Relationships & Attachment Styles
02:18:15 Share

Hey, chat. Welcome to the Healthy Gamer GG podcast. I'm Dr. Alok Kanodja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in.

So today we are going to be talking about attachment theory.

But today we're going to be going a little bit deeper. So if you all remember, we had a deep dive into attachment theory, which was great because it was sort of like focused on an individual. So how can we understand the development of attachment? How can we understand how attachment may affect you? And today what we're going to be talking about is attachment specifically in relationships.

So attachment theory is critical and it's kind of all about relationships, which is kind of ironic because like the last time we talked about attachment, it turns out that attachment is so much more important for like other dimensions of your life than we originally realized. So it even determines the way that you relate to the world, how you find motivation, how you find direction, all these kinds of things.

And so we were sort of like left with some info on relationships, but we just couldn't do it justice. And so what we've done is prepared a basically two-hour lecture on attachment specifically with relationships. And this is the way that this lecture is going to be organized. So first thing that we're going to do is explain in some very basic high-level ways how the attachment system works.

Once we understand like the basic system of attachment that shouldn't take long, we'll do maybe a very quick recap of the three major attachment styles, secure, avoidant, and anxious. And then we're going to get to the fun stuff. So we are going to characterize and give you all examples of this is what anxious attachment looks like. This is what avoidant attachment looks like in the context of a relationship. This is what secure attachment looks like.

And so when we talk about it in the context of a relationship, y'all may be asking, wait, are you talking about me or are you talking about my partner? And the answer is both. So we're going to say, okay, this is what anxiously attached people tend to do in relationships. This is what it looks like. And if you are this person, this is what you do. If you are dating this person, this is what you do.

OK, so it's kind of like understanding that in the context of relationship specific examples and features. So after we look at avoidant attachment, anxious attachment and secure attachment, then we're going to talk a little bit about the intersections between them. So we're going to say, like, if you're an anxiously attached person and you're dating an avoidant attachment person, this is what the relationship looks like. This is what the challenges are.

Then what we're going to do is, or actually maybe before that, we'll go through some like case examples of common relationship issues and how attachment styles affect those issues. So, for example, things like situationships. OK, things like, you know, should we move in together? When is too early to move in? Why does one person want to move in together? Why one person not move in together?

We're going to get a far better understanding, a sophisticated understanding of this concept of commitment issues. What does that even mean? So we're going to understand it way better. So we're going to go through some common relationship issues. And then in the last section, what we're going to do is like tell y'all what to do about it. So if you're dating someone who has a non-secure attachment style relationship,

How do you approach that person? If you are someone who has an anxious attachment style, avoidant attachment style, what can you do for yourself? And we'll give you all actually a couple of very key fundamentals that essentially will help you fix your attachment system or improve your attachment system, whether you're secure, anxious, or avoidant. Okay? Does that make sense? So let's dive in. Let's start by looking at...

The basics of the attachment system. So if we go back, this is going to be a super quick recap, okay? So if we go back and we remember, here's what we discover. So the first is that human beings have to form relationships in order to survive, okay? So like human beings are communal. So what happened is that as we started to evolve, we started to like...

develop systems in our brain our physiology in our biology and by the way attachment theory is very grounded in like neurobiology so there's like good physiologic correlates to all this stuff we developed a system to allow us to form bonds with other humans this is what the attachment system is the ability to form bonds so human can humans can form bonds in four different ways okay so

So way number one is securely attached. And this is the healthiest form of attachment. Now, this is where we also have to take a quick aside and say that

There are cases... Attachment theory is one of these things where they're not all equal. Securely attached is just better than the other two. And we're going to teach you all how to get there. And this is sometimes what happens with human beings, is that, yeah, there's a lot of individual variability, but some things, generally speaking, correlate with health, happiness, success. And secure attachment is one of those things. Now, then what happens is sometimes if the bond doesn't form properly, there's another situation which arises where...

Where this person, let's say this is the child and this is the parent or caregiver. So if the parent is available and supportive for the child, then that child becomes securely attached. The child feels safe. If the child has needs, the child's needs get met.

OK, so the child learns, OK, like other human beings are like decent. I can rely on them. I can form bonds with them. We can develop a relationship that has give and take and everything is kind of hunky dory and positive. Sometimes what happens is we have children who when they have needs, they sometimes get met or they sometimes don't get met.

So the child is kind of confused because sometimes when I'm hungry, I get food. And sometimes when I'm not hungry, I don't get food. So there is inconsistency. And when there's inconsistency, the child begins to fear. They're like, because I can't rely on it, right? It's random. It doesn't, it's not something that I can relax and be assured that it's done. So what ends up happening is this child actually starts amplifying signals that

of distress. So since my parents are kind of distracted, since they work a lot, unless I start crying or throwing temper tantrums, I'm not going to get my needs met. So inconsistency in getting your needs met results in an amplification of signals of distress and also results in a fear of abandonment, right? Because unless I cry loud enough, you are not going to be there to support me.

So they become very, very scared and they start to move towards their caregiver in a more like neurotic way. The other thing that can happen is a child can learn that if I am emotionally vulnerable and if I try to bond with other people, if I try to connect with other people, I will get punished. So when I cry, when I try to get my needs met, I tend to get ignored.

And this results in avoidant attachment. So this is a situation where the child fundamentally fears connection. Why? So let's run through this very quickly, okay? So if I'm a kid and I invite my parents, I say, hey, I have a soccer or football tournament this weekend. Can y'all please come and cheer me along? Because I'm competing and it's the finals. And so supportive parents will show up.

And then sometimes what will happen is unsupportive parents won't show up. And then what this person does is then they start to realize that, okay, being vulnerable and connecting with another human being is dangerous. Because when I'm vulnerable, when I connect, that makes me vulnerable. And when I'm vulnerable, I get hurt. So what we actually want to do is retreat away from the relationship.

Then the last kind is disorganized attachment. Now, here's the key thing to remember. About 50% of people are securely attached. 25% of people are anxiously attached. 20% of people are avoidantly attached. And about 5% of people have a disorganized attachment. We see disorganized attachment in cases of severe neglect or trauma.

So we're actually not going to talk too much about disorganized attachment because it also isn't very— I mean, in some ways it's consistent, but there's a lot of variability in disorganized attachment, and it heavily depends on the circumstances. So this really gets to quite an individual level where it's very hard to talk about disorganized attachment in kind of a generic way. So what we're going to focus on is—

This 95% of people today. Okay? So this is the basics of the attachment system. So now we're going to talk about the attachment systems. All right, so here's what happens. So remember that attachment is about the way we form bonds. Now, in the anxiously, in the securely attached person, we're capable of forming bonds. We'll talk about what that looks like. The anxiously attached person is afraid.

That if I don't do the right thing, you will leave. And in order to get my needs met in a relationship, I have to amplify my signals. So I have to cry a lot. I have to do other things like play games, which we'll get to, in order to pull you in. So people who are anxiously attached primarily have gravitational strategies. I'm going to pull you towards me. So one example of this is like, if I feel jealous because you have a coworker

who I am paranoid that you're going to hook up with. Instead of telling you, hey, I'm paranoid that you're going to hook up with this person. Instead, what I'll do is I'll say, okay, fine, just dump me now because you found someone better anyway. Just like, just let's get it over with. So you'll be a little bit histrionic. You'll kind of amplify things. You'll start to feel kind of distressed. And if we look at what happens in the attachment system, basically it's the same for avoidant or anxious. Basically there's a certain signal

which your brain interprets as a danger sign. Okay? This person is pulling away in the case of anxious attachment. I'm losing this person. Then what happens is the body and the brain and the mind go into panic mode. We're losing this person. Therefore, we need to engage in certain behaviors to pull this person back in. I'm losing them.

I need them back before it's too late. So I will do things like I will play games. I will cry. I will do all kinds of stuff. I'll have sex, right? Because sex is a way for us to bond and be closer because after we have sex, then we're cuddling and then we're held and then you're not going anywhere, at least for a couple of hours. But if you leave afterward, it's going to mess up people with anxious attachment. So this is important to understand. If y'all want to unpack attachment for yourself or your partner,

What you need to understand is that there are certain things that certain signals that will trigger the attachment system. And then the attachment system will respond to fix that problem. Now, this is where things get a little bit tricky because the anxiously attached person, what triggers their system, what triggers, what's the danger sign? What's the sirens going off? Is someone pulling away for the avoidant person? Is someone getting close?

OK, so for avoidantly attached people, as we start to become close and we start to become vulnerable, we're like, oh, my God, this is the danger zone. This is how we get hurt. When we start to trust people, when we start to rely on people, when we start to love people, we get disappointed and it hurts us. So the avoidant person gets triggered by closeness and their attachment system protects them by pushing someone away.

The anxiously attached person is the opposite. I get triggered by someone pulling away and I'm going to respond by pulling them back towards me. They're leaving. I'm going to pull them in. Okay. So this is the basics of the attachment system. And if you guys are dating people who are like incredibly frustrating to date, and we'll talk about which way they're frustrating because they're frustrating in different ways, we'll show you demonstrate how the attachment system perfectly explains their behaviors. Okay.

Like you'll be able to really understand this in an eye-opening way. So the other really interesting thing is that for those of y'all that are into red pill and MGTOW and all that kind of stuff, this is basically textbook avoidant attachment. And it's literally textbook. And we'll talk about that a little bit. Okay. So a lot of these people have been traumatized, have been raised in a particular area where they fear intimacy. So they like try to really reduce the emotional connection. Emotional connection is danger for them.

Okay. We'll also go through some specific things like, you know, different pairings of relationships and things like that. But does everyone understand that this is basically how attachment works? I'm a human.

I get signals from the relationship. Just like hunger or thirst, I respond to those signals in particular ways. When I feel hungry, I'm going to eat something. So my body, my brain will send me signals, this is dangerous because this person is pulling too far away in the case of anxious attachment, or this person is getting too close, we have to push them away. Okay? So now let's go over details of what this looks like. So let's understand the view...

of the relationship. So if you're avoidant, people who are avoidant basically view relationships as two separate people coexisting. We're basically almost like roommates. We don't have a shared life. I have my life. You have your life.

OK, so this is this manifests in all kinds of ways, like valuing independence. So people who are anxiously attached will I mean, sorry, avoidantly attached will be like, you know, I'm not going to compromise my career for the sake of my relationship. Like I would never move to another city for like for someone. Right. My career, like I have my life. You have your life. If you have to move away, you have to move away. And that's OK. These are like two separate lives.

All right. This also like the separation of people coexisting also involves other kinds of things like we don't necessarily need to move in together. I have my space.

You have your space and that's totally fine. We can have separate bank accounts. Another good example. Right. And then also like we don't have to define the relationship. It is what it is. It's kind of like a situationship. It's like I'm chilling. You're chilling. There's no like integration of two people's lives into one thing.

Okay. Now, this can also manifest in other like subtler ways, like people can be very work focused. Right. So you'll have like someone, let's say a man or woman or non-binary person who's in their mid 20s. And they're like, oh, like I'm just focused on work right now. Relationships are not a top priority.

Now, that's a very reasonable thing for someone in their mid-20s to say, and this is what's so tricky about attachment, is many of the attachment behaviors sound very logical or reasonable, but underneath it's the attachment system at play. So the main thing that I want you all to really think about is for each of these examples, what does this do for this person's relationship? So when someone is in their mid-20s and says, I'm focused on my career, on the surface, there's nothing wrong with that, right?

