The 3 Requirements for a Successful Relationship | (#061) 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 this episode, I’ll be getting into the three requirements for a successful relationship. One of the many reasons this is so important is because the success of your relationship is dependent 80 to 90 percent on your mate selection, your partner selection, choosing the partner. This is a very important point to pause on just to further emphasize that most people are not ready for a relationship. Most people are not mature enough to succeed in a long-term relationship. [00:55.4]

They don’t yet have what it takes to succeed in a long-term relationship in the modern world, where in the modern world, there aren’t the societal pressures that used to keep two people stuck in a relationship when it had basically already died, and nowadays in the modern world, you live a life of, quote-unquote, “quiet desperation”, or you just get a divorce or you just separate because it’s really straightforward and easy, relatively speaking, whereas in your grandparents’ generation or, depending on how old you are, maybe your parents’ generation in the ’50s and earlier, it was harder, and especially if you go further back in time, it was almost impossible. You would be cast out of your community, if you got a divorce, and in many religious communities, it wasn’t even an option.

Because of these societal pressures, you’d make it work or you’d just stick it out and that would be considered a successful relationship. I wouldn’t consider it successful, but looking at it, the people who don’t know or understand what a successful relationship is, looking at it from the outside, they’re saying, Well, they’re still married. Therefore, it must be successful. Let’s give them a big [hand], clap it up because they’ve been together for 50 years, and we don’t know the quality of that relationship. [02:12.8]

But in the modern world, because it’s relatively easy to separate or divorce, relatively straightforward and it’s so common, there are very few external pressures to keep you together and people would just separate, and in fact, it turns out, for those who aren’t in relationships, it’s very surprising for them, because they look around and see all these people coupled up and they think, Oh, there must be something wrong with me.

Actually, no, there’s a very good chance that those people that you look around at and see in relationships are either at the early periods of their relationship or are one of the rarer, let’s say, 10 to 20 percent of couples who actually have the maturity to succeed in a long-term relationship. But most people don’t. [02:59.0]

Again, I haven’t studied all the people in the world. I haven’t studied all whatever 8 billion people in the world. This is based on the research that has been done in couples counseling, psychotherapy, that sort of thing, but mostly even just from looking at the internet, watching the content that’s put out there about relationships, people talking about relationships, as well as people commenting on that content.

The vast majority of it displays an immaturity and these immature views that would guarantee that they fail in a long-term relationship, absent external societal pressures that would force them to stay together, on paper anyway, but inside, the love is gone or the passion is gone, or the love was never there in the first place. That infatuation has died away.

Based on the existing research and what I’ve seen on the internet, and the people I know and have come into contact with, I’d estimate that 20 percent, maybe as few as 10 percent of people, of adults are mature enough to succeed in a long-term modern relationship. [04:04.8]

Here are the three requirements. I’m going to get into the three requirements so that you can spot that minority of 10 to 20 percent of women, of adult women, who would have what it takes currently when you meet them to succeed in a long-term relationship. Again, not only is it that 80 to 90 percent of adults are not mature enough to succeed in a long-term relationship in the modern world, but also 80 to 90 percent of your chances of succeeding in a long-term relationship come down to the person that you select.

Again, addressing a big myth that a lot of single guys or a lot of immature guys have about what it takes to be in a relationship. The big myth is they think most women would have what it takes to be in a relationship and they’re just mostly looking at the physical attractiveness, which is very important. It’s hard to have passion and chemistry in your relationship, if you’re not at least physically attracted to the person, and, of course, you would want to get somebody who you are physically attracted to. [05:04.8]

At some point you have to decide what satisfies your requirements, because if you’re just always looking to optimize, there’s always a new model. Just like for your iPhone or your car, there’s always going to be a new model to come along. If you haven’t figured out what the satisfying condition is, then you’re going to be screwing yourself over.

But assuming that you already have this minimal requirement for physical attractiveness at this point in her life and your life for what it would take for you to commit for life, knowing that all this physical beauty, if you’re just looking for the standard markers for physical beauty, will wither away over time, though with cosmetic surgery and just sort of taking care of yourself, you can delay that. Especially with modern technology, you can delay it further and further, but eventually you’re going to have to look at inner beauty and, over time, inner beauty will definitely trump outer beauty. [05:55.2]

I just wanted to get that out of the way and dispose of that factor and put that caveat out there. Obviously, physical attractiveness is important. If that’s something that you’re obsessed about or that you’re mostly focused on, getting a hot girl, then I recommend that you don’t actually follow my channel right now because you’re too immature for this content.

That’s a sign that you’re too immature for a long-term relationship, and this is actually a great way to make the point that most women, just like most men, are too immature for a long-term relationship. They don’t have yet what it takes. They don’t understand what it takes. They don’t have the emotional maturity and maybe the moral fiber for what it takes to succeed in the long-term relationship.

Yes, most women, like most men, are not ready to succeed in a long-term relationship yet. They need to go through the therapeutic process. They need to understand what is actually at stake in a relationship in terms of vulnerability, meeting your own needs, unconditional love, and so forth—and I just wanted to point out that part of the motivation for this episode is in response to a comment on the last episode, on the last episode on how to create a healthy, intimate relationship naturally. [07:06.4] 

There was a comment. I think his name is Eloy who asked to clarify or to confirm that most women would not be suitable for a long-term relationship, and I want to throw in the word “yet” because I always want to leave the door open for growth. God knows, I’ve done a lot of growth in my life and was pretty damn immature earlier in my life, so always allowing the grace for growth there, so we’re saying “yet”. The person is not mature enough yet for a relationship and that person may never be mature enough for a relationship, but they might, so we’re always leaving that as a possibility, though, as soon as I open that door of possibility, the White Knight fixers among many nice guys jump up and say, “Let me rescue this woman. I’ll do all I can to help her grow.” Of course, he’s blind to his own neediness and his own need for growth there.

But all of that aside, yes, it is true that most people, not just most women, but most men and women, are not mature enough yet to succeed in a long-term relationship in the modern world, and even depending on how you define success, regardless of the modern world, pre-modern as well, they weren’t mature enough to succeed in the long-term relationship. It was just that they stayed together physically longer because of the external societal constraints. [08:17.2]

I define success in a long-term relationship, not just staying together, so that’s a very superficial and immature way of looking at success, the fact that they’re still together. A successful long-term relationship is one that’s still passionate and where the couple still has chemistry. They still flirt. They still have lots of, of course, intimacy and love and connection, and compassion and kindness, and loyalty and support for each other, but also there’s a hot, sexy passion that can be sustained and grown over time, despite what researchers or despite what I might have said 10 years ago because I was speaking off the research. There is now new research and I understand it a lot better at a lot deeper level, what it takes to create that, and so I’ve put that into my courses, like “Rock Solid Relationships” and even some of my free master classes. [09:04.8]

By the way, I do have a free masterclass on “Is she relationship material?” Another name for the same masterclass is “Relationship Red Flags”, and in this master class, I not only go through the red flags, I also go through the green lights, what’s required, the requirements for a successful relationship.

Here, in this episode, I’m going to be condensing some of those requirements into one, and so the actual number of them can change depending on what you want to emphasize. In this one, I’m going to be presenting three. It’s a lot easier to remember than a long list and I’m also going to be responding to a comment, so I just wanted to point that out. If you comment, I read them. My channel or platform is small enough that I can read all the comments and I try to respond to as many as I can, so you make a difference. I love to get your feedback. [09:53.0]

Right now, I am on the road. I’ve been traveling, flying from Taiwan to Singapore, and then to London and now through Newark into Toronto, and currently recording this in my parents’ home and my younger sister has her two sons here as well. We’ve got our one-year-old who’s napping upstairs. I’m in the basement, in my dad’s basement office, so you might hear some pitter-pattering of feet in all kinds of other background noise. Maybe the editors, the audio editors of the Podcast Factory will be able to cut that out, but just in case you hear any kind of background noise, it’s because I’m not in a studio. I’m in my dad’s basement office, which is actually quite nice. It’s all wood walls and wood ceiling.

