How To Know If She’s Right For A Relationship | (#011) 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: Hi. I’m David Tian, and for over the past 15 years, I’ve been helping hundreds of thousands of people in over 87 countries, attain success, happiness, and fulfillment in life and love. Welcome to the Masculine Psychology Podcast.

In the last episode, I reviewed how optimizing for casual dating success actually sabotages your long-term relationships success, so it’s really important that you begin with the end in mind. Now, if you haven’t listened to that episode yet, obviously I recommend that you do, and I go into detail on why, why it’s important that if what you’re after is a long-term relationship, that you’re not approaching it with the attitude or mindsets that would actually get you the most casual dating success. [01:03.0]

This message is for those who most want fulfillment, a life of love and joy and happiness, in that a life of those qualities, a life of fulfillment would be more important to you than just maximizing pleasure or power, or your significance in the eyes of others.

So, let’s just get clear on what casual dating success means, right? I’ve covered this in detail in the last episode, but just to catch us up to speed so we’re all on the same page here, casual dating success, the metrics to measure casual dating success or the number of sexually attractive partners you’ve hooked up with, have had sex with or anywhere along those lines, or maybe you had a fling with or a 10-nightstand with, whatever that is, just notice how if you’re maximizing for the quality and quantity or the desirability of your sexual partners, you can do that in ways that will actually take you away from relationship success. That’s what I covered in the last episode. I’m going to be expanding on that here in this episode, so you have a clear idea of why that’s the case. [02:14.1]

What happens is a lot of guys are buying into this myth, what I call the “just settled down” myth. The normal dude strategy for getting into a relationship to get a girlfriend or wife is this. His plan is that he’s going to date around as much as he can, maximize his dating opportunities and his casual dating success, and then settle down with one of the girls, one of the women that he hooks up with and likes the most. I think that’s the normal MO, right? It’s like I’m going to date as many women as I can and then pick one of them. That’s the “just settle down” myth. [02:48.3]

If what you’re doing to date all of these women is optimizing for the metrics for casual dating, so you’re becoming as attractive as you can be to as many women as you can be and hooking up with as many women as you can who are the sexually desirable, whatever standard that is for you, then you’re actually setting yourself up for failure in a long-term the relationship or at least making it a lot harder for you not only to get into a successful long-term relationship, but to maintain that and grow it.

You’re setting the conditions for relationship failure if you’re optimizing or maximizing for their casual-dating success or the casual-dating metrics to be as attractive to as many women as possible who are sexually attractive or who are desirable to you and your buddies.

A guy who is maximizing his results on the casual-dating side of things, the casual-dating metrics, unknowingly is actually going to make it harder for him to find real love. If you’re maximizing just for pleasure and power and significance, it will actually create barriers and roadblocks, and stumbling blocks and obstacles to creating a life of fulfillment and love. [04:05.3]

I’m going to be showing you more about why that’s true here in this episode. I started it in the last episode, so if you haven’t gone through that yet, I highly recommend you go.

Okay, so I know tons of guys who have made the mistake of buying into the “just settle down” myth. I think that’s the normal default view of the average male in the world of how to get into a relationship, just date a whole bunch and pick one. I think that’s also the standard route that women take, to date a whole bunch and pick one of those ones that you’ve dated and then just try to settle down.

From the male’s perspective, a lot of men in the modern West are on the receiving end of that female strategy of just date a whole bunch and pick one, and they can see perhaps, I was hearing, that already you can see how much of a turnoff that is for women who are pursuing that strategy. I just hook up a whole lot, and then when you are tired of hooking up with all of those guys, pick one and settle down. There are all kinds of terms that guys use to describe women who are like that and there’s a ton of bitterness right now in the modern Western world that’s directed at women like that. But that’s what dudes do, so there’s this kind of hypocrisy around this bitterness. [05:15.0]

But bringing it back to men, there are so many men who pursued this “just settled down” strategy, picking one after dating as much as they can and picking one of the ones that they’ve dated. They buy into this “just settle down” myth as a way of getting into or creating a relationship of love and it doesn’t work and they find out the hard way.