Right. Like obviously like, OK, you're mid 20s. Focus on your career. But 20 percent of people out there will use that statement to avoid bonding with other people. Now, this is important to understand. So this isn't we're not saying that people can't be career focused. What I'm saying is that they will use a very legitimate excuse to subconsciously prevent bonding with someone else.

Now, if you're career-focused, that doesn't mean that you're avoidantly attached. This is the problem with TikTok mental health advice, right? They're like, it's all one way. This is a nuance to understand. When we look at the constellation of avoidant attachment, this can be one of the features. And even this is subconscious. So when I work with avoidantly attached people—

It takes me a while to like break through to them that, hey, are you using your emphasis on career to avoid committing to relationships? Oh, I'm so career focused and oh, like I had this opportunity to move halfway across the world because of my career. And then when we tunnel down into it, I'm like, where did this opportunity come from? Oh, I applied very aggressively.

Hold on a second. So when you applied very aggressively, what did you think was going to happen if you got the job? That's halfway across the world. What did you think was going to happen to your relationship? And they're like, I don't know. I'm career focused. Right. So they're not. So career focused is fair enough. But then they're not relationship focused. And why? Because they're afraid of getting hurt. They value their independence. Does that make sense to people? So avoidantly attached people are going to really view their lives as separate. Right.

It's not like a life that we share together. It's like your life is over there. My life is over here. Okay. They can be very work focused, et cetera. Now let's talk about how they view. This is kind of how they view relationships, but there are a couple of other features. So things that they do, like, so here's some challenges that come with avoidantly attached people. So the first is that they send mixed signals.

They're not the only ones, but they send a certain kind of mixed signal. So dating someone who's avoidantly attached can involve a lot of like experience of kind of mixed signals. So the reason for this is that people who are avoidantly attached are conflicted because all human beings require emotional intimacy. They require bonds with other human beings. But people who are avoidantly attached get burned by bonds with other human beings because

Right. So I want you all to think about this like someone who is starving, but gets nauseous every time they eat. What is going to be their relationship with food? I'm hungry, hungry, hungry. I need to eat. I need to eat. I need to eat. But the second I start eating, I start to feel nauseous. I don't want to eat anymore.

This is what avoidantly attached people are like. They crave relationships subconsciously. So they seek out relationships, but once they engage in relationships, they get scared. If y'all want to dive deep into the most important topics for our community, check out HG Memberships. The first thing to understand is that there needs to be no outcome from small talk.

This is a vasana too. Your mind is vasanas all the way down. So the key thing about detachment is not that you don't have wants. It is that your wants do not control you. Membership grants you access to monthly streams as well as a back catalog of a year's worth of content in addition to quests and so much more. If you're interested, you can sign up for 10 bucks a month at healthygamer.gg slash memberships or click the link in the description below.

Hope to see you there. So it's like something really weird can happen with an avoidantly attached person. They can pursue you very, very, very passionately at the beginning.

And when they pursue you, you're like, oh, wow, this person is like super into me. But then something happens like a month goes by, two months go by. And then like suddenly they're like not responding to your texts. And you're like, what happened? Like we started sleeping together. And then what happens is on social media, we get all these like propagations of if you're a woman, you shouldn't sleep with a guy on a first date because then they'll ghost you.

That's not what's going on. Whether you sleep with someone on a first date, what happens after that is not uniform in the human race. I've worked with patients who have slept together on a first date and gotten married, had kids happily ever after, at least for 25 years. I've worked with people who slept together on a first date and then they get ghosted. Both are possible. It depends on the individual.

And this is the biggest problem with a lot of this dating advice and red pill stuff. They don't account for individuality, right? They assume that all human beings are the same. So avoidantly attached people send mixed signals and it can feel very hot and cold. So they, they crave, they have that fundamental need for human closeness and

But they also get really, really scared by being close. So this is fucking confusing if you're dating an avoidantly attached person. Because even if they don't text you for a while, you get frustrated. So you're like, okay, fine, whatever. And then you stop texting them. And then they'll do something weird. They'll be like, they'll start texting you again.

And this is where all these notions of playing hard to get and all this kind of crap come from. Because you can actually trigger the avoidant attachment system by even pulling away yourself. Remember, they want to keep you at arm's length. They don't want you to be at room's length.

They don't want you to be at hand's length. They want you right here, right in this middle zone where you're not too close and you're not too far. And if you pull further away from that, they'll try to pull you in a little bit. But generally speaking, what freaks them out because the tendency in relationships is to get closer over time. As we get closer, closer, closer, they start to push you away.

OK, so this is also where like a lot of people with avoidant attachment have commitment issues. And this is a good example of what I would say. Same thing as mixed signals. So it's like, yeah, I don't want you to date anyone else. I'm not really interested in dating anyone else, but I'm not ready to get married yet.

I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I'm not ready. What does that mean? I'm not ready. How do you get ready? There is once again, a very legitimate process of getting ready to, let's say, get married or have a committed relationship. But if you have avoidant attachment, you will use this very legitimate rationale. Your attachment system will hijack this and tell you, hey, we're not ready because we don't want people to be closer.

Okay, this is we're going to leave them right here. So people with avoidant attachments love these things like situationships. Okay, so then there are a couple of other behaviors that they do. So one is that they can have very uncompromising views of relationships. Okay, so this is where like, remember, you're entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to my opinion. My opinion is over here. Your opinion is over here. There doesn't need to be any overlap. We don't need to find some middle ground that both of us share. We don't need to do that.

This doesn't this isn't necessary. So so a lot of times people with avoidant attachment will have very uncompromising views. This is the way things are. It's a man's job to do this. It's a woman's job to do this. We don't need to do things together. And this also can get very confusing because this looks like misogyny or misandry or whatever. But remember, the goal is like there should be no blending. We need to keep things separate.

I'm not saying that misogyny and stuff can't exist as well. Once again, in the avoidant attachment system, it'll hijack all of these things to keep people at arm's length. So uncompromising views, and this can include things like worldviews, views on relationships, moving in, which MOBA should you play?

Which RPG should you play? You know, like, should video games be woke or not woke? They just have very, very uncompromising views because I am an independent unit. I'm an island to myself and you can have your island over there and it's like not a big deal. We can agree to disagree. Okay? So this becomes really challenging in relationships because as we'll talk about towards the end, relationships are about reconciling views. That's how you get to a successful relationship. It's not about who's right or wrong.

This is how they view things in relationships. If you're dating someone who's avoidant or you are avoidant, oftentimes there's no subjectivity. There's no opinion. There's a right way or a wrong way, and usually my way is right and your way is wrong. They're very focused on objectivity because objectivity means that there's no blending. There's a clear line of what is okay or not okay. A couple of other things. Now we get to the interesting stuff.

So, really fascinating. So people with avoidant attachment have a big problem with idealization in fantasy. So usually what they end up doing, they have this idea of a perfect partner. They think to themselves, and now we've got to kind of go off script a little bit. So people with avoidant attachment sometimes can appear to be like romantic.

And they're like, I'm looking for the one. I'm looking for the perfect partner. I'm looking for like there's someone out there who has everything that I'm looking for, and I'm going to keep looking for that person until I find them. Current online dating has made this problem worse because it gives you this idea that that person is out there. You just need to find them.

But let's unpack why there is no such thing as the perfect partner and why people look for the perfect partner in the first place. So people who are avoidantly attached, remember that they tend to be disappointed by their close human relationships. So when I'm disappointed by my close human relationships, when I get hurt, when I connect to someone...

What is the way that I protect myself from that hurt? It is through things like numbness, distraction. I'm going to avoid my feelings because they hurt. And the safest way to avoid my feelings is to never get close to anyone. Because if I'm never close to anyone, I'll never feel hurt and disappointed. So avoidance of feelings at all costs.

Okay. So then what happens is they start dating a real human being. And when they date a real human being that comes with positive and negative experiences of a relationship. And they don't like that. So what they say is, okay, I'm dating this person. This person is flawed. I don't like the way that I feel because they're not, they think that the

perfect relationship will make me feel emotionally perfect, but they don't feel emotionally perfect in a relationship. That's why they keep on looking for this very special person who will make me feel perfect on the inside, who will make me feel safe, who will make me feel, will never disappoint my vulnerability, will never take advantage of me, will always be there for me, right? This idealized version of what they wanted when they were kids. So they're looking for this perfect partner.

And the reason that you're not perfect is because there is some negativity that they experience. They don't know how to—we'll get to this in a second—they don't know how to even understand what they feel. They're oftentimes very alexithymic. They're very emotionally numb. They just know it's not perfect.

Because if it was perfect, then I'd feel perfect. But I don't feel perfect. I don't know why I don't feel perfect. But the problem must be you because they don't explore their internal environment. This is why they tend to be very work-focused, right? I'm going to focus on my job. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to live in the external world. I'm going to achieve a lot in the external world. I'm going to step away from these stupid things called emotions. So what they end up doing is actually looking for the perfect partner. And the perfect partner is someone who makes them feel safe, giving

gives them exactly what they want, which is impossible, which is that 100% safety with 100% vulnerability and no chances to be taken, no disappointment, no hurt. I want to be vulnerable, but guarantee that you're not going to hurt me. So they idealize things. And this can be very hard for the partner of an avoidantly attached person because they're always talking about this perfect version of you if you did this better. So this is also where they tend to be very critical.

Now we get to the next thing. So this is going to all kind of come together, okay? So they're looking for the perfect partner. And in turn, they tend to be critical because there's a gap between you and the other person, this idealized partner. The other thing that's really cool about being critical of your partner is when you're critical of your partner and you devalue them, what happens to the strength of your emotional connection? You push them away.

Right. It's really hard to let go of someone who's perfect. It's very easy to let go of someone who's flawed. Right. I can move on from you if you're flawed. And the more flawed you are, the easier it is for me to keep distance between me and you because you're not really you're not that great. So I don't need to be vulnerable with you. I can find something better out there. So this is really scary. But they will oftentimes do a lot of devaluing stuff.

In the worst case scenarios, this is stuff like nagging.

in red pill right so when we put someone else down it allows us to like protect ourselves from forming bonds with them but this can also be like very very um subtle things so like um they can like make comparisons with other people they can be like oh this person does this and this person does this and why can't you do this like this person or they may not even like blame you for it they'll just make these like subtle comparisons they'll hyper focus on small mistakes okay and

So this is a great quote from Amir Levine's book. I remember reading this and just thinking this was brilliant. So when they look at an apple, they focus on the worm instead of the apple.

Like they'll ignore 90% of the good stuff and just zero in on the bad stuff. And if you're someone who's avoidantly attached and you look at the history of your relationships, what you'll find, like Jerry Seinfeld, I think is a really great example of this. If you all have seen Seinfeld, the comedy show, right, where he'll like, he'll, he'll get like, he'll break up with women for all kinds of tiny stuff.

Like he breaks up with a woman because she eats her peas one pea at a time. And he's like, who does that? I can't date someone who eats their peas one pea at a time. Like he can't handle that.

So they'll come up with all these, like, they'll make mountains out of molehills with focusing on small little mistakes or little imperfections, and that'll become a reason to break up with someone. Once again, what's the goal? It's to push people away. And remember that with the triggering of the attachment system, we will see a lot more of this kind of stuff when you get close. So when you're dating someone who's avoidantly attached or you are avoidantly attached, if you pay attention...

This is what things look like. So here's closeness and here's happiness. And what you'll find is that the curve looks like this. So if we're too close, I'm unhappy. Or if there's very little closeness, I'm unhappy. I want you here. I want this middle level of closeness. And then if the closeness increases to a 10, then I become unhappy.

Once I start to become, once the closeness gets over here, my attachment system triggers and then I start to neg. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to push us back to this safe zone because this is where I feel safe. So I will devalue you. I will criticize you.