But because I’m on the road and I do not have ready-made conditions for recording, I’m recording this much later than I usually would, much later in the week and I’m sending it to the editors. One benefit from that is that I get to see the comments from the previous episode before I record this current one and I’m able to respond and incorporate that right away. This is really great. If you write comments, I will adjust the next episode I record, which might be two episodes later, normally, but I’m able right now to respond right away. [11:07.8]

Let’s get into the three requirements. Again, not only is the requirement going to be someone who is physically attractive for you, because, as a man, you’re going to need to get it up and that will require that you’re turned on enough by her sexually and aroused enough sexually, though, if she is a feminine woman, she can often arouse the masculine or a masculine man just through her vibe. Maybe just standing there, or if you’re in the fashion industry and you are assessing her potential as a model, you might notice these imperfections or asymmetries, but if she’s feminine, often she can become a lot more sexual to you and arouse you a lot more through her energy, her body language, her eye contact, the sound of her voice, how she moves her body and what she says, and how she arouses you. [11:58.8]

I mean, back in my day, back in my day, back in the 1980s and 1990s, before the internet, there was phone sex and just through the sound of a woman’s voice and her describing a fantasy that was, I don’t know, what, 9.99 a minute or some crazy thing like that that men would be paying for. 

Okay, all that aside, the physical attractiveness, the sexual chemistry, that’s just for starters. If you’re immature, that’s everything. If you’re mature, that just gets your foot in the door. On top of that here, the three requirements for a successful long-term relationship, because, by the way, the physical attractiveness and the sexiness is like the requirement for, I don’t know, a sex worker for you or a stripper that you choose to tip, okay. On top of that, we’re looking now at a long-term, like 50-year relationship. What’s it going to take beyond just titillation and sexual stimulation?

Okay, so here are the three and, like I was saying, 80 to 90 percent of the success of your long-term relationship comes down to the selection of your partner, mate selection. What are you actually looking for? Okay, here are three things. [12:59.7]

The first is that she’s able to meet her own needs. Whatever applies to you is going to apply to her, so you’ve got to be able to meet your own needs if you want to succeed in the long-term relationship and you can’t be doing all the heavy lifting. I mean, if you are doing all of it and she doesn’t grow and meet you there, so let’s say you’re able to meet your own needs because you’ve taken my courses, and you’ve done quite a bit of therapy and you’re far along in the therapeutic process. Then you meet this woman who you’ve got a lot of chemistry with, you’re very aroused by and you’re really turned on by, in other words, quote-unquote, “attracted to”, but she’s immature and she can’t meet her own needs.

You can probably take on that burden for a few years, but after a while, it’s not going to work, unless she learns from you, models you, and starts to meet her own needs and grows in that way. But that actually is rare that now you’re playing with fire.

Again, I don’t want to activate or trigger the nice guy, White Knight fixer, who is going to say to himself, “Oh, that’s perfect. This girl that I have a crush on or this girl that I’m in a relationship with, she’s really immature. But if I play the White Knight, if I do the heavy lifting, if I do the work, then we can make this work and we’ll stay together.” No, for the fixers, that’s exactly what your fixer parts have been hearing since childhood that you’re supposed to take responsibility for her needs, and that’s not going to work in your relationship. [14:19.1]

First and foremost, you’re looking for a woman who is able to meet her own needs most of the time. I mean, we’re all growing. We’re all in process, so you can’t expect immediately all the time that she’s always meeting her own needs. Obviously, same with you. Obviously, same with me. We all have stresses in our lives, lost luggage like we had as we were going through Heathrow. Luckily, we didn’t lose any of our luggage, but Newark to Pearson Airport did.

Just having just little stresses like that, maybe lack of sleep, maybe a bad diet, or maybe you got Caved, all good reasons to be a little grumpy and short with people, and so more grace for yourself. But being able to meet your own needs most of the time or consistently or frequently, or it’s increasing over time in frequency that you’re able to meet your own needs, is really important. [15:06.6]

Why? Not only, for the man, a lot of it has to do with attractiveness—I’ve done so many podcast episodes on the importance of neediness and how your neediness is directly proportional to unattractiveness or inversely proportional to your attractiveness—but for a woman and for a man in a relationship, it’s also important, and maybe this is more important than attractiveness.

It’s more important or also important, because the more intimacy there is in a relationship and, over time, if the relationship is growing, you’re going to become more and more intimate, which will require more and more vulnerability, which will necessarily begin to trigger those parts of yourself that have been hidden that maybe have been hidden so deep in your psyche that you’re not even aware of them. But those parts that are buried deep, exiled as IFS therapy likes to call it, exiled in your psyche, in your unconscious, will become activated and will want to come out the more intimacy this relationship has. [16:02.6]

Over time, your needy inner child parts will be coming out, looking for love and connection, and significance and security, from somewhere else, from the other, from your wife or girlfriend, and if you’re not able to meet your inner child parts’ needs, then that will be the end of that relationship.

You might have experienced something like this, where at the beginning of the relationship, it was all really smooth and exciting, and that’s what we call the honeymoon stage. Then you get more and more intimacy, and now you have these big fights that become where it’s like you can’t even remember what you were actually fighting about. You just remember the effects of it, which are, I don’t know, a broken chair, broken dishes, broken windows, words that were said that you completely regret in the cool light of day, when you’ve calmed down, and you can’t even remember what it was about how it started. But what happened was you triggered each other and what was going on is parts of yourself that were vulnerable were not getting their needs met, and as a result, other parts of you jumped in and were the Hulk, right? Then these are what IFS therapy called firefighter parts that try to put out the fires and they do that in extreme ways. [17:13.2]

This will happen, guaranteed. This is actually a good sign because it actually shows that there’s growing intimacy. However, this is usually the death knell of most relationships because the persons involved don’t know how to deal with their own intimacy, their own vulnerability, their own exiles when they burst out. So, their normal way of dealing with it is ineffective that it is going to be quite extreme, and the more intimacy that is involved, the more extreme the protective mechanisms become.

It’s actually going to be the case that the further along for most people, 80 to 90 percent, just based on what I’ve seen out there in the internet, plus the research, are going to get more and more triggered over time. Either they’re just going to shut down and shut off their intimacy. [18:04.3]

You might see couples like that who basically are still together because of the kids and they’re basically civil maybe, but they’re cold. They’re not opening up to each other. They’re not going to each other for intimacy. They might just be in a kind of cold partnership, friendship maybe, I don’t know, like a hi-bye type of friendship, like there’s a truce, but there’s no intimacy, no passion involved, and that’s the majority of relationships, I don’t know, 50, 60 percent of them.

Then the remaining 30, 40 percent of unsuccessful relationships, they just get a divorce and, for whatever reasons, they decide it’s not worth it to stay together physically or logistically, so they separate. Maybe they still have a co-parenting relationship, which you hope they have for the kids. But that’s how I would define an unsuccessful relationship that they had to separate, or even if they had to stay together, that the passion’s gone.

This happens when you’re unable to meet your own needs and she’s unable to meet her own needs, because what happens in an intimate relationship is that you become the other person’s “tor-mentor.” I borrow that term from Richard Schwartz, the founder of IFS therapy, and in fact, I’ve done a whole lecture, a seminar in person. [19:09.8]

There’s a video of me giving the seminar on what it takes to succeed in an unconditional love relationship, what it looks like between two true selves in an unconditional love relationship. It’s on my YouTube channel. You can find it there, and there I go over Richard Schwartz’s concept of the “tor-mentor”, the tor-mentor and the magical kitchen metaphor. These are really important concepts. I also teach these in a fuller version of them in my “Rock Solid Relationships” course in 2.0 version.

Okay, so the tor-mentor, what’s this about? As I say, I can go into a lot more detail. If you want to read more about it, which I highly recommend, get Richard Schwartz’s book, You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for. “You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for.” Just google “You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for Richard Schwartz,” okay, and you’ll find this book. It’s a great book. I highly recommend it. [19:58.0]

The “tor-mentor” idea is that as there’s more intimacy in the relationship, the other person will actually trigger your inner child exiles who are looking for love, because the other person, your partner in the relationship, you’re kind of responding to them—these inner child parts are responding to the partner—as if they were your parent caregiver or your parent figure back in childhood whose love you crave the most, and as a result, you had to adapt or change how you were in order to get that parent figure’s attention or approval, or connection or love.