In the beginning, there’s always going to be this honeymoon period because that’s the chemistry, right? That’s why you like this person in the first place, but then it has been scientifically charted and researched, three to six months into that relationship, the honeymoon period starts to wane and all of those nice hormones that make you like anything and everything about the other person start to wear off, and now you’re in this transitional period that most couples don’t make it through of anywhere from six months to three years and that’s usually where things just get really messy and a lot of triggering happens where you trigger each other. [06:09.0]

That’s because you didn’t set yourself up for relationship success in the first place and now you’re in troubleshooting. You’re in damage control. Most relationships in the modern world do not make it past that stage. This has been scientifically proven. There’s tons of empirical evidence for this.

Now, just staying together doesn’t mean your relationship is successful. There are couples, especially married couples, who stay together, but they’re staying together on paper, but the passion is gone and they’re often then just staying together because of the kids or some other logistical or practical reason, and for all intents and purposes, this relationship is very much dead. At best, they’re good friends, so they’re kind of like partners, co-parenting partners, and that’s it. Then there’s a huge majority, a growing majority of couples that just break up or get a divorce. [07:02.5]

Okay, so this is the norm, but if you’re going to take the “just settle down” route where you just date a whole bunch and pick one of the ones you’ve dated and optimize, and the most important part of that is that you’re optimizing for casual dating success and then just picking the one that you like the most, that’s going to lead most likely to failure.

There are ways of saving relationships that are already in damage control and troubleshooting obviously. That’s what good couples therapy is for, but you’re already in the negative, so why not start it off in the right footing? Right? This is, hopefully, for those guys who are not in relationships yet. You have this opportunity to optimize things from the beginning to set yourself up for the highest chances of success in your relationship. [07:47.1]

Now, if you’re already in a relationship and you’re already in that damage control period, then this is even more important for you because it’s a lot more relevant and you can see the things that are missing, and, hopefully, you’ll be able to get some good couples therapy or a good course for couples—or you can get my “Rock Solid Relationships” course that’s really good for both men and women. Of course, there are elements of it that are focused on growing your masculine energies. That’d be less relevant to your wife or girlfriend, but plenty of couples have gone through “Rock Solid Relationships” and absolutely loved it and it has saved a whole bunch of relationships, so I highly recommend that.

Today’s episode is all about how to tell whether she’s the one. And why is that so important? Because one of the reasons so many people take the “just settle down” route and fall into that myth, that trap of believing in the “just settle down” option is because they don’t know. They can’t tell whether somebody is the one until they date them. Then they want to maximize their options or their choices, so they date as many as they can. Makes sense, right? [08:49.0]

The problem is it becomes a trap because that first stage of dating as many as you can to figure out which one is the one that you want to invest your time and effort into, that becomes a trap where you are just focusing on that portion of it, that stage of your relationship or creating a relationship, just the very first inning or maybe the first at bat, and then it becomes warped because then you’re optimizing for that instead of the much more important and much longer phase or phases, which is the actual relationship itself.

I’ve got three categories of qualities that you should be looking for to tell whether she’s the one or at least somebody who could be successful in a relationship with you. These three qualities are necessary for success in a relationship. On top of all of that are, of course, all of the other things that you personally and subjectively want, and that goes without saying that you want a woman who is physically attractive and a lot of guys are sheepish around that because of their sexual shame, but you shouldn’t have any sheepishness or shame around that. If you can’t get aroused with the woman that you’re with, it’s not going to work. Obviously, you’re going to be attracted to the one who you find attractive. Just take that for granted, okay? [10:00.5]

So, we’re all going to say to you just find somebody you’re physically attracted to that you have chemistry with, so it’s not just physical attractiveness because, after all, and women especially can understand this that you can be in front of somebody of the opposite sex that other people find very attractive and yet it doesn’t really do a much for you or maybe it’s not your type. Okay, then you also have to work into this your chemistry, so somebody you have chemistry with, somebody that your personalities have this sort of electrical charge to.

Okay, so we take all of that for granted physical attractiveness. She’s hot, right? You’ve got chemistry, so you really enjoy your time together. You have similar hobbies, all that sort of similar interests, similar views about important things. We take all of that for granted. That’s just obvious stuff, okay?

On top of all of that, there are three categories of qualities that you need to be looking for to tell whether this person is or could be the one, somebody who has these necessary qualities for success in a long-term relationship. Okay, so there are three categories of qualities. [11:04.2]

The first category is what I call the growth-mindset categories. These are qualities or traits that are required to just be able to follow through on things and to grow in life. The first part of the growth mindset, as the way I’m using the term here, is that she is open to her own faults and open to correcting them, so that she’s not just demanding that you change for her or that you meet her needs and that she doesn’t have any growing to do.