I will even move to a different city to get physical distance from you. I won't want to move in. And they're resistant to move along this axis as well. Moving in together, getting married, meeting the parents, all this kind of stuff that advances the closeness of the relationship, avoidant people don't like. I'm happy to just be in this nebulous eight year. We've been dating for eight years and our relationship is limbo. I'm actually totally fine with that. They may still be unhappy, but they get scared anytime things advance.

Let's talk about one or two other things. Let's talk about conflict. So for avoidantly attached people, their conflict can look like a couple of different things. It can look like explosions or withdrawal. Sometimes they get very angry and it can be very frustrating to like argue with people who are avoidantly attached because they'll come up with some reason, but that's not the real reason. And so trying to talk to them about this is like very, very confusing.

So, you know, let's take this example of like moving to a different city. And it's like, I don't understand, like, why couldn't you apply for things that were like...

At least in the ballpark, like there are plenty of jobs in New York or San Francisco. Why did you have to apply to Hong Kong? Like, I don't understand this. And they're like, then they come back at you and they're like, well, it's because you're not supporting my career. And like, you know, this is an important time in my life and it's a great opportunity. And I wish you were more supportive. And then you've like been supportive, but you're kind of confused. They're like, there's lots of opportunities here. I don't understand why you don't just apply for those.

So oftentimes, like the conflict with them is very confusing and it can be quite explosive because they're not good at handling their emotions. Or what they'll do is they'll just withdraw. They'll give you the cold shoulder. Things are getting too close because remember, conflict is a sign of closeness in a relationship sometimes. And so what they'll do is just ghost, right? They'll like they'll withdraw. They'll numb. They'll retreat into themselves. Right.

They'll also create physical space. They'll go back to their place. They'll move out. They'll go stay with a friend. They'll do whatever. So it can be both of these things. And the really challenging thing about conflict with these people, first of all, they don't really have a problem with conflict usually. Maybe they'll just avoid it, but that's still not a problem with conflict. They have a strength to deal with conflict, which is I'm going to avoid. The other problem is that they're very poor at articulating their emotions properly.

or experiences right so like i'm applying for a job in hong kong and the real reason for that is because i'm afraid of intimacy they're not aware of that and so they can't even say like the healthy thing to do in that situation is is this relationship is getting closer i feel afraid that i'm gonna get hurt i feel afraid that if i choose a job or a career path i'm

based on you and our relationship falls apart, I will have lost two opportunities. Not only did I lose this relationship, but I lost this career opportunity as well. I'm afraid that you won't be there for me when I need it, and making the sacrifice is not worth it. This is what they feel, but they don't know it, and they can't articulate it. So you, in a relationship, can't solve this problem.

because like they're not even aware of what it is. So they're very poor at articulating their emotions and experiences. They're not very good communicators. Remember, going back to this, right? There's uncompromising, there's a right and a wrong way. There isn't like a feelings or any of that. There's an objectively, there's a right or a wrong thing to do. That's the beginning and end of it. There's no feelings to discuss. Like who cares? Opportunity is opportunity. Now, once again, the reason for that

is because if we go back to our basic attachment theory, remember that we learn our emotional experience through...

mirroring, right? So remember that we learn what we're feeling when our parents are emotionally available to us. So what does that mean? So remember, now we'll understand why this happens in avoidant attachment. Because when I'm feeling sad and I'm a kid, I don't know what sad is, right? So when I'm feeling sad and I'm like upset about something, my parents will come to me and be like, oh, you must be feeling sad. And then they mirror you. They're like, oh my God, is what the baby said?

Oh, poor little baby. Oh, my goodness. Little baby, let me hold you. So you mirror their emotion, and then the kid is like, oh, this is sadness. And this is the face you should make when people are sad. Dr. K's crying. We even change the way that we pronounce words. R's become W's, and we go wah.

And then when we get emotionally mirrored, okay, I'm not alone. The world understands me. I'm sad. Mom or dad is sad. And they do the right thing. They hold me. Oh, it's okay. Witte baby's crying. Oh, I'm so sorry, witte baby. Avoidantly attached people don't get that. So since they don't get that, I'm crying. And then my parent, so I had a friend who used to have nightmares. So their parents were trying to teach them how to sleep on their own.

And so the kid would be having nightmares and crying in the bed, and one of their parents would be sitting in a chair just watching them. They're like, I'm here. There's no reason to be scared. They didn't touch. They didn't emotionally mirror. They were emotionally neutral. They're like, look, I'm here. There's nothing in the room. And they would just watch their child cry, traumatize the kid. Kid is like high functioning, is in a relationship now and has kids and stuff. But man, they were quite articulate with how it messed them up.

They're like, yeah, my parents would just watch me cry and suffer and didn't do anything. But they were like, that's what they did. So that's how you become avoidantly attached. So once you don't know what you're feeling, then it's very hard to articulate what's going on. And if you're in a relationship with an avoidant attached person...

The way it feels is that there's something always in the way of the relationship. There's some reason why we can't advance. There's some reason why we can't move in together. And even if we move in together, your partner is pulling apart, pulling away in some way. So they're very scared. So things like situationships, things like these long-term, like we've been dating for 14 years and it's going nowhere. We're like coexisting as roommates who sometimes have sex. This is avoidant attachment.

Now, let's talk about sex for a moment. So people who are avoidantly attached. So now we're going to take a quick aside. OK, so in the 70s, there was some really cool research about types of love. And what people basically discovered is that there are six different scientific categories of love. There are six different ways that human beings look at love. There's Eros love.

So this is love that is like passionate. It's like, oh my God, I love you so much. Love me. We were made for each other. Kiss me. I need you. Do you need me? That's Eros love. This is what we tend to see in most of our movies.

There is another kind of love. I think it's called agape love. I don't know how to pronounce it. Maybe I got a letter wrong. So agape love is sacrificial love. This is where I love you and the way that I demonstrate my love is not, oh, kiss me. It's like, I'll give you a kidney. Right? That's very different. Like, no one is like in our rom-coms, no one is like giving people kidneys or like working extra shifts at the bank. Right?

to pay for your medical treatment, right? Like that doesn't, we don't, I mean, sometimes it happens in movies and stuff, but that's not what we really romanticize is love. Sometimes we'll have agape love. So we show sacrificial love. All right. So securely attached people love in these two ways. So if you're in a relationship with a securely attached person, their love towards you is going to be passionate and sacrificial. This is probably the healthiest.

There's another kind of love. So avoidantly attached people have a kind of love called ludus. And ludus is a playful love. It is an uncommitted love. It is a free love. It is a, oh, let's like...

Let's play around and let's have a good time. Let's live in the moment and let's not make sacrifices. It's fun. It's playful. It's actually viewed as a game. Okay, so if you look at the Greek, ludus, this is like playful and game-like love. Love is a game to be won and lost.

To be titillated and enjoyed. But there's no commitment. There's no sacrifice. And it's hilarious, right? Because like literally if you look at avoidant attachment people in the red pill community, and I'm not trying to criticize them. I think they've figured this stuff out, right? They looked at themselves as a community and they stumbled upon these truths in their own way, which is a little bit less scientific.

But they call it the game. They call relationships literally a game. And that's what ludus refers to. So the Greeks figured this crap out thousands of years ago. There were scientific studies about it in the 70s where we said, okay, there's a certain type of people who has ludus love.

Ludus love is playful, uncommitted. It's all about having a good time. If we're not having a good time, why bother? Why sacrifice? Why, oh, I'm going to move halfway across the country and I'll fuck people over there. Uncommitted, free, playful. This is ludus love. This is what avoidantly attached people have. And there are scientific studies that correlate these two things. And then we get to anxiously attached people who have manic love. Now, manic love is a whole different thing. Manic love is obsessive. It is possessive.

It is, no, I love you with all my heart and my passion and don't ever leave me. Don't ever leave me. Let's move to a desert island together. Let's move in together. Let's have babies together. Let's mix our DNA. Let's do everything. I own you and you own me.

It's not just passionate. It goes beyond that to manic, obsessive, possessive. Okay. And there are a couple of other loves, which we won't go into, but it's really fascinating because we can see this history of attachment being manifested even in the Greek views of love. Even in these research studies, when attachment theory was still, I mean, it was there. And then as attachment theory has grown, we've correlated this.

So they'll even like if you talk to someone who's avoidantly attached, they will view love. It's not that they're incapable of love. Right. So but they just view love is like this is why situationship is perfect. It's joyful. We're doing this because it's fun.

And if it stops being fun, we stop doing it. No strings attached, right? And the red pillars call it, literally they call it the game, which is what Ludus refers to, okay? So this is avoidant attachment. Can you have both attachment? Yeah, so we'll talk about that. There are blends. So I guess we can talk about that now. So we're talking about these patterns in avoidant attachment. And remember that like a securely attached person or an anxiously attached person can have a couple of these things, right?

Right? So it's not that like all avoidant people have all of them and none of these traits are shared by any of the others. We as human beings are a blend of everything. It's just which one is predominant. So even a securely attached person will have some features of this. Okay? So let's talk a little bit about anxious attachment. Okay? So

First thing that we talk about is how do they view the relationship? So they view relationships as blended or even completely blended. Remember, there's this manic obsessive conjoining kind of love where it's like a relationship is not me and you as separate creatures. We are going to become one in the same. I want as much closeness as possible. Remember, the basic fear of an anxiously attached person is that you won't be there. So I need to keep you close.

So their kind of goal, so they desire a lot of closeness. And desiring closeness, what we're talking about is physical closeness, blended lives. It's not your friends and my friends. It's our friends, our BFFs. Your sister is now my sister. We're sisters too, right? Oh my God, we're BFFs. Everything is blended. Now, sometimes what this can result in is a loss of identity.

And y'all may have been this way before, or you may have dated someone this way who's like, will like lose their identity with you. And sometimes when you date an anxiously attached person at the very beginning, you feel like you found the perfect person. You're like, they like all the things I like, you know? Oh, I like this particular sexual position. They like that particular sexual position. I kind of hinted that I wanted to have sex and they were like, yeah, let's do it.

They seem so—they're into the same beers that I like. They like the same video games that I like. They like everything that I like. They're so nice. They're so supportive. They never seem unhappy, okay?

Now, why is this? It's because they're afraid of losing you. So what they're going to do is sometimes they lose their very sense of identity because they want to make you happy. So they view relationships as something that is fragile and could fall apart unless I act in the right way. So people who are anxiously attached tend to be very insecure in their relationship. They feel like unless I do this right, and this may resonate with you, unless I do this perfectly, this person will leave me. I'm not worth dating.

And it is only through a very, very clever series of moves that I've tricked this person into a relationship with me in the first place. Right. And if I stop doing something that they like, then they may dislike me. They may pull away.

And as they pull away, it will activate my attachment system. And then my attachment system will try to rope them back in. And we'll talk about how they do that. Okay. Does this make sense? So their basic fear is that you will leave or you fear that other people will leave. And so therefore you tend to be very, very accommodating and you want a blended life. I want to stick you. I want to entwine our lives so closely together that you will never be able to leave obsessive possessive. So very practically, okay.

If you talk to people who are anxiously attached, they are preoccupied by their relationship. They think about it a lot. Okay? There are a couple of other challenges in the relationship. The first is that they struggle with conflict. So remember that there's a lot of insecurity. And so, like, if I tell you that I'm unhappy with you, you could leave.