Okay, I’ve covered this a lot in my other courses and in the podcast. This is where you tried out different coping strategies, like being a pleaser or an achiever, or a rebel or a loner withdrawing. These are all the different ways that you dealt with it as a child, you dealt with having to navigate, having to negotiate attention, love, connection with this parent figure or parent figures, and this gets transferred into your adult relationship the more intimate it gets. [21:05.2]

As a result, because these child parts of us that held the most vulnerability were repressed in order for us to get along in life, to get on with making money and getting all these adult responsibilities taken care of or even teenager responsibilities taken care of, we had to repress these childlike parts of us. They get dredged up again in intimate relationships and you’ll go on in your life not even knowing these parts of you are there, but it’s because of the intimate relationship that triggers them that allows you to discover them.

Hence, that other person becomes your mentor by tormenting you. That’s the play on words, okay? Then your partner becomes your mentor. It allows you to learn more about yourself. It provides the conditions for you to learn more about yourself by triggering you, by tormenting you. [21:57.3]

If you can embrace that as an opportunity for you to learn more about yourself, for you to discover new parts of yourself that you might be aware of, but don’t have a lot of familiarity with or haven’t built a relationship with, then you are able to go and build a relationship with them, as a result of them getting triggered and brought out of the basements of your psyche so that you can meet their needs.

In order for all of that to happen, you’ve got to be pretty far along in the therapeutic process. You have to be able to get more access of your higher self so that you can access your confidence, your courage, the natural confidence and courage of your higher self, and the compassion and the care and the centeredness, and all those good qualities that I’ve covered before in my previous podcast episodes and seminars on the idea or the concept of the true self.

Only if and only when both parties in the relationship are mature enough to be able to meet their own inner child parts’ needs, their own exiles’ needs, when they come up, when they get triggered by the partner, by your partner, only then will you be able to succeed in a long-term relationship. [22:58.6]

Now, a quick caveat. Sometimes, especially earlier in the relationship, one partner may be more mature than the other and that more mature partner can also help to meet the needs of the more immature partner’s in our child parts. Okay, that can’t go on indefinitely because that will be way too much of a drag on the more mature one.

You could have a relationship that I guess is sexual and intimate and romantic, where one partner is always emotionally dependent on the other, but this is not an ideal situation and I wouldn’t call it a healthy one, especially if we’re looking at a 50-year relationship. That situation could last three years. But if the immature partner is not growing, as a result, and able to better meet his or her own vulnerable parts’ needs, then this is really going to be a difficult situation.

The ideal is that both partners are mostly able to meet their own needs and they’re mostly growing. In other words, each person is actually growing in their capacity and capability to meet their own parts’ needs for love, connection, security, significance, and so forth, because in an intimate relationship, guaranteed, you will trigger each other. [24:12.7]

This is actually a good thing because it’s an opportunity. It’s one of the only opportunities that will allow you to discover these parts of yourself and those needs that are not being met, so they are your mentor by tormenting you. They’re your “tor-mentor.”

Okay, that’s the first requirement that you’re able to meet your own needs, because in an intimate relationship, you will trigger each other, and you’re going to need to be able to go to those parts of you that are triggered and not require your partner to meet those triggered parts’ needs, because that will be the end of that relationship, if that were the case. That’s how it is for most people. They don’t know how to meet their own parts’ needs and, as a result, the relationship eventually blows up or dead ends inside and they’re maybe physically together, but the chemistry is already gone. The passion is already gone. [25:02.4]

Do you struggle in your interactions with women or in your intimate relationship? Are fear, shame, or neediness sabotaging your relationships or attractiveness? In my Platinum Partnership Program, you’ll discover how to transform your psychological issues, improve your success with women, and uncover your true self.

Get access to all my current and future online courses by applying for the Platinum Partnership today at DavidTianPHD.com\\Platinum.

Okay, so that’s a super, super important requirement. That’s why many episodes I’ve dedicated to what it takes to meet your own needs and this is what I’ve called the therapeutic process. The seven-step therapeutic process trains you to meet your parts’ needs yourself, because that’s the first and most important requirement. [26:02.0]

The second requirement is that your partner values goodness. In other words, you have a moral partner. Okay, this is often taken care of when you start to meet your own needs, because a big part of meeting your own needs is meeting your parts’ needs for love, understanding, acceptance, and compassion. The therapeutic process guarantees that you don’t end up like a Hitler. Okay? So, you can’t actually meet your own needs if you’re evil or if you’re bad, or if you’re a Machiavellian, seeing the whole world red in tooth and claw only, devoid of morality and goodness, as Red Pill sees it and as a lot of the men’s dating gurus online see it.

She values goodness in and of itself. Right? Not just for what it can get her. She’s not seeing the world and your relationship and you as what she can get out of it. She’s not going into the relationship to get, not going into a relationship to get her needs met, but as a place instead to give, as an expression of who she is, of the love that’s overflowing in her heart. [27:07.7]

Now, the reason it’s so difficult for a lot of guys, because I’ve been talking about morality for years on my content and I get guys asking, “But how do you spot one? How do you find somebody, a woman, who’s got integrity and compassion, and values goodness for its own sake? It’s like this doesn’t exist,” and I know why because I’ve met these men and I’ve been interacting with them online. I’m looking at their comments, what they actually share. I understand why it’s so hard for you to find a moral woman, because you are not a moral man.

Okay, I’m going to let that sit. Most guys are not moral, just like most guys are not mature enough for a relationship. One of the reasons they’re not mature enough for a relationship is not only the fact that they’re quite early in the therapeutic process, not able to meet their own needs for connection and love, and significance and so forth in themselves. But, in addition, they themselves don’t even value goodness for itself intrinsically. They’re actually selfish and self-centered. They’re just looking to get. “How do I get my sexual needs met by those hot women? How do I get a woman to meet my needs for love and connection?” [28:13.0]

They’re only going to give if they can get, and as a result, your relationship is already doomed, because that’s a relationship that’s not founded on love. That’s one that’s founded on mutual interest. “As long as you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Oh, the minute you stop scratching my back, screw you, get the heck out of my house.” And all the red pillars are like, Yeah, of course, that’s the way every relationship is.

No wonder you guys are so screwed up and you think all women are evil and don’t have a single moral bone in their body. Part of it is because you don’t, you lack integrity. Already, your agenda is one that lacks integrity, so that’s pretty clear. But then, of course, you’re actually seeing the world through the lenses that you have created. Those people who are actually morally good would just stay away from you. [28:55.8]

If I spot most guys are just using me, which is fine, because if they’re paying me, I mean, this is a transaction. This is called business, so it’s perfectly fine. I know the bargain. I mean, I know the deal. I’ve entered into this contract. It’s an implicit contract and sometimes an explicit contract for what they want.

But in a true friendship, I can’t just count on a contract, either implicit or explicit, because if it’s just a contract, there might be ways of getting out of that contract or they might just say, “Screw the contract. I’m going to take the consequences and screw you over, screw you, David, over, and I’m going to take whatever I can from you and good luck trying to get it back or whatever, get revenge or whatever.” I just don’t want to deal with people like that.

I want to deal with somebody I can trust. I want to deal with somebody that I can close my eyes around. I want to deal with people that have integrity, that have a sense of moral morality that love goodness for its own sake, because then I don’t need to constantly monitor them or to read all the fine print in a contract that I have with them, because I can trust that they’re good people. There actually are people like that, people who won’t stab you in the back, even if they can profit greatly off it. [30:01.2]

Now, a lot of guys aren’t good people actually. I don’t think that they’re yet bad people because a lot of guys just haven’t even thought about it. Because they haven’t thought about it, push hasn’t come to shove yet, so they haven’t been tested. They haven’t been stress-tested. They haven’t thought about what they would do in these morally-dicey situations. Therefore, they just revert to whatever is easiest, which is often just going along with whoever has the strongest frame or whatever most people are doing, or whatever will benefit them the most, and then they feel bad about it maybe afterwards. But because they haven’t thought about it ahead of time, they’re not prepared, right? You can’t actually trust them yet. They’re still naive.