Now, if you’ve been following this podcast, you probably have a growth mindset, or if you’re listening to this right now, and it might be a foreign concept for you, for somebody who doesn’t have a growth mindset. But when you get out there in the dating world, you’ll find plenty of physically attractive people who think they’re the shit and they don’t need to grow, and they’re just kind of going through as many dating partners as possible to find the one that loves them for them and that loves them even without them needing to grow, which is a good thing in one sense. You do want to accept. [12:00.0]

The one thing about committing to a partner with unconditional love is starting off with, bare minimum, acceptance of their traits and of their parts, but that’s something that you have to reserve. This is a decision you make to enter into an unconditional love relationship. It’s unconditional. It’s not indiscriminate or you don’t just unconditionally love every woman. That would strip it of all of its value and its specialness and uniqueness.

It’s only possible for somebody to love maybe half a dozen to a dozen people conditionally. Then when it goes beyond a dozen, maybe two dozen, then it becomes so attenuated, there’s so little actual love directed at that person because, I mean, imagine saying, I love that person on the other side of the world unconditionally, but I don’t even know who that person is. Right? That’s just meaningless.

When you love somebody unconditionally, it’s a choice that you make to go all in, and when you’re all in, you’d better be careful who you direct that love to. Generally speaking, unconditional love relationships sometimes pull you, like when you have a baby or a child of your own. It’s natural and we have hormones that help this. It’s natural to feel unconditional love and then we just commit to supporting this child no matter what, generally easier, because we get that jumpstart with the hormones. [13:12.8]

But then, when it comes to a relationship, you’re picking that one person for whom you are going to be there for through thick and thin, right, and you’re going to love unconditionally. You make that choice. Now, I’m telling you about these three categories, here’s the type of person that would be the right type of person for that and, in fact, don’t commit to an unconditional love relationship, unless she has these three qualities, because, otherwise, you’re in damage control.

Now, if you’re in damage control, there are still ways to get out of it. There are still ways to save that relationship, but it’s just really hard. You’ve just made it a lot harder for yourself, right? Take advantage of this opportunity if you’re single and you’re listening to this. Start with the end in mind.

Okay, so that first category is the growth mindset, and at bare minimum, this is being open to your own faults and correcting them. There are plenty of physically attractive people who are sort of narcissistic who don’t want to change for anybody and are done changing, and they’re also just lazy people who don’t want to improve themselves or grow. [14:09.0]

Those people will not be successful at a relationship that lasts for years, okay? You’re looking for somebody who is going to grow and is open, and is eager to grow and is welcoming somebody pointing out areas where they can grow. Obviously, you can help that along by couching any kind of helpful constructive criticism in gentle ways that are easier for them to swallow or take in. That’s just taken for granted. But what you’re looking for is somebody who is at least open to learning about their own faults and correcting them.

You’re also looking for somebody who has displayed that they can delay gratification. Another problem with the mindsets of physically attractive people, generally speaking, is that they get things from other people relatively easily. Other people, especially young hot women, are used to guys doing things for them often without them even asking, but when they do ask, it’s just done and they’re not used to delaying their gratification in this way. [15:09.3]

You’re looking for this, not just in the work setting or in their academic career or whatever it is, but especially in the personal realm. Even when they want something real badly right now, are they good at waiting and not going for it? Do they have willpower?

Okay, and this goes into the next sub-quality or subcategory here, which is commitment. Have they shown that they can commit to something and follow through? Have they shown in their lives that they can follow through with willpower, and then when they commit to something, they’ll stick with it, even when they don’t want to, that they’re not just hedonists following pleasure after pleasure?

You might think, I know there’s a subset of men who are just super jaded, and this is the subject of another podcast episode, they’re super jaded and think all women are like that. None of them are capable of commitments, and if they are, then they’re not attractive for something like that. That’s just not true. You just haven’t met them, or the ones that are out there, you might have said hi to at a party and then they’ve met you with your negative, cynical, skeptical, whatever bitter vibe, sort of like, Uh … and then they just moved on, right? This happens all the time. [16:13.3]

Like attracts like, and unlike repels unlike, so they’re not giving you the time of day and you didn’t even notice that I’m speaking to these bitter guys who think that there are no women who have willpower and follow through. There are. There are plenty of them and there are plenty of feminine women who also are capable and find this to be just a part of their personality that they are able to commit and follow through.