So what I'm going to do is just not tell you that I'm unhappy with you. So they avoid conflict in some ways, but they also create it in other ways. We'll talk about that. Okay? Sometimes they'll—this is what's really interesting—they'll also express a lot of insecurity. Okay? So—

Part of this is like, it's kind of tricky, but like you may, y'all may have done this yourself or you may have noticed other people doing this. Anxiously attached people will be like, sometimes they'll trauma dump. Sometimes they'll be like, oh, I'm so pathetic and I'm not good at this and I'm not good at this. And your ex must have been better than me at this. Is your ex prettier than I am? Am I prettier than your ex? Is my dick bigger than your ex's dick? Like,

Who's the best lover you've ever had? Like, it doesn't matter, man, woman, whatever, non-binary. There's some kind of insecurity, and they're quite overt about it. And the reason is because a lot of times people who are anxiously attached have discovered that human beings are somewhat compassionate. And since they're somewhat compassionate, if I'm a damsel in distress, someone will come and help me.

So they express sometimes a lot of insecurity and can be quite tiring. Oh my God, I'm so, and then they'll use a lot of, so here's the really tricky thing is they have difficulty with conflict, but that doesn't mean that they're not unhappy and not resentful.

So then what happens is a lot of anxiously attached people will play a lot of games. They're very manipulative because I can't overtly tell you what I'm upset about. So instead, what I have to do is I'm like, if I think that your girlfriend is, your ex-girlfriend is prettier than I am, I'm going to get really, really upset about that. And I'm going to ask you once or twice,

And then you're going to say, no, I'm with you because I like you more. But then I see you looking at her Instagram profile and that pisses me off. It really triggers my insecurity. So what I'm going to do is anxiously attached people do all kinds of weird, like passive aggressive shit. They'll make mountains out of mole hills. They'll throw temper tantrums. They tend to have, whereas avoidantly attached people tend to be numb.

anxiously attached people have difficulty regulating their emotions. So you'll see explosions of emotion. And remember, why is that? That's because when they were kids, they had to amplify the signals of distress in order to get their needs met. So this human has learned a strategy, which is when I'm upset, let me throw shit around. And so that way people will come and they just want me to calm down.

They'll do whatever they need to to get me to calm the fuck down. Fantastic. So I'm going to throw temper tantrums.

So it is no surprise that anxiously attached people are more likely to have manifestations of things like histrionic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder. All of these things are kind of like have some similar roots. Poor emotional regulation, emotional lability, right? And depending on how severe it is, we'll classify you. If it's very, very bad, we'll give you a personality disorder. But if it's mild, we'll just say you have anxious attachment. Okay? Okay.

So remember that, like, once again, this system is triggered by your distance. So if people are pulling away, you will activate the anxious attachment system to rope people in.

So they'll do things like guilt trip. They'll use whatever they need to to bring y'all back together. If I can make you feel guilty for looking at your ex's Instagram profile and then you stop doing it and you spend time with me instead, that will be winning for me. But the problem is that I will never articulate that with you because I won't create conflict. Like dating someone who's anxiously attached is like this is like a good example. OK, it's one of these things where you're like, hey, hey, what's wrong? Nothing. Nothing's wrong.

No, it's fine. You're allowed to look at whoever's Instagram profile you want to. Like, I'm just being a possessive, dumbass, bitch, whatever. Because, yeah, that's on me. Everything's fine. You can do whatever you want. I don't want to be controlling. And the other person's like, okay, yeah, I'm not going to be controlling. What's wrong? Nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong. I told you nothing's wrong. Why do you keep on thinking, is something wrong? Everything's fine. You can do whatever you want.

And then it's like, you're like, what the fuck is this if you're dating this person? And so they won't overtly tell you about conflict. And instead, they'll get very passive aggressive. They'll use guilt tripping. Sometimes they'll even punish you. They'll start flirting with someone else. And so you may think if you're flirting with someone else, does that mean that you're avoidant? So people who are avoidant are more likely to flirt and have

extra marital affairs or extra, you know, they're more likely to cheat on their partners. And once again, the reason for that for avoidant people is because if I'm getting too close to you, one of the best ways to create distance is to go fuck someone else.

So anxiously attached people can also do that kind of stuff, but usually they're doing it to pull you in, right? So this is very important to understand. An avoidantly attached person will have an affair to keep you away. They're like, we're getting too close. I need you to be pissed at me. I need you to cooperate with me, cooperate with me to pull us apart a little bit. We're getting too close. So I'm going to do something that'll piss you off. That way you will reject me.

And then once you reject me, I'm going to apologize. Oh my God, I made such a big mistake. How could I throw away the best thing that I ever had, which was you? I love you, baby. Come back to me. And then you come back to them and they cheat on you again when you start talking about getting married and moving in. Avoid an attachment. Anxious attachment. You're pulling away from me. I'm going to make you jealous by flirting with this other person. You're pulling away from me in extreme situations. I'm going to punish you by sleeping with this person.

And then I'll tie you. I'll bring you back. I'll go the nuclear option. And then when you're like, fuck you, you slept with someone else. You've been unfaithful. I'm done with you. Then they are like, oh, my God, answer the phone. Otherwise, I'm going to kill myself. Then they escalate even more and more and more. I've seen it as a psychiatrist. It's a mess.

But do you all understand how this is like it's same behavior, but coming from two very different places. One is to keep someone away and one is to keep someone close. Okay. So anxiously attached people also have a tendency to do things like play hard to get. Right. So they're like,

So avoidantly attached people are actually hard to get. It's hard to actually nab them down. Anxiously attached people play hard to get. They're like, no, no, I won't go out with you. Ask me again. No, ask me again. No, no, I would never go. Ask me again. Why are you dating that other person? Oh my God. Why are you flirting with her? Why are you flirting with him? No, like we're just BFFs. No, ask me again.

Wouldn't it be funny if we went to a desert island together and got drunk and had sex? Wouldn't that be hilarious? This kind of shit. A lot of game playing, a lot of a passive aggressive, a lot of guilt tripping, a lot of emotional manipulation. Avoidant people aren't, they don't have the emotional bandwidth to like know how to emotionally manipulate you, right? They're struggling with their, they don't understand your emotions. They don't understand theirs, their own. They don't understand any emotions.

anxiously attached people are the other way around. They won't overtly tell you what's going on. They will use all these emotional games to get their needs met. Okay? So next thing we're going to talk about is theory of mind. So this is really important because in terms of some people have been asking, what do I do if I'm avoidantly attached? Theory of mind is a huge part of it. So now what we're going to do is we're going to actually talk about secure attachment and theory of mind. So theory of mind,

is the ability for us to understand someone else's experience, right? So we have to understand that like this person has their own thoughts, has their own emotions, and that they have a subjective experience of life. So in anxiously attached people, their theory of mind in some ways is quite poor, right?

So, like, for example, like, a theory of mind—so if—let's say we're dating and you're anxiously attached, and then I say, hey, I know that you wanted me to come with you to that work dinner, but I have to travel for a job interview, so I won't be able to make it that weekend. So I have a life that has demands on my time. Awesome.

Oftentimes what happens with insecurely, anxiously attached people is they will take things very personally because they're not able to understand that in my subjective experience, I have needs that don't relate to you. They oftentimes will interpret things as this person is not returning my text. Therefore, they don't love me. This person is choosing this work trip. Therefore, they're more in they would rather spend time with their coworker than spend time with me.

They tend to take things incredibly personally because they have that blended view, right? So they don't really acknowledge that when I think something, when I'm afraid that you are pulling away from me, I don't recognize that that is a fear. It's not a reality. It is just my mind is afraid that you're pulling away. They have a lot of difficulty separating out the thoughts in their head from the reality of the world.

They have a lot of difficulty stepping outside of their shoes and stepping into someone else's shoes. I'll give you all a classic example. I don't understand why you're with me. You could be with anyone. She's better looking. He's better looking. He makes more money than I do. He has a bigger dick than I do. He's taller than I am. I don't understand why you're with me. They don't understand that you have a mind in which you have chosen this person.

Over that other person. So they're not capable of stepping outside of their own mind. Okay? Now, theory of mind for avoidant attachment is also impaired. They have a difficulty because they don't understand what they themselves feel, and they have no concept of your subjectivity. They have no concept of, like, the subjectivity of things in general.

So they think that there's the right way and there's the wrong way. This is objectively good. This is objectively better. Having joint bank accounts is objectively worse than having separate bank accounts. Therefore, we should have separate bank accounts. They don't realize that their objectivity, and we see this a lot in the red pill community, for example, they don't realize that they're not actually objective.

If you try to explain to them this is just your subjective experience of things, this is not the way the world is, they will reject that. They think this is the way the world is, period. So they are very happy to conveniently ignore that.

60 years of attachment research, which shows that you can form healthy bonds, men, women, whatever. You can form healthy bonds with other human beings. You can be happily married, have kids, have grandkids, that the majority of human beings in the history of humanity have done it that way. They're very easy. They conveniently ignore all that stuff because that would mean that objectively we're not right. And so for them, things are very objective.

This isn't just red pill. Women can be like this too where there's a right way to do things, wrong way to do things. So they don't have the theory of mind of recognizing, okay, you behaved that way not because it's right or wrong, but you have a particular experience of life that allows you to behave in a particular way. I have a particular experience of a life that allows me to behave in a particular way.

So in both cases, the theory of mind and the capacity for mentalization is impaired. Yeah, they also don't care about feelings. They're like, I don't know. I'm not. Here's another big thing about anxiously attached people make you responsible for their feelings. If I feel a certain way, it is your job to fix it. They'll do it subconsciously. If I'm feeling unloved, you need to drop everything that you're doing and come and love me. Avoid an attachment, people.

Try to not be responsible for your feelings as much as possible. And you're not responsible for their feelings. My feelings are over here. Your feelings are over there. You're not going to touch. We're not going to touch them with a 10-foot pole. We can touch genitals. That is fine. So when it comes to sex, avoidantly attached people...

This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. It's tax season, and we're all a bit tired of numbers. But here's one you need to hear. $16.5 billion. That's how much the IRS flagged for possible identity fraud last year. Now here's a good number. $100 million. That's how many data points LifeLock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed. Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash podcast. Terms apply.

will utilize sex as a barrier to intimacy. We're just going to make it physical. It's a situationship. There's no emotions involved. It's friends with benefits. No emotion, just sex. Anxiously attached people will use sex to enhance intimacy. It is a tool to bring us closer together.

Oh my God, you're dating two different people at the same time, me and someone else? Let's fuck so you pick me over them. They will use sex to advance the intimacy in the relationship. Okay? Now let's talk about secure attachment. So their view of relationship. A relationship is two people that...

blend into one shared life. So anxious attachment is kind of like we're one person. It's the same life. My friends are your friends. But with secure attachment, we acknowledge that, okay, I have my friends, you have your friends, and we have our friends. So I would say that avoidant attachment people have lives like this.

anxiously attached people have lives like this, and then securely attached people maybe have... Actually, this is probably secure attachment. This is secure right here. And anxiously attached is like this. So we acknowledge that we're individuals, but we are building something together, right? So they think about the relationship as like a unit. So there's me, there's you, and there's the relationship, right? So here's me, here's you, and this in the middle is the relationship. So...

Generally speaking, these people are like dependable. They're like emotionally like available. They can make relationship decisions. And oftentimes they will discuss things. They'll discuss major life decisions with their partner. So it'll be like, hey, I feel like I'm stagnating in my job.

So the avoidantly attached person doesn't subconsciously realize it doesn't realize that they're subconsciously afraid of this relationship. They apply for a job halfway across the world. The securely attached person says, hey, I'm not really finding a whole lot of things over here. And I kind of feel like I don't want to live in the city anymore. I want to use this opportunity in my 20s to explore career opportunities elsewhere. What do you think about that? Would you want to join me? Would you want to stay?