I’m not talking about being naive. I don’t want to surround myself with naive people. I want somebody who understands what evil and bad are and then has chosen not to go that way, even if it were to benefit them in the short term or maybe even in the long term in terms of worldly success, but because they value goodness, which includes, of course, integrity, loyalty, commitment, responsibility, love, compassion, kindness. [31:11.8]

As a result of being with somebody like that, it means I can relax. I can breathe deeply. I can close my eyes and be vulnerable around them and sleep, and have all my possessions around them and trust that they won’t steal anything or do me wrong. That’s a requirement in a long-term relationship, because if you’re only in it because you can get something out of it, at some point you’re going to torment each other, you’re going to trigger each other, and it’s not going to be pleasant for that moment.

If somebody isn’t valuing morality, if it is a person who doesn’t value morality, that person will take the easy road and quit or screw you over in a really nasty divorce. The reason it’s so hard for most guys to find moral people is because like seeks like, okay. Moral people can tell or those who are not naïve. I’ve been defining morality, it means if you’re just naive, then you’re just not tested yet. I’m talking about being a moral person, you’re somebody who is consciously chosen to do good, even when it’s not to your immediate advantage or even to your long-term advantage. Somebody like that will stay away from you because they’re used to spotting evil and bad. [32:24.4]

Actually each of these points, each of these three requirements, I could easily spend a whole semester or a whole year long course, a university-level course, a graduate-level course in each of these points, so I’m just going to move on from here. But just saying that the second requirement is somebody who values morality, values goodness, and understands what goodness is, and that requires that they understand what evil and bad are and they’ve consciously chosen not to go with the evil and bad directional route. [32:52.8]

They’ve consciously chosen integrity, compassion and goodness, because in a long-term intimate relationship, there will be times the more intimate it gets, when it gets hard, when it’s not fun, when it’s not pleasurable, and if you don’t have the moral fiber to stick with it, then you will quit and you might even have so much anger and resentment towards your partner that got built up that you’ll want to backstab them or make their life as torturous and difficult as possible, just to get your revenge, and all of that is just this anger. The more anger there is actually, the more love that these parts are actually wanting and not getting, so they turn into this evil version of themselves.

Okay, so that’s morality. Then the third requirement is to understand unconditional love. Now, I believe, I’m going to say this is a controversial thing and it might even be surprising to many of you. I don’t think a romantic relationship is the ideal place to find unconditional love. [33:53.8]

For most people, they have so much trouble understanding unconditional love in the first place and then they throw on the complexities of an adult relationship. Even in a true friendship, it’s really tricky to talk about unconditional love and especially in a romantic relationship where there’s even deeper levels of intimacy, including sexual intimacy. I don’t think that the place where you should be, first and foremost, finding or looking for unconditional love should be in your romantic adult relationship.

The best place to practice and to first experience unconditional love is with a child. Now, if you can’t, if you don’t have a child, an actual person, a child, a physical external child in your life, the child is there really just to teach you also, I mean, obviously, that the child is valuable in and of itself, just as all people are, but the child is also there to teach you in terms of unconditional love and learning about it, what it’s like to love your inner child, because for most men, it’s hard to have love for yourself because of toxic masculinity that tells you to keep your emotions tampered down and it’s unmanly to cry, and all that bullshit. Right? [34:59.4]

As a result, it’s very hard for them to be vulnerable with themselves and even to find and be with their inner child parts, and to fully accept them for what toxic masculinity would call weakness, which is actually strength from a healthy perspective, but toxic masculinity has a very superficial, insecure, fearful view of what strength is.

As a result, I had to learn through loving first my goddaughter and then children that came into my life, including my son who is continuing to teach me how to love my own inner child parts, because it was hard as someone who was raised with a very tough mindset of just suck it up, fuck your feelings, just move forward, get shit done, and being able to turn inwards and find, first of all, and fully accept, second of all, and then, thirdly, fully understand and give love to my inner child parts. That inner child work is required in the therapeutic process and that’s the best place to actually experience and get practice experiencing unconditional love in yourself, because then it’s uncomplicated. [36:06.2]

Another proxy for a child might be a pet, a puppy, so if you’re mature enough to love the puppy for itself and not just get a puppy so that you can grow, please don’t do that. You’re not going to be a good dog owner and you’re going to traumatize this dog, so don’t do that. But if you really have a place in your heart for a puppy, because you have so much love to give and you want to give it to an innocent and pure source, and you don’t have like a nephew or a niece or a goddaughter or godson in your life, get a puppy. Okay? Specifically, a dog I think. But you can practice with cats, like a kitten, but they’re generally more standoffish and more independent, so I would recommend a dog, but I’m a dog person. So, I’ll just say pet, okay?

It is not a good idea to be looking for unconditional love, first and foremost, in a romantic relationship. In fact, you shouldn’t at all, because, obviously, that means that you’re not able to meet your own need for unconditional love. You’ve got to be able to do that yourself for your own inner child parts that are craving it the most, being able to give them unconditional love. [37:12.8]

When they say to you your love, true self, is not good enough, this is a sign that you are actually not in the state of your higher self, but in the state of some protector part who has an agenda to grow or some self-help agenda, or some self-development, personal-development agenda.

I would recommend that you find a good IFS therapist and get to know these protector parts that have these agendas so that they can trust and allow enough room for your higher self to be there. You can also get really far along in the therapeutic process through my recorded courses, which you can get all-access to all of them through the Platinum Partnership, so I highly recommend that. Obviously, I’m a little biased there. But you can also get an IFS therapist. Get a good IFS therapist. [37:57.7]

Now, that’s the third requirement that there is unconditional love, first and foremost, from yourself to yourself. When you are able to do this—okay, so this is also going to stretch credulity for a lot of single guys—when you’re able to unconditionally love all of your parts, all the parts of you, including the parts of you that you might consider weak or that you’re ashamed of, when you’re able to give unconditional love, which is far more than just unconditional acceptance, but actually even more love for them, then you’ll discover this unending eternal fountain of love inside you.

That’s when you’re ready for an intimate relationship, because there’s so much unconditional love flowing from you that you’ve got so much that you want to give it. You want to give it to others, specifically. Not everyone, not the whole world, because then it dilutes it. That’s sort of like I’m going to do a meditation on loving the whole world. Okay, that’s cool. That puts you in a really nice state of mind and it feels really good, but you can’t love somebody in—I’m going to name a faraway country from most people—Timbuktu or whatever, somebody in a village there. [39:02.8]

Most people have the time and the resources to unconditionally love and interact or engage with maybe half a dozen people, 12, 24. I’m picking nice round numbers, ballpark figures, right? This is unconditional love flowing from you. When you’re able to meet all of your own parts’ needs and you discover you have a surplus still of an unending fountain of unconditional love, now you’re ready to be in a relationship, because that’s actually what’s required. 

That’s actually what happens in a healthy relationship. Each partner is able to meet his or her own needs, him or herself. On top of that, they’ve still got so much love that they’re able to also love their partner’s inner child parts fully, and then you have a whole other source of love. Okay, just like it’s really great to have one loving parent, now you’ve got two, and that’s what a loving, healthy, passionate relationship requires. [40:00.0]

Just to recap, first that each partner is able to meet his or her own needs most of the time and is growing in their capacity and capability to do so, so that when each of them becomes the others tor-mentor, they’re able to actually learn from it and grow from it, because that is inevitable and actually a good sign of an intimate relationship. The second is that this person values morality, right, values goodness for its own sake. Third, this person has unconditional love for his or her own self, and as that person experiences that, they’ll discover that there’s a surplus of an unending source of it, and so that is the precondition for a healthy, romantic relationship that will last over time and grow over time.

Okay, and then, of course, I’m going to throw the caveat on there for all the immature guys. Of course, she’s going to be really hot, blah, blah, blah, right? You’ve got to be physically attracted to each other. This can actually grow over time because it’s subjective and relative. All right, so that physical attractiveness is one of the most minor and easiest factors to meet. The other three are a lot harder to find. [41:08.3]

And, yes, for all those immature guys out there, there are many immature women as there are immature men. I’m throwing their ballpark figure, right? But that’s a pretty safe statement and that means that 80 percent of adult males, just as 80 percent of adult females, are not mature enough yet for a lasting, growing, intimate, loving, passionate relationship, maybe as high as 90 percent.