Another subcategory is responsibility. Have they shown that they can handle responsibility? Another is have they shown that they are independent, whether they can do things on their own, that they’re self-reliant? So, delayed gratification, commitment, responsibility, independence. These are all just becoming an adult, so are they capable of that? Not all the time. Obviously, they want to have fun. They’re not super serious all the time like some guys are who make it all about that, like, I am responsible. I have integrity, all of that. Those guys generally are not fun or to be with because they’re just so uptight and trying to control every little thing, so that’s something, again, for another episode. [17:15.5]

You may not have chemistry with a woman like that because, if she’s really uptight and ultra-serious, she’s probably kind of masculine in her presentation, in her personality, and in the way she interacts.

You can have a very feminine woman who, in her personal life or professional life, has shown that she can commit to follow through, showing willpower and responsibility that you can trust her with responsibility, and she has shown independence and self-reliance. That’s what you’re looking for, and the more of that, the higher the chances that she will succeed in a long-term relationship, because, obviously, a long-term relationship requires that you stick with it.

Even when sometimes you don’t feel like it, even when you’re really, really angry at your partner, you don’t just walk away and cheat on him or something like that, or just because you are so angry or you want to cheat on him because another hotter guy maybe who walks by and winks at you. [18:05.3]

You’re good at saying, No, I’m not going to do that because I’ve committed earlier on to follow through with my husband or my boyfriend or you, so you need to look for that. That’s something that’s really important that she can say no.

Delayed gratification, the classic study of that are the marshmallows for the kids, right? Can she say no to the second marshmallow or to the two marshmallows, saying no to the one marshmallow so she can get to later on, right? Does she understand that when she delays gratification, it’s more enjoyable later on, that relationship that she wants to enjoy and she wants to feel what it’s like?

Maybe some of you guys, too, haven’t thought about this, that qualitatively a relationship that has matured for 10 years feels very different from one that’s just fresh, like in the honeymoon phase, and the guys who just keep getting flings and just settling for that, settling for the first inning or their first at bat, never get to experience what it’s like in a 10-, 20- year relationship that’s still passionate. They never drink the aged wine. They just settle for the fresh right-off-the-vine wine and they’re missing out and they don’t even realize it. Does a woman know that? Is she able to delay gratification in her life and has she shown that? [19:14.4]

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The second category is, broadly speaking, compassion. Compassion, empathy, kindness. Now, this is really lacking in the modern world and maybe it was lacking in the pre-modern world, but I don’t know, I just see this more lacking in cities and all that. [20:10.7]

It’s sort of exacerbated by the magnification of normal media because the media knows that bad news gets more clicks, because it generates more anxiety and so on, so you click on it, and the good, positive news generally doesn’t get as much coverage.

I’ve been following on Instagram more positive news and the good news channels or accounts as much as I can. I’ve noticed that there’s actually lots of really good news. Often there are these GoFundMe accounts, right? You hear about this all the time of somebody who is down and out and tons of strangers pouring all of this money, and that’s a sign that people are actually overall pretty kind, and I’ve been doing a lot of research on this. That’s, again, for another episode.

But just what you’re looking for, and this is relatively rare among young people who are in the peak of their physical attractiveness, like especially for a really attractive woman in her early twenties, walking into a club, the club is going to bend over backwards for them and guys are going to bend over backwards and do all kinds of favors for them that they didn’t even ask for. [21:08.6]

Are they now sort of spoiled by this? Are they unable to show empathy and kindness for those who don’t have it as good as they do? Because they don’t realize how good they have it because they’ve just been spoiled in this way. This is pretty normal. This is just like a spoiled princess, and there are dudes who are spoiled like this, too.

You probably don’t know as many of those dudes and, definitely, women’s sexual meeting value generally tends to peak in the twenties, whereas a man’s peaks later because part of it is pegged to his worldly success and his access to resources and all of that, so it’s really much more of an issue with women. But you notice that there are just as many mean men as there are mean women, but it’s just more obvious probably because, for women who lack compassion, empathy or kindness, you’re focused on looking at these attractive women and observing their behavior. Maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re not even screening for that yet, so I’m drawing your attention to that. [22:01.5]

Compassion, empathy, and kindness are required for success in a long-term relationship, especially compassion for children because that’s what’s going to be required for you to grow in your relationship. If it’s a relationship of passion and love, you will trigger each other, guaranteed, and that’s part of the package, the tor-mentor package, where you’re going to torment each other and this is mentoring each other because you’re going to learn from each other’s triggering each other, how you trigger each other. You will have to go through that.