So they'll like take their individual needs and they will bring them to the relationship. Anxiously attached individuals sometimes aren't even aware that they have individual needs.

So they'll be like, you're right, you're right, you're right. Avoid conflict, avoid conflict, avoid conflict. Passive-aggressive, passive-aggressive, passive-aggressive. Whereas people who are securely attached will be dependable, reliable, will communicate, will make shared relationship decisions. Okay? So they also are able to compromise in relationships. So oddly enough—

Avoidant people aren't very good at compromise. It's my way or your way. It's the right way or it's the wrong way. Anxiously attached people are also not very good at compromise because they're afraid of creating conflict. So what they're going to do is be a doormat and then punish you later. I'm using hyperbole here. They're not that bad.

Okay. As securely attached people are able to compromise. I like it this way. You like it this way. There's somewhere in the middle. I can give this up. You can give this up. Why are we capable of giving that up? Because the relationship is more important than me or you individually.

Right? Up to a point. It's not that the relationship demands all sacrifices, but like there are some times where the relationship wins out, sometimes when you win out, and sometimes when I win out. That's how it works. They're capable of compromise. So they're also good at communication, usually. They're able to communicate in a relationship. They can vocalize their thoughts and feelings. Okay? Okay.

They can tolerate mistakes through empathy. They're quick to forgive and don't hold grudges.

Right. So let's understand this. This is where we get back to the roots of attachment theory again. So how is it that these people are able to do this? Like what what mysticism is this? So remember that when you're securely attached, I grow up. I have emotions. My emotions are mirrored. Therefore, I learn what they are. Oh, I'm feeling angry. I'm feeling sad. And someone else can help me with that. As I begin to develop an understanding of my own emotions, I also develop empathy.

Why do I develop empathy? Because someone is empathying towards me. Therefore, I learn how to empathy back. Right. So when my mom and dad get angry and upset, when I get bullied and when they feel sad with me and when they emotionally support me, I notice that they're feeling sad. It works both ways. It's two way traffic. Right. We learn how to listen.

and understand a language, and we learn how to speak a language. So they tend to be more empathic. Once they're empathic, this is really, really important. Because now I can put myself in your shoes.

And when I put myself in your shoes, I can understand why you would do something that is hurtful to me. I can understand, oh, you were having a bad day and you just forgot my birthday. You're under a lot of stress at work. You forgot my birthday. That hurts me. But I understand where you're coming from. Therefore, I'm more forgiving of you forgetting my birthday.

Now, in the case of anxious attachment, this is very difficult because they have struggled with theory of mind. They have struggled putting themselves outside of their head into your head. It's about my needs, my distress, my difficulty regulating my emotions. In the avoidant attachment, they have no sense of themselves or you. So securely attached people are more capable of forgiveness, more capable of compromise, and this is why they tend to have more successful relationships.

Because people make mistakes. And if you hold a grudge, that doesn't lead to long-term positive prognosis. Okay? Now, it doesn't mean that people with—so one thing that I want to point out is that there's a lot of hyperbole here to help you all understand these concepts, but—

But securely attached people can struggle as well. Anxiously attached people can be very good at communicating. Avoidantly attached people who have been a part of this community, right? We have some red pill converts. And that isn't to say that red pill is all bad. Like I know that a lot of people in our community still find a lot of value in that community. I think that's fair, by the way.

Because the red pill community is one of the very few communities that are actually like supportive of men. So they'll tell you to go see a therapist now and will tell you to get in shape and work on your confidence and work on your career and like become an independent human who is confident in yourself. That's wonderful.

That's a good thing. So securely attached people can vocalize their thoughts and concerns. They're actually good at conflict resolution as a result. Also, there are a couple of things that are different about securely attached people. One is that they're not afraid of commitment. Sex is an expression of intimacy, not a substitute for intimacy like anxiously attached people, and not a way to reduce intimacy like avoidantly attached people. So we're in love, therefore we have sex.

It's great that we can have sex and love. They're blended together. It's Gucci. The other thing is that they tend to enjoy the relationship. So this is another really interesting data point. So sometimes people with avoidant attachment find that relationships are a lot of work. It feels like a lot of work. Oh my God, this fucking person has emotions again. They have emotions again. They have emotions again. They have emotions again. Oh my God, why am I in this relationship? Oh my God, it's so exhausting, so exhausting, so exhausting.

Generally speaking, securely attached people think that the exhaustion is worth the joy. So they tend to enjoy relationships. I know this is crazy, but working as a psychiatrist, I've met some people who don't enjoy relationships. Like their day-to-day experience of a relationship is negative, which is why they end up hopefully breaking up at some point. They tend to be comfortable with blending their lives, right? So...

You can come to my work event. I'm happy to come to your work event. I'm happy to meet your family. You can meet my family. When it's maybe it's time to buy a house together, maybe it's not. Maybe it's time to get married. Maybe it's time to have kids. They're okay blending their lives, but they don't have to lose their life for the sake of the other person. As we mentioned before, there tends to have eros love, which is passionate, as well as agape love, which is sacrificial. Okay? So this is what secure attachment looks like. Now,

Y'all probably are wondering, what do we do about this? How do we fix this? So the first thing that we're going to do is we're going to go through a couple of cases, like really simple things just to illustrate this. So let's say moving in together. So anxiously attached people tend to really want to move in super fast, right? Anything to advance the relationship, anything to bind us together. Avoidant attachment people resist moving in because this means I lose my space. I'm someone who needs my space. I don't want to lose my space.

Securely attached people are ready to move in when they're ready to move in. Maybe a year from now, maybe two years from now. Hey, we've been doing this for a little while. I'm comfortable with advancing things to the next level. Another example that we talked a lot about, work. So some people prefer to keep work very separate from their personal relationship. I don't want you to meet my work friends. I don't want to bring you to a work party. And then you can be like, why? What's wrong? Are you embarrassed to me? No, it's just I like work over there, relationship over here, separation.

Other people, why don't you bring me to the work events? I'm going to apply. Oh, my God. I've worked with people like this, where one partner gets hired somewhere, their spouse applies for a job there. They're a package deal. It can cause real problems in companies and in relationships. It's not necessarily a bad thing. There are ways to make it work, but blended lives, not your life and my life. Why don't you take me to the work thing? Why don't you come to my work thing?

I want to come to your work thing. I want to meet your parents. I want them to adopt me. Blended, blended, way blended. Fused is a better word for anxious attachment. Another really good example, right? So the bank accounts, work stuff, chores, and laundry. So little subtle things. You do your laundry. I'm going to do my laundry. We don't need to mix our laundry, right? Avoidantly attached.

It's too much blending of stuff. It doesn't need to be done together. You stay over there. I stay over here. We have sex at this interval.

We do this thing. I pay this time. You pay that time. Separate, separate, separate. Anxiously attach people. Let's do all of our laundry together all the time. Securely attach people. Hey, if we're like living together, let's do our whites together. I don't know what to do with your fucking delicates, so you wash that stuff. And you don't want to wash your delicates with my dirty gym clothes, so I'm going to do my own gym laundry. You're going to wash your delicates. And then for the whites and the towels and all the other stuff, we can wash it together. Blended lives. Okay.

Okay, so these are just a couple of examples. That makes sense? So secure attachment, anxious attachment, avoidant attachment. Now we have to talk about a couple of things. So first thing that we're, so now we're going to talk about dating specifically as all three and then what to do. So the first thing is we're going to talk about the anxious attachment, avoidant attachment pairing.

OK, so if you are anxiously attached, the worst person for you to date is someone who is avoidantly attached, which is ironic because there's a very good chance that you will end up dating an avoidantly attached person. So even though it is the worst person for you to date, it is sometimes the thing that you are the most attracted to. And I don't mean like physically attracted to. I mean, what is the most attractive?

Literally, it's attraction. Not like in a good way. You're just drawn to avoidantly attached people. So there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that there's this idea that the good ones are taken. And that's not false. It doesn't mean that you can't find someone at whatever age who's a good one, quote unquote. It's not like there are good ones and bad ones out there. But what we tend to see is that if you're securely attached and you form a bond, you're comfortable advancing the relationship.

So like two securely attached people who get together may end up their likelihood of getting married is way higher than like one avoidant person or two avoidant people or two anxious people, maybe two anxious people. It'll work out. Who knows? So like securely attached people don't rotate through the dating pool.

Avoidantly attached people are very good at rotating through the dating pool, right? Because they don't form bonds. It's situationships. I'm dating you and I'm dating someone else. So securely attached people, I'm only dating one person at a time. Avoidantly attached people, I'm dating three people at a time. 20% to 25% of people are avoidant.

50% of people are secure, which means that still, if you look at the odds, the chances that you'll run into someone who's avoidant may be higher than for you to date someone who's secure. So we see this statistically. Very high likelihood that you'll end up dating someone who's avoidant because they're dating around. It's ludus. It's fun. It's playful. No commitment. I'm out there. I'm out there today. Now, there's a lot of problems with anxious and avoidant attachment dating. The first is that anxious people...

Are insecure and avoidant people don't have the emotional bandwidth to soothe that insecurity, right? It's like it's a match made in hell. You need more emotional support to calm the fuck down, but I don't want to give it because that brings us too close. So now we run into a real challenge, OK? And hopefully you all can predict this. So anxious attachment system. Remember, you're pulling away that activates my attachment system. Oh, my God, this person is pulling away. Pull them back in.

passive aggressive guilt tripping now we're getting too close together the avoidant person is like oh my god we're getting too close together this is danger danger danger danger warning we're too close let's pull away so the avoidant person is always running away and the anxious person is always chasing them neither of them are actually happy with this because this person won't give me fucking distance and this person keeps running away it is a match made in hell you understand this

So anxiously attached people are insecure. Avoidant attached people are very bad at soothing people. Okay. So anxiously attached people, they also like feed on each other's preconceptions of what relationships are. So like as an anxious person, I feel unworthy and avoidant doesn't care about me, which actually is true. I'm like, oh my God, like this person doesn't care about me and they don't care about you. So it's like, it's like, you're right.

It actually feeds into your preconceptions. And then the avoidant person is like, oh my God, relationships are so exhausting. I don't want to get close to people because I have to deal with their fucking emotions. And this anxiously attached person is so emotionally dysregulated. Oh my God, relationships are such a waste of time. So I have to keep them at arm's distance because if I let this crazy person, if I move in with this crazy person, it is GG. And so then I tell them, yeah, I'm not ready to move in yet.

Because if I tell them I don't want to move in, they're going to have a temper tantrum and they're going to explode and all this kind of crap. So I'm not going to say I don't want to move in. I'm going to say I'm not ready yet. I need some space. And the anxiously attached person is like, okay, fine. Are you ready yet? Are you ready yet? How about now? How about now? How about now? How about now? And the avoidant person is like, this is driving me crazy. I don't ever want to move in if you're this persistent. It's like a match made in hell. So one wants intimacy. The other wants space.

The anxiously attached person is also more likely to ignore positive things and reassuring things and focus on the negative. Right. So we didn't say this explicitly, but this is something that we know. So we know, for example, people with BPD, when they look at a facial expression, they can detect negativity in a facial expression, even when the facial expression is 75 percent positive. So if I'm smiling at you and then I get mad.

If you literally look at, if you take that one second clip and you make a hundred stills of it, still number one is smiling. Still number 100 is angry. And if you look at the transition where there's a point where my face is half happy and half angry. So people who have anxious attachment are capable of detecting minor, minor amounts of emotional unhappiness. And then the problem is that avoidantly attached people send mixed signals.