Yes, you are looking for someone in the minority, but as you yourself become more and more good and moral, and as you yourself get further along in the therapeutic process, giving love to yourself, as you yourself are able to meet your own needs, you will spot these other people. You’ll have this radar that’s naturally just going. You’ll also have a radar that will have a kind of “ugh”, kind of like an “ugh” reaction to 80 percent of people. That’s what my life is like, okay? [42:02.8]

Then you decide for yourself, why am I interacting with this person? Is it because they’re my plumber and I need to get my plumbing fixed or whatever is the case? Then you decide this is a perfectly fine contract to be in, but what you don’t do is get into a romantic relationship with them because you already understand what it takes, because you’re actually going to be turned on by maturity, because you’ll actually be spotting it because it’s something that you are doing for yourself and it’s feels so good in yourself, and then you find it attractive when you see it in others.

Immature people don’t even notice it. It’s sort of like radio waves, right? Like you’re on the AM dial and you don’t even notice the FM channels, but there’s a whole other set of channels up there that are going along the way and your antenna or whatever, your device, you are not attuned to this other frequency or other set of frequencies, so it’s like that. When you are on the right road, you’ll start to see them a lot more easily and you’ll also avoid those who are on the roads that you were on, the roads of immaturity. [43:04.7]

If you get stuck in immaturity like most people or if you get sidetracked by Machiavellian game playing like you see in Red Pill and most of the dating advice for men online, your life will be guaranteed to be miserable in the long run. Maybe you’ll get random sex and you get pleasure, and you might get narcissistic apply.

In other words, you’ll get your ego stroked and get validated for a little while, but you’ll never be able to relax because you’ll never be enough just by being yourself. You’ll always have to earn it, which means you’ll never be able to relax. You’re on the perpetual backwards travelator. We say travelator in Canada. That’s that walking … I don’t know, in the airport that just keeps moving, but it’s moving it backwards so you can never rest, and I’ve been on that. That’s the achiever’s trap and the achiever applies that to areas of life that you can’t earn, like unconditional love, and they wonder why the world is devoid of love. It’s just devoid of love for you and everyone who is like you who approaches life with these lenses on. [44:06.8]

That doesn’t have to be the case for you. You can actually find lasting fulfillment, happiness, love, and joy in your life, just by you being you and just by you giving more love to yourself, choosing more love for yourself. If you invest in yourself for the therapeutic process, this life of a loving, intimate relationship, but even more importantly, for you being able to meet your own needs for unconditional love and acceptance, and being enough, that can be yours, but you’ve got to invest in the therapeutic process.

Okay, this episode was partly inspired by a comment, so please comment. Let me know what you thought about this episode. Give me any feedback on any prior episodes, too. Thanks so much for all of those who have been commenting and giving feedback. I appreciate it so much and all of those who have been liking it and given ratings and all that good stuff. Thank you on all the various podcast channels and platforms. I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much. If you know anyone who could benefit from this, please share it with them.

Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [45:10.2]

In this episode, in contrast, I’ll be presenting how to create a loving, passionate relationship in a healthy, natural way. This is in the hopes that you won’t then waste your life, living out of fear and insecurity, overcompensating for your neediness with narcissistic behaviors, and instead you can live a life founded on love and courage, so it’s fear and insecurity versus a life of love and courage.

In previous episodes, I’ve covered how it doesn’t help to focus on whether you’re masculine or even whether you’re successful. Many men want to become masculine or successful in order to compensate for their feeling that they’re not enough, and they believe that if they’re just masculine enough, then, finally, they’ll be enough for love, and if they’re enough for love, then they ought to be enough for attracting the woman into his life. He’s mistakenly thinking that the key to his happiness is by becoming more masculine. [02:00.0]

Similarly, there are some people who believe that if they’re successful enough, success as defined by worldly success, as in financial success and outward status, and they believe, they mistakenly believe, that if they can be finally successful enough, then they will be enough for love and then they can be happy. Their big mistake is in thinking that masculinity or success will necessarily bring them happiness, but they don’t. They’re actually totally different wavelengths. They’re flowing along different channels. Happiness, love, and fulfillment aren’t linked to being masculine or even being successful.

Any man who is obsessing over whether he’s masculine enough is actually feeding his own insecurities and making himself needier. If you’re asking yourself whether you’re masculine, you’re actually just reinforcing and amplifying your neediness, thereby ensuring that you are becoming less attractive and less masculine. [03:02.8]

Similarly, the level of an intensity of the love, happiness and fulfillment in your life are not pegged to, are not connected to your success. Up and down all levels of worldly success, you can find people who are happy and fulfilled, and who have lives full of love. Similarly, up and down the entire spectrum of success, worldly success, you can find people who are unhappy, miserable, depressed, full of anxiety, never satisfied, never feel like they’re enough, regardless of how much worldly success they have.

So, it’s really important for you in your mind to uncouple, to decouple masculinity and success from love, happiness and fulfillment, and one of the many traps that these online dating gurus fall into is linking the necessity of being masculine or successful, or whatever other quality, whatever other outward quality, and linking that to your happiness and fulfillment and being enough, and that is a lie. [04:08.0]

Being masculine enough or successful enough won’t bring you love, and no amount of worldly success or masculinity will make you happy unless you are already happy to begin with. Those things can bring you pleasure and a kind of superficial happiness, but they won’t lead to any lasting happiness and they definitely won’t lead to fulfillment, and of course, they just having this requirement at all would undermine them leading to love.

What should you do instead? I’ll present to you four points for how to find and create a loving relationship in a natural way that’s organic with the way you live your life. Okay, so there are these four points roughly in this order.

The first point and the first in this order is to meet your own needs. Learn how to meet your own needs. I’ve covered this in many episodes, especially the one on the seven steps for how to overcome your own neediness and I’ll review those real quick here, but I also go through them in a lot more detail in my courses. [05:10.7]

Each of the courses is focused on a different aspect of your life, like relationships or lifestyle, or casual dating, and all together, they are meant to be a comprehensive approach to the seven steps and an easy way to get access to them is just joining the “Platinum Partnership”, which gets you access to all of them. Just in case, to head off any questions, because I know I’m going to get the question of “Which courses? Because you have so many courses, David,” the courses that are focused on meeting your own needs and the seven steps, and that include major components of the seven steps integrated into the course material, include “Freedom U”, “Rock Solid Relationships”, “Lifestyle Mastery”, and even “Invincible”, which has about half of the material that’s therapeutic material. 

That’s a challenging course because a lot of guys who were buying it when we first launched it seven years ago, and now it’s, at least at the time of this recording, in its fifth iteration, the 5.0 version, about half of it, again, is the therapeutic process, the therapeutic material. [06:14.2]

Unfortunately, at the beginning, because there were so many guys coming to me, looking for dating advice as for casual dating and even from the pick-up world, they didn’t know how to appreciate the therapeutic material, and that’s a big part of why I have this podcast to draw your attention to how this is far more important than the tactic, strategies and techniques that a lot of the pick-up type of guys were originally focused on and completely ignored any of the therapeutic material. The therapeutic material is the most important thing and it makes all of the technique type of stuff so much easier and so much more natural.

I also go through the seven steps in some of the smaller courses, if you take them all together, courses like “Drive”, “Heart”, “True Self”, “Purpose”, and “Core”. Together, these courses will help you walk you through the seven steps as well. [07:03.2]

What does it mean to meet your own needs? First of all, just real quick, this is by way of review—I cover this in a lot more detail in other episodes as well as. There’s a lot more detail and I guide you through the process in the courses themselves—but what are the needs that you need to meet? What are the needs that we all have necessarily? These aren’t needs that are unhealthy or healthy. That’s not the question. The question about healthy or unhealthy is about how you meet these needs. The needs themselves are natural. The question isn’t whether you have these needs. We all do. The question is how are you meeting these needs?