This is the reason the vast majority of relationships in the modern world fail and they fail either through the death of passion or the actual splitting up of the two people because they can’t survive this triggering, because they don’t have the compassion within themselves to be compassionate towards the pain of the partner, because all they’re seeing on the outside is the partner’s firefighter parts that are lashing out with hatred and venom. The more energy of hatred and venom and active punishment coming from the partner, actually underneath it is the more hurt that person is feeling, and you’re not going to able to get to that unless you have compassion, unless you are used to entering into your compassion and empathy and kindness. [23:07.0]

I, back in my clubbing days, saw so much callous behavior from clubbing guys and girls, and you can see this in the clubbing scene, often the nightclub areas are kind of seedy or they’re not the classiest areas, and when you walk out, you’re going to find panhandlers or just like … because where else would you go at 3:00 in the morning to beg, right? Or maybe there are people who drink too much and they’re in a vulnerable position on the sidewalk, passed out. One reaction is just to laugh at them and maybe pour something on them or kick them or something like that and then just laugh at that.

I’ve seen so much callous behavior, especially the younger they go, early twenties, because they just haven’t entered into that maturity of knowing what it’s like to be that person or somebody who’s in a vulnerable position, because they’ve drawn a high in this kind of narcissism of compensating for their insecurities that they don’t even know about yet. [24:01.3]

Is this woman in touch with her compassion? Does she show compassion for those who are in a hurt state or in a damaged state, or in a weak state? Do you? I’m going to be turning the whole point. I have it in point-form here to turn that around to you by presenting these three categories to help you select and screen for the women that you will commit to. But how about you, the fact that you haven’t found women like this or attracted them into your life?

A big factor of that in that is because you yourself probably aren’t exhibiting these or living in these qualities all the time. How much of that growth mindset is true for you? If you’re listening to this, if you’re a guy who listens to podcasts, you probably can check that box, especially if you’re a more masculine guy who is used to willpower and discipline. But what about compassion? And I know there’s a lot of fear in toxic masculinity towards compassion. There’s a lot of fear around being vulnerable because you could be hurt. They don’t realize how oxymoronic that sounds, because you’re supposed to be the tough macho guy who is full of courage and bravery, but you’re afraid of being hurt emotionally? [25:05.8]

Okay, that’s the toxic part of it, thinking you’re all a tough guy because you’re tough, and you’re just actually hiding your vulnerability. You’re scared of being vulnerable. That’s actually not strength. That’s just fear and that’s why that’s toxic. In fact, compassion and empathy and kindness requires courage, right? Part of the reason why toxic masculinity is so afraid of compassion is because they’re afraid of getting taken advantage of, because they suck at asserting boundaries, because they don’t even know what their boundaries are.

Right, so there are very healthy ways of approaching compassion, not out of fear. Does she have and exhibit compassion for those who are less fortunate? Is she able to empathize with those in pain? Is she showing kindness to the person on the street, to the serving staff, to those who technically she doesn’t have to be kind to and they’ll still serve her? Is she showing that or is she more a stuck-up princess who thinks everything should come easily? [26:08.2]

That’s a caricature. There are definitely women like that, but obviously you probably wouldn’t have chemistry with that or be that attracted to a woman like that, or maybe you haven’t even thought about that. I know a lot of guys haven’t even thought about it. They’re just focused on the physical.

Okay, so that’s the second one category, compassion, empathy and kindness, and the third category is moral values. I’ve done a lot of material on this. I’ve done some podcast episodes in this podcast about moral values. I’m not going to dwell on this. I’ll just throw it out there. Has she shown a conscience when she has done something that maybe she shouldn’t have or that she could have done better? Does she feel regret and want to make it right? Does she want to make amends? Does she reveal a conscience and is she trying to follow her conscience? Does she also show integrity?

What is integrity? Integrity is where the outside matches the inside, where what you say you want to do matches how you feel and how you follow through, and how you try to do it. Integrity. Does the outside match the inside? [27:05.3]

Character is how you are on the inside. Reputation is how other people think you are and that’s how you show yourself to the outside world. Integrity is like character. Is she a person of character? Does she follow through on her values, her stated values? Does she even think about values?

