nice thing that you want.

If you want guidance and help along this journey, I have this thing called the “Platinum Partnership”. That includes all of these courses that lead you through the process of becoming non-needy so that you become naturally attractive, but even more than that [49:57.7] –

• how to access your true self;
• how to discover and build relationships with the various parts of you, including your inner-child parts and your shadow parts;
• how to access your masculine energy and your masculine parts;
• how to succeed in a relationship, all the relationship skills that you need;
• how to optimize your lifestyle and create a lifestyle that fulfills you and that helps you to meet your needs in yourself, as I explained through the example of Thomas.
• Plus, so much more.

Check out. It’s all in the “Platinum Partnership”.

You can also get an IFS therapist that will help you to discover your true self and access your parts, and build relationships there and to unburden your parts that are holding the neediness and so forth. You can look for an IFS therapist through the IFS Therapy Directory. You can also email our support team, support@AuraTransformation.org, and inquire into my availability.

I am a certified IFS therapy practitioner and I might have a spot open. I don’t know, when you’re listening to this, whether I will or not, but we also have a waiting list, and depending on your time zone, we have different waiting lists for that and on the time slot you’re looking for, so you can be added to the waiting list. If you’d like to work with me personally, you can write to support@AuraTransformation.org. [51:12.7]

If you liked this episode, thank you for liking it, but also comment. Let me know what you thought of it, what you liked about it and any of the thoughts you have on this episode, what we’ve covered here. I want to thank you so much for listening, and please share it with anyone that you think would benefit.

Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to Episode 50, our big five-oh, and until then, I wish you well, and I will see you in the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out.

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