What are other needs? I’m going to list off 10 universal human needs for you to fulfill this first step. You’re going to need to figure out how to meet them yourself on a frequent basis, every day or maybe multiple times a day, and within your control and not requiring other people to meet those needs for you or to behave towards you or treat you a certain way for you to get your needs met. [08:08.7]

These 10 needs include security or certainty, healthy limits, variety, play and spontaneity, significance, autonomy, a need for connection, a need for growth, for contribution, and the most important need that undergirds them all is a need for love. I go through each one of these needs in a lot more detail in my courses, as well as leading you through discovering how you can meet those needs yourself in healthy, sustainable, frequent ways.

I’m going to assume that you’ve listened to some of the previous episodes before on your needs or maybe you’ve gone through some of my courses before, so you have a basic idea of healthy, sustainable, in-control ways to meet your own needs on a frequent basis. [08:58.5]

You’d understand that as you’re doing this, you must be creating a life or lifestyle that you enjoy, because that’s a big part of meeting your own needs, being able to have within your control a life that you actually take pleasure in, where you’re not doing everything just for a paycheck, but you’re actually able to meet your needs for play and spontaneity, and significance and variety through your life. If you’re doing that, then you’d naturally be going places and engaging in activities that you enjoy, and then it just takes a little bit of tweaking, though, for most people, it would just happen naturally because many of these activities or places involve other people, but even if they’re just you going to, I don’t know, your guitar teacher and it’s just that, there’s no band yet, then it just takes a little bit of tweaking for you to be able to go to venues that you enjoy that are in line with your hobby or your interests, or your passions or the things that you enjoy, these activities, and meet other people who also enjoy those activities. [10:05.0]

For instance, and this is just an example I pulled off the top of my head there, if you enjoy guitar, playing guitar, you must enjoy listening to guitar. You’re going to need to enjoy listening to the guitar in order for you to become good at guitar. If you enjoy listening to the guitar, you probably enjoy going to venues where live guitar is being played and, at these venues, these are concerts or maybe smaller concerts in pubs or something. You’ll naturally be in settings where there are other people who also enjoy their guitar and watching it and listening to it played live. Trust me, for this example, there are going to be a lot of women there, so I’m assuming you’re a man listening to this.

You can just pick any example in your life, and just with a little tweaking and ingenuity and creativity, you can find some way in which there is a group setting for this, and then you’ll have a natural, organic interest already. You’ll already be enjoying yourself there, because you’re going there not just to meet women, but you’re going there because you have an interest in the activity and you’ll also have a natural conversation starter, and you already can assume that you have something in common, some common interests. It’ll be a lot easier and a lot more natural for you to strike up a conversation or to meet people. [11:16.8]

Now, a lot of pick-up artist boys who are shy and socially introverted, and need the comfort of an entire scripted-out conversation before they even leave their home, they don’t know what to make of this, because, first of all, they don’t even have natural interests yet because they haven’t learned how to meet their own needs, so they’re actually needy so that you can’t do Step 2 until you’ve done Step 1 or made a lot of headway or progress on Step 1.

That’s the main focus. Step 1, which is the seven steps, should be the main focus for all of you guys listening, for all of us, if this is something you want, love and happiness, because Step 1 is about meeting your own needs for something, such needs that are so big as growth, contribution, and love and connection. [11:59.3]

In fact, once you’ve taken care of Step 1 or Point1, which is to meet your own needs, and you’re well on your way on the seven steps, then all the other points get taken care of for themselves. You don’t even need to really worry about them. The second point here is to live a life you enjoy, to get out there, because you’d already be doing it naturally, so I wouldn’t even need to point this out to you. It would just happen naturally. It’d just be an extension of you meeting your own needs.

I’m only pointing out Points 2, 3, and 4 on this episode so that, for those who haven’t learned how to meet their own needs or haven’t even started really, they have an idea of what is coming, what’s coming up. These Points 2, 3, and 4 would’ve happened along the way as you learn how to meet your own needs, as you’re going to have to get out there.

You will get out there because you will be meeting your own needs, for your own needs for connection. That will at least lead you out of your house and at least into nature, and if you love nature, there are plenty of opportunities to meet new people, especially other nature lovers, especially if you go to nature retreats and things like this. There are entire communities formed on just the common interests of their love of nature, and this is true for everything, especially now with the internet, which hyper-connects us. [13:13.5]

If you are well along the way to meeting your own needs, then you will naturally be living a life that you enjoy, and your neediness, because it will be going down, your attractiveness will naturally be going up and then you’ll be going out into the world. That’s Step 2. You are going to be going out in the world, living a life that you enjoy.

Obviously, part of that life that you enjoy will also be in the comfort of your own home or whatever, and for those pick-up artists who are worried about “If I go to these venues, let’s say I have an common interest in wine and I go to a wine tasting event, but then I don’t know what to say to her. What’s my opener? What’s my transition?” and blah, blah, blah, I covered this in the last episode, but I want to reiterate here, one of the big differences between what I’m doing here in this podcast, as well as in my work for the past several years, versus what pick-up artists are doing. [14:02.3]

In other words, we have different goals, but the pick-up artist’s goal is to become a ladies’ man and he tracks that goal by his conversion rates and depending on whatever conversion he’s focused on, whether it’s getting the number or getting late or whatever it is. He’s trying to get his numbers up, so he sees women not really as specific human beings and wanting to get to know them as humans, but he sees them as a means to his end. The means are a way of keeping score, and the ultimate goal is “to become really good with women”, quote-unquote.

That’s not what I’m focused on. That’s not what I’m interested in helping you with. What I’m interested in helping you with and what I’ve been doing all along in this podcast isn’t helping you to become a ladies’ man and to jack up your opening rates or whatever. What I’m focused on is helping you find love, fulfillment, and happiness, lasting happiness, because being a ladies’ man won’t lead to lasting happiness or fulfillment. It won’t lead to love and this is a big reason why I did that last episode. [15:04.7]

Now that that is clear, even if you’re super shy, socially awkward, but because this is truly an interest of yours, whether it’s wine or cosplay or comic-con, I don’t know, whatever your interest is, the fact that you are there and there’s somebody else there that you’d like to strike up a conversation with, you already have a natural, organic conversation with this person. Then, because you’re meeting your own needs, you’re also becoming more healthy emotionally, as a result, and then you’ll be naturally taking an interest in the other person.

Then it will be easy, because you will have a natural interest in the other person as an end in herself, not as a means to make you feel better about yourself or for you to pump up your ego, or for you to add another notch to the bedpost, so to speak, or another close on your metrics that you’re tracking to see whether you’re manly enough or whatever. You’re actually interested in this human being and what she thinks and feels, and you’re interested in getting to know her. [16:07.0]

Most pick-up artists and most dudes aren’t actually interested in the women themselves. They’re just interested in the women’s reaction to them so that the man can feel good about himself. That’s the reason why he goes blank. That’s one of the main reasons why he goes blank in conversation, because he’s racking his mind to try to come up with something that will impress her or that will come off well, so he is in his own head about himself. “What does she think of me?” It’s all “me, me, me, me, me,” instead of actually being fully present with her and not thinking about himself at all.

This leads naturally into the third point, which is that as you’re living a life that you enjoy, naturally, along the way, you’ll be attracted to, you’ll start to spot women who also meet their own needs, who are also able to or are learning how to meet their own needs. [16:53.5]

As you’re learning how to meet your own needs for security, for significance, and so on, you’ll know from the inside through experience intimately, what it’s like when you’re not able to meet those needs on your own, and you’re feeling needy and the things that you do and say when you’re feeling needy, versus as you’re learning how to meet your own needs yourself on a frequent basis, on a daily basis, within your own control, not needing other people to meet your needs for you, you’ll also be able to spot what it’s like when other people are doing the same thing. When you don’t need others to treat you a certain way for you to feel good about yourself and you take full responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings and beliefs, you’ll naturally be easily able to spot other people who are doing the same.

This point is hard to describe without just giving tons and tons of examples, but the easiest thing to do instead of focusing on Point 3 here is to focus on Point 1. As you do Point 1, naturally, as you learn how to meet your own needs, you will naturally easily be able to spot other people who are experiencing and going through the same thing, and you’ll also be able to spot easily and naturally people who have not yet gone through it, because you were once there and so it becomes easy for you to say, Oh, right, I can see that this person is experiencing this, which is also why it’s so easy to enter into compassion for those who are not yet at the maturity that you are in. [18:20.4]

There’s a compassion for them because it sucks to be in that position, so naturally there’s a compassion when you watch some of these online dating gurus and their immaturity, and of course, it’s also entertaining, but there’s also this compassion. That compassion does not mean that you then bend over backwards to accommodate them on their every request. 