If she hasn’t thought about values, then probably she has just unconsciously adopted her friends’ or peer group’s values, which are probably unconscious as well and adopted from some toxic part of society, because that’s the easiest, lowest common denominator of values, right? Hurt people who haven’t hurt you. That’s not if you’re setting the bar very high on values, right? Anybody and everybody does that, being kind to those who are kind to you. You kind of have to be a real dick to be mean to people who are kind to you and there are plenty of people like that, so we’re looking out for that. That’s already Category 2.

But is she being kind to those that she doesn’t have to be kind to? In fact, is she even able to empathize with those who are being mean to her? That’s another level that you should consider. Now, if you were more mature, that would turn you on and attract you in the same way that her physical attractiveness would also attract you? Are you attracted to her moral character? [28:10.6]

If you’re not, turn that mirror around and look at yourself. If you’re having trouble finding women like this, it’s very likely because you are not like this, that you are falling short in the growth mindset and that category of traits, that you fall short in compassion, empathy, and kindness in your day-to-day life, and maybe in terms of moral values, you haven’t thought very much about those, so you’re not living a life of integrity for yourself.

If that’s the case, if you’re cutting corners, if you’re sort of sneaky, if you download my courses illegally—this isn’t to throw that out—if you do all that crap, right, and then you’re wondering why aren’t ethical people who have upstanding values and people of integrity, and women who are physically attractive but also compassionate and empathetic, why aren’t they coming to my doorstep? Why is my social circle not full of women like that? It’s because you are not like that very likely. [29:02.7]

If you’re like that, naturally, over time, and probably not that long of a time you will have to wait, you will naturally attract people like that. Like attracts like. As you go about your life and your daily life, you will start to notice people who have these three qualities, these three categories of qualities, and it’ll just naturally attract like magnets.

Okay, so those are the three.

The first is growth mindset and that category of willpower and discipline, and responsibility and commitment, and so forth.

The second category is, broadly speaking, compassion. Compassion, empathy, and kindness.

The third of these moral values are conscience, integrity, and character. Then, of course, turn that mirror around. How true are these of you?

Let me tell you this quick story of how I discovered this. I started off with a sort of client, a kind of mentee of mine, named John. I knew him from back when he was living in a small town where he was dating the hottest girl of the sorority in that town. Then he moved to the big city, to New York City, and that’s the biggest city in America and this is the big city now. He’s in the big city and he’s kind of a codependent narcissist. Of course, we didn’t know those terms way back then. This was over 10 years ago. [30:07.8]

He moved to New York City because he had dumped his girlfriend, that queen of the sororities, and had gotten together with a slightly older woman who was a fashion model and she was like a Tier-1 fashion model in New York, and he thought he had made it, like he has got the hottest girl in his arms. He found a really nice apartment right in the center of New York, and for his narcissistic self, this was it. He was in his mid-twenties at this point and he thought he had made it and he was riding high.

Every weekend, he was going to the most expensive high-end clubs with this very fetching, I guess, eye-catching model on his arm and all of their friends. They were rich friends who were investment bankers and other models and all of that, the models and bottles scene, and he really dove all the way into this.

Then the problem became that he wanted to be in a relationship with this model, and they were in a relationship for a while, but it was incredibly dramatic. Lots of drama, lots of big escalating fights out on the streets, in the clubs, in their apartment that they shared with other party people, and there was lots of drama. [31:12.8]

This was an up-and-down, back-and-forth, very tumultuous relationship that lasted, I think, it was over a year, until they broke up, and then he found out a few weeks later that his best friend at the time ended up dating her, like they were making out at the club. He heard from the grapevine, mutual friends, and he felt so betrayed, so angry, and he thought, How could they betray me? How can they? Then they continued to do all kinds of other things that he found to be morally questionable and he was just in this state of like, How could they do this to me?

Then only later was he able to calm down enough and have enough of clarity of mind to see that he wasn’t any better, that this time with her, this pursuing of the casual dating success of the superficial significance, of what he considered it to be power, the influence—can he get through the door at the high-end club? Can he get into the VIP area? Or is he being looked at by all of these people? Is he able to hang with rich people and really beautiful women? That kind of thing. The power, the money, the “Scarface” qualities or values, right? [32:15.5]

Then he finds out that, behind his back, his best friend back then would break the bro code and cheat on him—or not really cheating on him, but betray the bro code with his ex-girlfriend so quickly after they broke up, in just a few weeks—and she has no conscience, no morality, no integrity, and no compassion for the pain that John was going through. But, yeah, because, John, you didn’t look for any of these qualities in the woman you picked. You picked just the hottest model who knew the richest or most influential or the celebrities, and that was it. You were climbing the social ladder and this is what you’ve got, and this happens over and over and over. [32:54.5]

This is one of the reasons guys get into pick up in the first place, because they think the thing that will finally be significant is if they get that type of woman that other guys want and the superficial thing, and this just kind of hedonistic cycle. Then they think they also get to have all of the love and fulfillment, and joy and peace and connection that they’re really yearning for, but that doesn’t work. It’s not working. It doesn’t work that way.