Because I still crave this fundamental human connection. I can't be alone. I can't truly be alone. We're not designed like that. So I crave the connection and I pull you in and I push you away. Mixed signals. That wreaks havoc on the anxiously attached person. Neither people are good at articulating. So in the case of anxiously attached people, we see situations where they can't articulate what their actual emotional needs are. So they play all these games. And similarly, the avoidantly attached person is numb. So they don't even know what they're feeling.

Right. So one party requires a lot of reassurance and verbal support, and the other person wants a lot of distance and you handle your emotions over there. I'm going to handle my emotions over over here. We don't need to talk. You just go see your therapist. I'll go see my therapist. And that's enough.

The last thing is that remember that sometimes avoidantly attached people look for the perfect partner because they have this idea that if I find the perfect partner, then I will feel safe. And if I feel safe, then my relationship will be good and everything will be Gucci. I'm looking for the perfect partner and you aren't it, which feeds into the anxious person's insecurity. It is a match made in hell.

Okay, so the irony is that oftentimes the anxiously attached people and avoidantly attached people end up together all the time. And the reason is somewhat, we mentioned one reason, but there's another reason, which is that oftentimes when you're avoidantly attached, if you date someone who's securely attached, they just don't put up with your bullshit for too long.

They're like, I've waited a year for us to advance this relationship. It's not going anywhere. So I'm going to break up with you and I'm going to end up with someone who I'm going to try to find someone because they have confidence in themselves. Right. They believe there are other fish in the sea. And they're like, look, there's some shit that you need to work out, which like I understand you're looking for perfection. I am what I am. Either it's good enough or not good enough. I tried making a change. It seems to not be enough for you. You always find some fault with me. I don't know what the fuck is going on. I'm done.

So anxiously attached people, same thing can happen where you're like, look, I've demonstrated to you that I'm with you because I want to be with you. I don't want to be with my ex. That's why I broke up with them. That's why I'm dating you. But at some point, you know, you got to calm the fuck down. So in both cases, sometimes securely attached people don't tolerate their crap.

The flip side of it is that both people will be very successful if they date a securely attached person because the securely attached person can tolerate their BS the best. They can provide the most emotional reassurance so that they can calm someone down if they're anxiously attached. They're also good enough at conflict resolution, forgiveness, and being able to hold the space where they can help an avoidant person connect with their feelings.

So if you really look at it, like one of the best things that you can do is basically date a securely attached person. And like, I wish I could say that wasn't the case, but that's just what the data shows. So we know that dating a securely attached person over time will generally speaking heal your attachment style. Okay, so now what should you do?

If you have one of these attachment styles is the solution. Oh my God, just find someone who's securely attached and that's the beginning and end of it. No, there's a lot that you can do. Okay. So if you're anxious, remember that the core thing is that you're over here. This other person is over here and there's some kind of signal. There's a signal that they are pulling away. This signal then triggers attachment behaviors to rope them back in. Right. So you want, that's going to bring them back this way.

So if you basically want to fix this, there are a couple of very simple things you can do. You just need to break this cycle. That's it. If you break the cycle, the attachment issues will resolve. The first thing is in the interpretation of the signal. Okay? So oftentimes the signal that you perceive is actually an internal emotional need. So I'll give you all an example. If I am feeling unloved and you choose to go to a work event,

instead of hang out with me. Then I interpret this as you're into your coworker, right? This is what happens with an anxiously attached person. Now, if we really look at this, the root of this is this.

When they're feeling unloved, it changes the way that they interpret the stimuli around them. Now, this is where if you all have been with us for a while in memberships, this is glishta. This is vasana. This is samskara. We're going to do a deep dive into perception in a couple of days. So like this is all of that stuff, right? We've already given you the tools. The key thing to understand if you're anxiously attached is that you have internal emotional needs, right?

And the more that you focus on these directly, directly, directly, directly, the more that you understand I'm feeling unloved, I'm feeling a lack of confidence. And that's not true. This is the other problem with theory of mind and mentalization, which is that when you feel unloved, you think you are unloved.

But that is just something that is produced by your mind. It is a samskara. This partner loves you. That's why they're dating you. They happen to have a work thing, but your mind can't see it that way. And the root of this is the unresolved emotions. Okay? Second thing is when you are starting the dating process, there's one really big mistake that a lot of anxiously attached people make. Their mind defaults to...

Can I make this person happy?

Can I like their favorite things? Can I be nicer? Can I do this? Can I have sex more? Can I do it the way that they like it? Can I cook their favorite food? Can I make them happy? So the big irony of anxiously attached people is they are so preoccupied with keeping this person near them that they don't even think about their emotional needs. So what you really need to do is will this person be able to satisfy my needs? This is the question you should ask yourself.

Right. What are your emotional needs and can this person handle them? Because oftentimes what happens if you look at this question early on in a relationship and you're dating someone who's avoidantly attached, the answer is going to be no. But you'll still chase after them anyway. Wastes your time and wastes theirs. Right. There's some amount of like growth in a relationship and stuff like that. And I'm not saying that anxious and avoidant relationships can't work out. They can. Absolutely. I've seen it happen. But this is really what you need to focus on.

Okay? So now remember, if we want to disable this, so that's the signal, right? Really thinking about your partner selection and what's the underlying emotion that you're feeling that's triggering then the attachment behavior. Now comes the next part, which is disabling the behavior. So oftentimes what you'll find is if you—this is what's really important is there's going to be a lot of stuff like, let's say—

spam texting right so when i feel you're pulling away i'm going to text you i'm going to call you i'm going to keep hey answer answer why aren't you answering why aren't you answering are you having an affair are you having an affair why don't you call me back this behavior drives people crazy and then when you sense them being driven crazy that panics your attachment system even more because they're pulling away because you're acting crazy and then you kind of like you spiral

There's also things like guilt tripping, subtly punishing them. You didn't answer my 16 texts. No, nothing's wrong. Nothing's wrong. Everything's fine. Everything's fine. I know you're busy. You're busy. I get it. Fuck me, right? You're busy. All that kind of crap has to be disabled. And what is it that disables that is understanding the subsurface emotion. So this is key. So when I work with anxiously attached people, they usually know that they're crazy.

Like they're like, and I use that term specifically because that's the word they will use. They're like, I'm a little bit crazy. I'm acting crazy. The main question to ask yourself, it's not that you're crazy. It's that you have learned, you've been conditioned to when you get a particular signal, okay, that it requires a certain behavior to get your emotional needs met, right? This is as a psychiatrist. I love working with people who have borderline personality disorder. A lot of psychiatrists are terrified of it.

They're like, oh, my God. Like, it's so like they're so emotionally. No, it's like once you understand where they're coming from. Look, this is a human being who's not crazy. They're a human being who's grown up in a particular way where their ability to form bonds, regulate their emotions. All these things are different for this person. That's it.

And once you understand the ways in which they're different, you can treat them with compassion and tolerance, and they can turn that boat around. I understand you're feeling this way today. You tell me, do I really need to drop everything? This is something I'll say with my patients who have BPD.

Sometimes they'll message me. They'll be like, I'm falling apart. Do you have time today? And I will tell them right back at them. Look, it's 530 p.m. I was going to leave the office in 30 minutes. If you are really falling apart and you want to come by and you can be here at six, I will stay late. If you can wait till tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., I can see you then. You tell me. 95% of the time, they'll say, I can see you tomorrow at 10. That's fine.

And then I'll ask them the next day, how was that? Was it okay? Was it a mistake to come at 10? Should you have come yesterday? Like, let's work through this. You can be stable and reliable and it works wonders. It's amazing. These are good people. They're not crazy. Amazing human beings. And if you're anxiously attached, avoidantly attached, I know I've been very hyperbolic in describing things, but like y'all are not fucked. Understand these things. You'll be amazed at how much you can improve and heal. Just understand these dynamics. Okay? Okay.

Now, the other thing that we need to understand is that there's something called protest behavior that people who are anxiously attached will engage in. So this is basically that stuff like guilt tripping or subtly punishing people. So this is going to be kind of interesting.

I don't know if I can explain this properly, but I'll try. So just because an anxiously attached person values another person more than themselves—oh, if you want Thai food, we'll do Thai food today. No, it's fine. We'll do pizza tomorrow. I'll set myself aside. You come first. I'm inferior. You're superior. They do a lot of this idealization stuff.

Just because they do that doesn't mean that they don't feel the negative effects of that behavior. So when I say, I wanted pizza and you want Thai, fine, we can do Thai because I value you over me. It still doesn't mean that there isn't a part of my mind that's like, man, fuck, I wanted pizza today. So all of that resentment kind of builds up. And then this manifests as something called protest behaviors.

So protest behaviors are these little things that are passive aggressive, are punishing, are like pulling away, making your partner jealous, acting out, throwing a temper tantrum, withdrawing. No, everything's fine. They're little ways that you kind of, you know.

You're like poking someone for one damage. It's not like an actual conflict. You're afraid of like PVPing people. So you're not going to step into the PVP ring and then like bow and then use all your Elden Ring buffs and then go at it. What you're going to do is like pretend to be a cooperator and then just subtly poke them. So you have to understand this as an anxiously attached person that you will engage with these behaviors. If you're dating someone, you have to understand that they'll do this too. Even if they seem fine, you fucking know this. They're not fine.

They'll try to make you feel jealous, all this kind of stuff. So the key thing to understand is what are the signals that make you think this person is pulling away? What are the underlying emotional needs that you have and what are the ways that you respond to getting those needs met? So the main question you need to ask yourself or if you're dating someone, what you need to ask about them is what is this person looking to do? Like what is the need that they need to have fulfilled?

This is critical. So when I do this passive aggressive stuff, what am I looking for? I'm looking for an apology. I'm looking for this. I'm looking for someone to tell me that I'm looking for reassurance. I woke up this morning and I have a zit on my nose. I feel ugly. I need to know that this person is not going to leave me just because I have a zit on my nose. It feels so stupid to articulate. And this is my experience as a psychiatrist. When I talk to these anxiously attached people, they feel like their needs are dumb.

They feel like their needs are a burden. They feel like their needs are stupid. And why? Because when they were kids and they had needs, they were not treated with respect. So they carry this forward. So the big irony is they have a lot of our needs, but they can't even articulate them. And then the other person is left guessing. Okay. Now there's one real problem if you're anxious attachment, especially if you're a man. So now we're going to talk a little bit about gender dynamics. We're not going to have time for all of this, but...

Because there's even research that shows that gender plays and sexuality play really important roles in attachment theory. And specifically, one of the things that I'm going to highlight, because there's more and more research on this, is anxiously attached men. Because many of the aspects of masculinity conflict very clearly with anxious attachment. So men are supposed to be the initiators. But if you're very insecure...

It's like very hard for you to initiate, right? Because you're putting yourself out there. Like that's very hard to do.

Men who are anxiously attached tend to have sex way later in life. Women who are anxiously attached tend to have sex earlier in life. They're more willing to engage in high-risk sexual behaviors to please their partner. So that includes things like sex without condom, sex without being in a committed relationship, sex with someone who is having sex with other people. So women are more likely—anxiously attached women are more likely to have sex earlier in life. Anxiously attached men are more likely to have sex later in life.