One common objection that you hear from immature people about unconditional love or even compassion is that then they think that it means that they have to just do everything and anything that the person, their love object says, but that’s obviously not true. You can clearly have compassion from somebody, but not get entangled with them, because it’s not good for you and it’s not good for them. [19:02.4]

Another easy example for love, for instance, is if you love your child and the child keeps asking you for more ice cream, because you love them, you don’t give them unlimited ice cream, despite the fact that they’re whining for it. Clearly, right? That’s an example that as you know intimately from the inside through your own experience what it’s like to actually meet your own needs, it will naturally and easily be obvious to you when it’s not yet [there], when you’re not yet there, when you’re not yet able to meet your own needs for love, connection, growth, significance, security, and certainty. Then it becomes very difficult for you to understand what it’s like to be able to spot that in someone else. Okay, so the easiest thing to do to master Point 3 is to actually master Point 1. Then Point 3 will come along naturally. [19:52.5]

Do you struggle in your interactions with women or in your intimate relationship? Are fear, shame, or neediness sabotaging your relationships or attractiveness? In my Platinum Partnership Program, you’ll discover how to transform your psychological issues, improve your success with women, and uncover your true self.

Get access to all my current and future online courses by applying for the Platinum Partnership today at DavidTianPHD.com\\Platinum.

The final point is similar to the third, that along the way, as you’re living a life that you enjoy as a result of meeting your own needs, along the way, find a partner who has moral principles, and this will be easy to spot if you have moral principles. Why do so many Red Pill guys get cheated on and lied to by women? It’s because they also cheat and lie when it serves them. They also can be mean to others when it serves them. They’re just bitter that they lost that fight against that girl, so they’re trying to get it back. [21:04.0]

Again, if you have moral principles, if you are already somebody who values and prioritizes integrity, and that means you live up to your word, you keep your word, it also means that you follow your moral principles, even when there is no punishment or negative consequences, just because it is the right thing to do or just because it is the good. You also follow through even when no one else sees and you’re not out just for your own selfish or personal gain, but that you value the good for the sake of good, because it is good, not because the good will get you something as a result.

Similarly, you don’t treat people as means to something else. You treat them as ends in themselves. They are their ends for their own sake, not as means for you to feel good about yourself or for you to rack up a higher score on your dating scorecard or whatever. [21:58.0]

This is a good example actually. This is a good place to pause for an example. Let’s take an example of going to a speed dating event and approaching it with moral principles, versus approaching it without moral principles. If you were to approach it without moral principles, as an example, here’s one way that you could do it.

As a man, you go there not interested in really meeting any of the women, but just interested in seeing what your score would be, how many of them you could convince to give you their number. You don’t value them, meeting them in themselves, but you’re just using them as a way of gauging your score, racking up points on your scorecard.

In that sense, you’re treating them as means instead of ends, and that’s creepy, versus going to a speed date to see who might be there that you could strike a conversation with and find common interest in, and maybe something bigger can come out of it, maybe a marriage out of it. You never know who you’re going to meet, and so you’re interested in each of the people that you meet as human beings, not as a way to keep track of how successful you are in speed dating as a separate activity. [23:05.3]

The same thing could go with cold approaching, cold approaching with moral principles versus cold approaching without moral principles. Now, let’s go with the first one, cold approaching with moral principles, because this might seem surprising to some of you who are more morally judgmental.

Cold approaching is simply the act of going out, out into the world, with the intention of meeting some new people. It’s similar to speed dating with moral principles, except speed dating is highly confined and ritualistic. There’s a lot of rules. There’s a timer and all that kind of setting, whereas cold approaching is just, I don’t know, the world, right? You could cold approach technically anywhere, because the cold and the cold approach simply indicates that you don’t know each other yet or you have no mutual friends in common or something. [23:48.2]

You could, say, set aside one hour or two hours in the day to go and meet new people, and if you have moral principles while doing it, that simply means that you’re going to treat each of these people that you meet as an end in themselves that the very activity that’s interesting to you, the reason you’re doing it, is so that you can get to know these people and the people themselves are intrinsically interesting to you. You might meet some new friends out of it. You might meet a potential mate out of it, but, regardless, you are treating them as ends.

Now, here’s the creepy way to cold approaches, which is actually how pick-up artists encourage you to approach cold approaching, which is a depersonalized impersonal way, which is that you just view it as like a video game, like the game, right, so that if you get “rejected”, quote-unquote, you can just brush it off like you’re just putting another quarter in the arcade and press continue and your character starts up again.

Cold approaching without moral principles is seeing the women that you meet not as ends in themselves, but as a means for you to gauge your success in dating so that you can feel better about yourself or masculinity or whatever, hoping, ultimately, at the end of that, that you’ll finally be enough. [25:03.0]

If you can rack up enough points to finally be enough as a human being or be enough for love or whatever it is, or finally be significant. You’re using them as a means to make you feel better. Now, you might have heard of that saying of a notch on the bedpost and that’s exactly getting at the same point.

Now, if you’re somebody who naturally has prioritized following your conscience and has thought through your moral values, and is trying to live according to those moral principles and you actually care about the good for the sake of it, of the good, not because you think that the good will get you more money or more babes or whatever, and that you’re not out just for selfish gain.

A lot of guys are only friends with each other for as long as they can use each other, and that’s really sad that that’s not really friendship. That’s just mutual using of each other, and then they wonder why they get so bitter and resentful when they get burned. You set the whole thing up, you hypocrite, and this is the case for most, I mean, all the Red Pill guys that I’ve met and most people out there. [26:09.0]

It’s like we’ve forgotten, as a society or as a world, what moral values are and most people have not even been equipped, they’ve not even given the opportunity to debate them or to think through moral values and ethics. It’s like it’s not even a topic anymore. That’s really sad, especially coming from a former professor of philosophy who taught courses in the university on ethics and moral philosophy. Even if you reject it and you become a nihilist, a moral nihilist, or a moral relativist, at least have arguments for it. At least have thought through your position and have considered the major alternative positions.

Anyway, this is just something I recommend that everyone do. I think it’s very difficult to have moral convictions, if you can’t defend them in the face of counterarguments, and if you’ve never had the opportunity for that, because everyone nowadays, through the algorithms of social media, lives basically in these mental silos where their ideas aren’t challenged. [27:07.2]

It’s very sad that the universities have gone towards a cancel-cultural route and that politically-correct route, which has not allowed young people or university students to learn how to debate moral principles and ethics and that sort of thing, because then along the way, naturally, as you think more about the virtues like courage and fortitude, and love and so forth, you will have developed your own theories and ideas.

Now, you don’t have to have the theories behind why you should be good. You could just be a good person because you value the good, because you’re naturally compassionate and considerate, and kind and so forth. But it’s even better if you are also kind and considerate, and compassionate, and have the arguments, the philosophical reasons for why you are holding to these moral principles.

When you have a higher degree of sophistication around these, around moral principles, it’d be a lot easier. It’s natural to spot other people who have similar values and you’ll naturally be drawn to them and day to you. It’s natural, so there’s nothing else you need to do. [28:11.0]

If you’re doing Step 1, Point 1, meet your own needs, okay, and then you just live your life. You’ll naturally come into contact with other human beings, including females who are also learning to meet their own needs. You’re naturally going to be attuned to them. It’s like a radar that you’ve got going naturally, going all the time. Similarly, for those who share your moral values and your moral principles, you’ll already be [attuned]. You’ve got this radar going.

Okay, those are the four points that I wanted to cover on how to create, in a natural way, a loving, passionate relationship.

The first point is to meet your own needs and I covered the seven steps for doing that in a previous episode.

The second point is to live a life that you enjoy, which will flow naturally from the first point. [29:00.8]

Then the third point, which flows naturally from the first and the second point is that, along the way, as you live a life you enjoy, find a partner who also is meeting her own needs or is learning to, or is growing in it or is meeting her own needs, and that will also be natural for you because you’ll naturally have your radar attuned to that.