From the get-go, from the beginning, you’ve got to begin with the end in mind. Look for the growth mindset, the delayed gratification, the commitment, the responsibility, independence and self-reliance. Does she have that? Does she have compassion, empathy and kindness, which are probably harder to find than a growth mindset? Then, even more difficult to find, does she have moral value? Is she living a life of moral value? Is she living a life of integrity? Is she obeying or listening to her conscience? And then, how true are those of you? Because if you are living those yourself, you will naturally attract, draw to yourself, other people who are living a life along those three categories.

Now, if you’re not exhibiting these, you’re going to be attracting the opposite. You’re going to be attracting people who don’t have these, right? If you don’t have them, you’re going to attract people who don’t have them, and then you’ll wonder why the whole world is toxic. It’s because … turn the mirror around, right? [34:09.8]

If you have not thought about your own moral values—what is important for me in life? Where do I draw the line? What about lying and cheating? That’s obvious, but what about her getting really angry and, I don’t know, setting fire into my trash can, like in The Social Network movie with the Zuckerberg thing? Where do you draw the line? Have you thought about these? What are your moral values? Loyalty? What about freedom? What about autonomy? What are these things to you? How about love? How about unconditional love? What does that mean to you?—if you haven’t thought through these, you’d better think through them because they are required for a long-term relationship to be successful.

I have courses around this, obviously. If I think it’s important, obviously, I’m going to put them in my courses. I have a process in my course “Invincible” and in some other courses, like “Freedom U”, where I will walk you through a process where you discover for yourself what your moral values are and your hierarchy of values. You discover also, what are the conditions under which you can live these values. That’s in “Invincible”. [35:07.3]

“Invincible” is also part of the “Platinum Partnership”. Obviously, the “Platinum Partnership” is the all access, unlimited access to all of my courses, over 20 courses at this point, and “Invincible” is one of my favorites and we cover this issue of values for dating success leading to relationship success.

You still can date a whole bunch of women, and then the one that you liked the most, you can get into a relationship with her, as long as you’re not optimizing for that part where you’re dating a bunch of them—because the guy who’s going to date a whole bunch of them, he’ll be a chameleon, like the best thing to do is that it doesn’t matter what the woman is as long as she was physically hot and desirable. There are ways that you just morph yourself to match that.

The problem is, when you do that enough times, you don’t even know who you are anymore. You have no idea what your moral values are, what you stand for, what your ideals are, and you stop looking for compassion and stuff like that because that would already disqualify a whole huge number of women that you could have gotten with. [36:06.4]

For example, in growth mindset, too, that’ll take out a whole bunch of women that you could have hooked up with, right? If you’re just optimizing for casual dating success, you shouldn’t be looking for growth mindset, compassion, and more values, because that’ll disqualify like 80 to 90 percent of the women that you could have hooked up with. Obviously, optimizing for casual dating success will actually put you along the wrong path and you’re going to go in the wrong direction if what you want is a relationship of love and a life of fulfillment, happiness, and joy.

Okay, in the next episode, we’re going to get into the dating skills that do matter. David, I do know what I’m supposed to be looking for now in a long-term partner, but how do I attract somebody like this? Okay, so besides me having these qualities, how do I attract somebody like this?

Okay, very fair question. We will be covering that in the next episode. What value are dating skills and mindsets? How do I attract the one? I kind of have an idea of what the one would be like, thank you very much, David, for this episode. Now, how do I attract somebody like that? That’s the subject of the next episode. Come back for the next episode and I’ll be sharing that. [37:09.5]

If you liked this episode, if you like this podcast, please rate and review it in Apple’s podcasts. That would help us a lot. If you really liked this, share it with your friends. I really appreciate all the encouragement and support we’ve been getting for all of these episodes. Thank you so much and I love it when you share the podcast.

I will see you in the next episode. Until then, David Tian signing out.

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