So men are supposed to be confident. They're supposed to be initiators. But since you have those insecurities, it becomes kind of like a double whammy because you're like, not only am I insecure about my appearance, but now I'm insecure about being insecure. And I'm not a man because I'm not confident. So you have a lack of confidence about your lack of confidence. So the other problem with this is when you start to get into these kinds of patterns, what ends up happening is that

anxiously attached people can start to get into a lot of unhealthy patterns in their relationships. Sometimes they will overly invest in an unhealthy relationship. They'll tolerate a lot of bad behavior. So they'll tolerate a lot of toxicity and abuse. And then there's even like, there's studies that show this is really fascinating. If you're someone who has anxious attachment,

your mind is more likely to suppress the negative qualities of your partner. So when you look at your partner and they're 50% good and 50% bad, an anxiously attached person will ignore the bad and focus on the good. They'll focus on the apple and ignore the worm. The other really interesting thing is if you look at people who are anxiously attached, they will suppress...

positive features of potential partners that they're not dating. So if I'm dating an abusive person and I have a coworker who actually is kind and is attractive and would actually be a way better partner

And it's actually kind of into me. If I'm anxiously attached, I will ignore that person. I will push down that person. I will literally suppress their positive qualities and suppress the negative qualities of my existing partner. So anxiously attached people are much more likely to stay in bad relationships for a long period of time. Okay? So the other thing that's really important to understand is that sometimes...

Men who are anxiously attached will also use a lot of coercion. They'll actually engage in a lot of coercive behavior for sex. So I know this sounds kind of weird, but like this is just an important data point where we should back it up. So remember that

Sex is used as a substitute for intimacy. So a lot of times, since it's hard for us to articulate what our emotional needs are, especially if you're a man, right? You're not allowed to say as a man, like, hey, I'm feeling a lack of confidence today and I feel insecure about my appearance because I woke up with a zit on my nose. It's like, I wish I could put on some makeup. You can't say that as a dude. So it's hard enough for people who are anxiously attached to

If you're a dude, it becomes even harder to share some of these insecurities because a part of the masculine ideal and I'm not blaming women for this. So please don't do that. OK, it's not women's fault.

This is society. So if I can't articulate my insecurities because it's not masculine to do so, I need some way to create that emotional intimacy because I can't get my needs met. And oftentimes what anxiously attached men will do is be sexually coercive. So if I can manipulate you, oh, yeah, I'm going to kill myself unless, oh, my God, unless we have sex. It's the only thing that keeps me from being suicidal is sex. Yeah.

And they'll do that kind of engage in manipulative behavior. And once you feel that physical connection, use it as a substitute for intimacy, use it as a coping mechanism. So sometimes like a lot of really manipulative crap around sexuality is very common for anxiously attached people. A lot of times people think, oh, my God, like it's the avoidantly attached people who are sexually manipulative. They're usually not quite as I mean, I don't know about usually and quite that.

I can't speak about probabilities or relativity there. That's not really fair from a statistical standpoint. My point is that just because you're sexually manipulative doesn't mean that you're red-pilled and avoidant. That can happen for anxiously attached people too. Okay? Now, let's talk about dating as attachment, avoidant and attachment dating. So the first thing is if you're avoidantly attached or your partner is avoidantly attached, the main thing that you need to do is recognize all the internal thinking that

that allows you to propagate your avoidant attachment. Save on Cox Internet when you add Cox Mobile and get fiber-powered internet at home and unbeatable 5G reliability on the go. So whether you're playing a game at home... Yes, cool! ...or attending one live...

You can do more without spending more. Learn how to save at Cox.com slash internet. Cox internet is connected to the premises via coaxial cable. Cox mobile runs on the network with unbeatable 5G reliability as measured by UCLA LLC in the US to age 2023. Results may vary, not endorsement of the restrictions apply. So the biggest thing that I've seen in people who are avoidantly attached is they engage in a lot of thinking that seems very reasonable, but it's actually serving their attachment system.

So they'll say things like, I'm not ready to commit, or they'll think I'm not ready to commit. It feels too soon. And when I'm doing therapy with these people, I will dig into them. What feels too soon? What would it take for you to feel ready? And what we tend to find is that the further we dig, there's nothing there. There's no moment that they're magically going to wake up and be ready. But remember, that's what they do. They fantasize because they have no experience. So they think, okay, if I meet the perfect person, then I'll be ready.

But that doesn't exist. So pay attention to your thought processes, which may be incredibly logical. Second thing, another thing that your thought process will do is focus on the imperfections of your current partner.

This gives you an excuse. It gives you a reason not to advance the relationship. Another thing that's very important for avoidantly attached people is like all the stuff around alexithymia, understanding what you feel emotionally, understanding what you're scared of, and being able to articulate it and converse about it. This is critical. So part of the reason this is the real tragedy of people who are avoidantly attached is that part of the reason they don't articulate their emotions is because when they try to articulate emotions, things don't go well.

And the reason that they don't go well is because they suck at it. This is a vicious cycle, right? I queue up for a game and I get dumpstered. Therefore, I say this game sucks. I'm never playing again. If I ever want to have a good experience in the game, I shouldn't never play it again. I need to get better at playing the game.

This is something that people who are avoidantly attached fundamentally tend to miss, is that if I'm having a bad experience with someone, it's not because all women are evil. It's because I suck at having meaningful relationships with women. And this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that I see all the time in people that I work with that are quite red-pilled.

is they view relationships as transactional. And a securely attached woman that you would potentially date who will not be transactional, she doesn't want to date you because you're acting transactionally. So the only people that you're left with are the people who are interested in transactional relationships.

Which then reinforces your idea that all relationships are transactional. Women are just looking for someone to buy them food, and we pay money, we pay Gucci bags for sex. That's just what women want. Yeah, it's because the ones that want more than that aren't going to date you.

So you have to be very careful about understanding your emotions, expressing your emotions, really doing that internal work is very important. The other thing that critical mistake, if you have avoidant attachment, there's a major pitfall that we have to talk about, which is that people with avoidant attachment love engaging in relationships with non-feasible partners. So if you kind of think about it, what is a surefire way to keep someone at arm's length?

If they're already married to someone else, easy. What's a surefire way to keep someone at arm's length if they're in a different city? I see this so much nowadays with Discord and online relationships. So I don't know if you all noticed this, but avoidant attachment is growing on the internet.

We're keeping everyone at arm's length, more and more situationships. We don't know what we feel. We're scared to connect with other people. Something about the technological influence on our brain pushes us more towards avoidant than anxious. If you ask me today, I would say in 10 years, right now, 25% of people are anxiously attached. 20% of people are avoidantly attached. I think within 10 years, those numbers will flip. Hilarious.

Beautifully said, waifus. There's no way that you're going to get too close with someone who doesn't exist. So now the question becomes, okay, what do you all do? So here's like, you know, so same thing, by the way, with avoidantly attached people, their signal is we're getting too close and their behaviors are these kinds of thoughts, focusing on imperfections, creating physical space, making up excuses, pulling away, starting to date other people, dating un-

unfeasible people, all of these things are out of fear of the closeness. So you have to recognize the signal and recognize the reaction. The more that you do this, the better off you'll be. Now, the last thing that I'm going to leave you all with is like, what's the, what else can you do?

So there are two basic things which people who are securely attached are very good at, which lead to successful relationships. And if you build these things, it will move you towards secure attachment. These are competencies that are natural for people who are securely attached, which have to be learned by people who are insecurely attached, which includes avoidant and anxious. So the first is mentalization. So mentalization is literally the understanding of

that someone else has a mind. You have a mind and someone else has a mind. And the mind filters their experience. Things are not objectively correct. I have a mind which will subjectively interpret information and arrive at certain conclusions. The avoidantly attached people tend to need to focus on this.

That what you think isn't right or wrong, it is being influenced by the subjectivity of your mind. Once you recognize that subjective influence, you will be way better. So anytime, if you're avoidantly attached, if you're really focusing on this, you have some belief. Why do you believe that? And because your mind says it's not true, that's wrong. Scientifically, it's wrong.

So if we look at the human brain, the human brain is not an objective measure of anything. That's why we need instruments that objectively measure things. A human brain is incapable of an objective measurement. It's capable of a very good subjective measurement.

That almost gets to the realm of objective, right? But it's not truly objective. It's never objective. It's always subjective. That's what a human mind is. Reality and mental thinking are two separate things. So the understanding that everything that you believe is filtered through the experience of mind is critical for avoidant attachment.

Mentalization, the flip side of that is also important for anxious attachment, which is recognizing that someone, same thing, is that my mind is interpreting these things in this way. And also that someone else has a mind that causes their behaviors, right? So when someone says, oh, no, I don't want to, I can't go to the work thing with you because I have my own work thing. They have their own mind, which allows them to get to that conclusion without all the reasons that your mind is giving you. Right?

So if we look at things like treatment of narcissistic personality disorder, one of the best treatments is something called mentalization-based therapy. We literally treat narcissists by teaching them, hey, when someone does something, they have their own fucking reasons. It doesn't have anything to do with you. But the only way that you can understand that is if you understand someone else's mind. So mentalization, we'll talk about this a little bit in two days when we talk about perception.

But mentalization is the key thing. So if you look at studies on people who are securely attached, they're very good at mentalizing. Since they're good at mentalizing, it's easier for them to forgive. Why? Because they can put themselves in your shoes. Oh, now I understand why you forgot my birthday. Because you were busy. So it's easy to forgive once you're able to mentalize. A narcissist cannot forgive because they're unable to mentalize. They're unable to truly understand.

They're able to say they forgive and tolerate insults, but that's how they become martyrs, right? Oh my God, like you did such a terrible thing and I'll tolerate it, I'll forgive. No, it wasn't that bad to begin with. You had a good reason to do it. So mentalization is key. And the key goal here is being able to filter your subjective experiences, emotional beliefs, emotions and beliefs through your subjectivity. What I believe, what I feel,

is subjective. It's not objective truth. Second thing, the goal of relationships is intersubjectivity. Now, this is kind of a weird term, so we have to explain it. I am subjective. You are subjective. Neither of us is right.

So a lot of times people think that the goal of a relationship is figuring out who is right and going with that. That's not the goal. The goal is intersubjectivity. Your subjectivity is over there. My subjectivity is over here. An avoidant person will say agree to disagree. An anxious person will abandon their position and join yours and then punish you for it later. The right way is something called intersubjectivity. We blend your subjectivity with my subjectivity.

We bring it together. Inter-subjective. You have a subjectivity. I have a subjectivity. We're going to bring it together. It's not finding out who's right or wrong. It's acknowledging that you have a particular belief. I have a particular belief and we'll find some way to make it work together. This is really the goal.

Right? It's not about what's right or wrong, or I have to do it this way, or you have to do it this way. It's really about coming together. Here's my perspective. Here's your perspective. How can we blend these two things so that they're somewhat tolerable for both of us? And on some days, you'll do more blending. You'll compromise more. I'll compromise less. That's very healthy in a securely attached relationship. Not everything has to be 50-50 all the time. The big irony is people who believe that are more likely to be avoidantly attached. Everything has to be 50-50.

And because it's not 50-50, this isn't the right relationship. Avoid an attachment. You guys see it? Inter-subjectivity. Foreign concept, by the way. Most people have no concept of this. They think they're subjective and objective. No, it's inter-subjectivity. This is the goal. And the more that you move towards these two things, the more naturally securely attached you'll become.

So I think like TLDR is like, be careful about who you date. Start with someone who's securely attached, if at all possible. Over time, as you grow, you will become closer to securely attached. For a lot of people, they're here saying, oh, but I don't even have a partner. I've never dated. That's probably a result of anxious attachment. Could be avoided attachment, but more likely to be anxious attachment, especially if you're a dude.