The fourth point is to find a partner with the same or similar moral principles or moral values, or for somebody who prioritizes or appreciates moral values, like integrity, compassion, courage, reliability, following through on your word, loyalty, things like this.

You’ll have a much easier time with Points 3 and 4, and, of course, with 2, if you’re already doing Point 1, meeting your own needs. Then, a special case for Point 4 on moral principles is it really helps to be thinking through moral values for yourself, because society is not doing it for you and most people did not get this education or opportunity in school as they ought to have. [30:03.7]

My son is just over a year old right now. I mean, he’s in this beautiful time in his life right now, but I’m also looking forward to the time when he’s old enough to debate me at the dinner table on moral values, moral positions, and even if we totally agree on all our values, I’m going to assign him an opposite position to get him to have practice in defending a position that he doesn’t himself believe, because that in itself is a skill, to be able to enter into alternative positions and to shore them up, to even come up with stronger arguments and a stronger position than the original one that he was given, even though he doesn’t actually believe in it. That’s actually a skill. It’s a skill that I think everyone should learn and it will make it a lot easier to be able to find partners with the right type of moral principles and to be able to spot people who value morality. [30:52.6]

I should have mentioned this when I was talking about Point 4. If they don’t value morality, then it will be just a matter of time before they cheat or lie, and destroy or sabotage the relationship, because the more intimate the relationship, which is required for a fulfilling relationship as, over time, you get deeper and deeper and intimacy, the more intimate it becomes, the more triggering it becomes for your burdened exiled parts. 

If the relationship is healthy over time, especially the first five years or first 10 years, it’s going to trigger the fuck out of you, and every time, it’s an opportunity for you to meet your own inner child parts that are reacting out of their burdens and to help them. That’s your responsibility, not your partner’s responsibility. It’s not your partner’s responsibility to heal you. That’s yours. Similarly, for you, it’s not your responsibility to heal your partner. That’s part of Point 3, find a partner who also is meeting her own needs. When that’s the case, the relationship is a wonderful place for your own personal growth. [31:58.4]

It’s easy for single guys to be level-headed and even-keeled because they don’t have any intimacy. Without intimacy, no one is triggering you, and without that triggering, you’re not actually going to grow. But because a loving intimate relationship will necessarily involve the level of intimacy and vulnerability that will necessarily trigger all your inner demons, if you haven’t learned to meet your own needs, you’re going to destroy. The relationship is done. It’s going to be destroyed. You’re going to destroy it. She’s going to destroy it. You’re both going to destroy it, because you can’t handle being triggered, because you haven’t actually learned how to meet your own needs.

That is at a deep level, right? I break it down to the seven steps about the protector parts and the exiled parts, and so forth. There are levels to this, right? I cover that in seven steps of meeting your own needs. If you aren’t a person who prioritizes or values morality or moral principles, then when the going gets hard, you’re going to bail, because when the going gets hard, you get triggered because the intimacy is increasing now. It’s going to be uncomfortable, because you haven’t learned how to meet your own needs, and as a result, you’re just going to back out. [33:04.8]

You’re just going to break up or, on the spot, going to get really angry and probably say a lot of things you regret and throw things or whatever, and then you’ll break up. Then maybe you’ll get back together, if you’re needy, if you are using this other person to meet your needs for security, and then it’ll be back and forth, back and forth, break up, get back together, break up, get back together. I’ve been there. I’ve seen so many people there as well.

So, that fourth point of finding a partner with moral principles is important because that’s required for that person to stay with it. That’s the part where therapists talk about marriages or relationships requiring work. That’s when it kicks in, so it’s really important that you have that moral value of integrity and compassion and that kind of stick-with-it-ness and not just lie and cheat whenever it benefits you or whenever it’s easy, because, definitely, in a long-term loving, intimate relationship, if you don’t have the moral principles to keep you in it, it’ll be far too easy for you to just step out and leave the discomfort and go back to your comfort zone, which is to find a new relationship with a new person that you buy the lie that this will bring you happiness. [34:11.8]

If the reason you broke up is because the other person kept triggering you, that’s actually on you and this is an opportunity for you to grow. There are also plenty of other legitimate reasons to break up or divorce, right? But the triggering, it could also be legitimate in the sense of, hey, this is at that period of time in your life you didn’t know any better, right?

But now that you know this, if you value that relationship, you can stick with it and do the work, get a good therapist and do the work. You can also go very far with my online recorded courses, especially in this area, in this area, especially, in “Rock Solid Relationships”. You can also go through this with your partner. Plenty of guys who go through this with their partners. I mean, so many guys who have said that they’ve saved their relationship. [34:58.1]

Just before I go, I want to share the story of Mark. When Mark came to us, he joined our “Platinum Partnership”. He started the courses. He was sharing with us in the forums and in the private coaching session that he comes with that he had a really strict father who had very high demands for Mark to be as successful and, in fact, more successful than he was, than his father was. 

He felt a lot of pressure about this and Mark’s father was verbally abusive telling Mark that he’s not good enough to be in this position that his dad was in, and he kept, in this way, being very hard on Mark. As a result, Mark made the choice that for him to be significant, he’s got to beat his dad, which means he’s got to make hundreds of millions. He’s got to have a McLaren, right?

He went about constructing his life in such a way that, in this kind of tortured haunted way, he went out and achieved, and kudos to Mark, he did. He managed to put together these deals that netted more than his father was making, or at least more than his father was making at his age, and he was getting the money together to get his Lamborghini and all that. He was incredibly miserable. [36:12.8]

Along the way, he got a girlfriend who was more of a trophy girlfriend for him. It was the type of girlfriend that made him feel like he had made it and he was showing her off, but then it turned out she was cheating on him multiple times and he broke up with her. She begged to get back together, let her come back together with him, and she cheated on him again, and this happened again and again. 

He was sharing all of this. This was the situation he was in as a result of the inability to meet his own needs for significance and love, and security and certainty, and so many other levels of needs. As he went through the seven-step process of meeting his own needs, the therapeutic process, his life transformed. He no longer was attracted to this woman who was toxic and suggested to her that she find a good therapist. The last I heard, she was working on herself, which is a great thing, but he didn’t take responsibility for healing her or for making her better as he was tempted to do because of his dynamic with his mother. [37:09.8]

He also was able to let go of needing to prove himself as a man to his father, and as a result, he no longer needed all of these external trappings of happiness and, instead of collecting a Lamborghini and a McLaren and all that, he actually was able to come out of the closet with one of his real passions, which was antique furniture collecting.

It turns out, there are some really expensive antique furniture out there in the world that you can auction on and he started to do this, and it wasn’t for anyone else except himself. He just took so much pleasure in getting these items and placing them in his home, and seeing them in every day and using them, and he didn’t even really make it a point to mention it to people when they came over, and it was just this quiet pride and enjoyment for himself meeting his own needs that he was doing this for himself, not for others or not to get significance or validation from others. [38:07.0]

His life became so much lighter, became deeper in meaning and he switched his vocation, his industry, into helping others and, as a result, was just experiencing so much more happiness. He was also not haunted by the need to make more money and that actually opened up the floodgates for him actually making a lot more money, but all in ways that are far more enjoyable for him.

This is what can happen. By the way, I know a lot of guys who have books on women. Mark is also dating a woman who is really great for him and they’re going on all these different retreats together. I’m going through their own transformational journeys separately, but also together. This is what can happen when you meet your own needs and make that the priority, rather than trying to find some other intermediary thing, like fancy cars or worldly success or being masculine, and instead going directly to lasting happiness, fulfillment, love, and joy in life. [39:08.5]

When you do that, you go right to the end. Instead of having to go through all these things that you mistakenly believed or brainwashed into thinking would get you lasting happiness and you just find lasting happiness just within yourself, within your own control. Then, as a result, your lifestyle completely changes. Your life completely changes. The people in your life completely change and this is something that happens naturally when you’re able to meet your own needs.

Thanks so much for all your comments on all the other previous episodes. I want to hear what you think about this one, so please leave a comment and please share it with anyone that you think would benefit from it. Thank you so much.

I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Until then, David Tian, signing out. [39:50.5]

 This is ThePodcastFactory.com