Because you're scared. You're insecure. You don't know how to date. Now, like, I'll see this a lot, and I don't know if this makes sense, but remember, anxiously attached people are insecure about their insecurities. Now I'm 27, and I've never dated. I won't ever be able to date again. See, if you really look at it, incels are anxiously attached. This is a gross generalization. This isn't factually correct. This is just my observation. Incels, like, what's the similarity and difference between incels and red pillars? Securely attached people don't mess with any of this stuff.

Right? Because they're in relationships. The incels are anxiously attached. The red pillars are avoidantly attached. What the incels want is to become avoidantly attached. We glorify it as a protective mechanism. Build confidence. The world is objective. All women are the same. Right? It's a philosophy that appeals to both of these attachment styles.

And so if you haven't dated yet, that's okay. What you'll discover if you're someone who hasn't dated yet is attachment is 100% at play. I don't know if it's 100% at play. That's what I'm opinion. Okay. Not scientific fact. What you'll discover is that oftentimes it is an anxious attachment system, which prevents you from dating.

So if you ask, why haven't you dated yet? What's wrong? Well, I don't know if this person is going to say yes or no. I don't feel confident in myself. I'm scared of rejection. I have these emotional needs. I feel insecure. I sometimes trauma dump on people and drive them away. People consider me, they put me in the friend zone. Why is that? It's because I do this and I do this. The same system will exist where there's going to be some signals that your body will be receiving. And those signals will result in behaviors. Pay attention to that.

And then Bandit Revolver saying, dating is hard no matter your attachment style. That's true too. No one ever said dating was easy. Why do we talk about this? Because dating is hard. Because dating is hard enough without this crap acting in your life without you realizing it. We're going to try to level the playing field. We're going to try to make it a little bit easier. You're not screwed if you're anxiously attached or avoidantly attached or securely attached. You're not screwed. Understand what is going on within you.

As you understand this stuff, as you date people who are like this, it will give you the opportunity. It'll change the odds in your favor. That's what we're doing here. This is such powerful science, accessible to so few people, right? And we've crafted all of these narratives on the internet, pink pill, purple pill, whatever. And people haven't understood the fundamental. And if you understand the fundamental, you can alter it. Good diagnosis precedes good treatment. You have to understand what's going on with you first.

then you can fix it. And the whole problem is that what a lot of people do, they don't realize this, is they don't mentalize. So they come up with some kind of objective conclusion. All men are this way. All women are this way. And then they operate based on that objective conclusion. But that objective conclusion is not objective. It's produced by the mind. Okay. So a lot of great questions here. So question number one, as an anxious attached person, how can I recover that identity loss? I feel my chameleon-ness has made...

me lack my thing while all my friends have their own thing? What a great, great, great question. So when we're anxiously attached, we tend to be like chameleons. So when someone else likes something, we want to be their friend, right? So since we want to be their friend, since we want to be their boyfriend, since we want to be their girlfriend, since we want to have a relationship with them, we adopt some of their features, right?

Now, if you look at what is the core problem that anxiously attached people need to do, they need to acknowledge their own emotional needs explicitly. The tricky thing about being anxiously attached is that you will get your needs met, but you will get them met in roundabout ways. You don't acknowledge them. You don't even are not 100% sure what you feel. You just know this is why you're passive aggressive. This is why you play games. This is why you guilt treat people. This is why you withdraw because you're feeling something. And in order to

Calm down that feeling. You engage in a behavior. This is really important to understand. You manage your emotions through external things. The world fixes your emotions for you. And that's because when you were growing up, that's probably what happened. When you were feeling unwell, your caregiving was inconsistent.

So when the world was there to take care of you, you felt good. And when the world wasn't there to take care of you, you feel bad. Therefore, you become dependent on the world to take care of you. Now, a securely attached person, the world is always there to take care of them. And this is the big irony. When the world is always there to take care of you, you become independent.

You learn from the world how to take care of yourself. I know it's kind of weird. It's like paradoxical. But when there's a random reinforcement schedule, it increases our dependency on the thing. When there is a fixed reinforcement schedule, we can gain independence from it more easily. This is why people gamble. So now if you've spent your whole life being a chameleon and you don't have a sense of identity, how do you deal with that identity loss? Brilliant question.

What you do is acknowledge your emotional needs, right? So instead of looking to the outside world, you need to spend some time looking within. I know it sounds like a generic guru thing, but this is what we've already said in the lecture. Biggest problem that anxiously attached people have is they don't have a realistic understanding of their own emotional needs. So chances are, if you're an anxiously attached person, there are a dozen things that you do so quickly that

These are vasanas, mental habits, that you don't even realize that you do them. You want to eat Thai food, I want to eat pizza, let's do Thai. There's one right there. Hey, I'm having a rough day, but you're busy, don't worry about it. There's another one right there. You don't have time to come to my work thing, no big deal. Even though it is.

So if you look at anxiously attached people, they tend to idealize their partners and devalue themselves. So what you basically need to do is reverse that. So in therapy, what we'll do with these people is like we'll sit down and ask them, okay, like what do you want? We'll spend time literally talking to them about what is going on inside. What are your emotional needs? What are you feeling? What do you prefer? What do you like?

And what I oftentimes encounter is that they will say what they like, but then they will devalue it right away. I like pizza, but Thai food is healthier. They do this really subtle, simple trick where anytime they have a preference, they squash it. They say, oh, it's not as good as this other person's preference. They go on devaluing themselves. It's not an identity loss. You haven't lost your identity. The identity is there. The preferences are there. They've been suppressed. They've been devalued.

So it's not an issue of finding something. It's an issue of elevating something. And the more that you catch yourself in your mental habits, the better this will become. Great question. I hope that answers it. See, someone in chat is making a great statement. Damn, people-pleasing. See, we talk about, oh, I people-please. And what do we do when I people-please? Let's devalue people-pleasing. People-pleasing is bad. I should stop people-pleasing.

I need to be better. I need to be less of a people pleaser. That's the same dynamic. There you are taking your initial impulse of being a people pleaser and devaluing it. You suck because you're a people pleaser. Instead, what you should do is ask yourself, why do I want a people please? Where does the desire to people please come from? You'll see it's so subtle, so quick.

So easy to judge. Can you spend a few seconds on disorganized attachment? What do they do instead of avoiding pulling and how does the Venn diagram look? Yeah, I can spend a few seconds on it. So disorganized attachment is a system where in avoidant attachment and anxious attachment, there is some degree of consistency about the way that you form relationships with another human being. You have relationships. They're not ideal, but there are relationships that are formed.

In the case of anxious attachment, you have a relationship where your needs are not consistently met, random reinforcement. In avoidant attachment, you are punished for forming connections with other people. This is consistent. So anytime there is consistency, there is at least a pattern that forms. In disorganized attachment, usually the relationships with other people are so severely screwed up that the fundamental way that you connect with another human being gets messed up in some way.

You're not able to consistently form connections with people in a consistent manner. So people who have disorganized attachment can do everything from like dissociate to not know like how to form any kind of connection. To be so disorganized and so emotionally dysregulated that like they can't form relationships with people. You can't form something like a relationship. There can sometimes be like coexistences between

and somewhat of a dynamic kind of like harmonious equilibrium. I've seen that before, but it's like a really weird relationship. It's hard to describe. It's not like a

regular, and I say this word, I say this word carefully, it's not a normal relationship. And I don't mean abnormal in like a derogatory way. I mean, like if you look at the bell curve of things that people normally do in relationships, and you say that there's like a two standard deviation, people with disorganized attachment will sometimes form relationships that are outside of those two standard deviations. That's what I mean by not normal.

It's not a value judgment. So disorganized attachment just means that like sometimes people kind of don't know how to participate in a relationship. That's the best answer actually that I think about it. So they're like norms. So when I work with people who are like highly disorganized in their relationships, like they don't understand some of the basics. Like, oh, I didn't know that sex was something that

is an expression of intimacy, that people in love have sex. I didn't understand that. And you may think like, hold on a second, how can someone not believe that? Well, if they were like sexually abused as a child, what is their experience of sex? Has nothing to do with love. That's what we mean by disorganized. Some of the fundamentals of what we assume about how relationships work are lacking in a disorganized attachment. The fact that I have emotions and you have emotions, and then sometimes I have a bad day, sometimes you have a bad day, that there's some kind of

A exchange or reciprocity in a relationship, they may not understand. Because when they were growing up, there was no reciprocity. They were told they were a piece of shit every single day. No one cared about their emotions. No one, you know, is just a mess. It can look quite different depending on what the circumstances are. That's why it's hard to talk—it's hard to do a lecture where I give—

See, there's enough consistency around anxious attachment and avoidant attachment and secured attachment to where we can describe it. We can point out the patterns. In disorganized, it gets very disorganized. That's why we use the word disorganized, because it's not easily representable.

Now, the big caveat there is I'm not an expert in attachment theory. If you'll find someone or we find someone who knows more about attachment theory and specializes in disorganized attachment, I'm 100% sure they could give you a way better answer than I can. But when it comes to my clinical experience, I've probably seen, I don't know, like thousands of patients, 5,000 to 10,000 patients in my life is my guess. And like the number of people that I've done psychotherapy who have a disorganized attachment, I can think of like

three or less where I've really come to understand them. And these are like really weird situations. Like one patient was incapable of having a relationship, like technically, professionally, they were incapable of having a romantic relationship. Had parents, one parent who was way, way, way older than what you would normally expect a parent to be. So age gap relationship that was not abusive, but was like,

And then like they ended up walking a professional path where they couldn't engage in romantic relationships. So it's like just really weird situations like that. So they grew up in like a cult household that has its own weird set of stuff. And then like they're like, oh, yeah, you know, I can't date because my job forbids it. So then it's like, what what is that person's relationship? What do they look like? It's just different. So the reason it's hard to form a Venn diagram is because.

The fundamentals of two human beings coming together like may not be possible for them in their current state. It's like we're on two separate pieces of paper. And furthermore, oftentimes they even have they struggle with their own identity. Like so there's a lot of dissociation, a lot of depersonalization, oftentimes with disorganized attachment. So it's like even the sense of they are not even a complete circle themselves. Right.

So then it's very hard to form a relationship. So they do have relationships, but they tend to be, you know, like they can be like even sometimes fun and good for periods of time. Like I see this a lot sometimes when, you know, I'm working like on an inpatient setting and two patients who are severely traumatized and inpatient and really doing bad fall in love. It's like a good example of disorganized attachment. It's like they'll literally have homicidal ideation today, be in love tomorrow and have suicidal ideation the third day.

And it's hard to describe that. It's like very different from the cult picture. Changing internal interpretations feels like I'm trying to delude myself. It sounds to me more like alternative delusions rather than conclusions. And then someone else asked, what's a CBT example of changing I'm unlovable because I'm ugly? Okay, so y'all should definitely come on Wednesday because we're going to talk about perception. So...

Changing internal interpretations feels like I'm trying to delude myself. So here's the question that I have for you. If you're someone who thinks, oh my God, thinking this way is deluding myself, where on earth did you get the idea that your current belief system is correct and that this alternate belief system is the delusion? Let's start there.

Forget about what the delusion is and what's right and what's wrong. Oh, you deserve love. You deserve happiness. You're beautiful. You're lovable. Forget about all that. I don't know any of that. I can say that kind of crap. People will say like, oh my God, you say that because you're a psychiatrist, but I'm not lovable. Fair enough. Fine. Who am I to tell you otherwise? What do I know about your life? The question is, why do you believe that this is objective and this is a delusion? Well, the answer is simple. Very good. My life experiences.

Now, hold on a second. So if we're saying that this reality is formed by your experiences, what that also means is that your reality can change if you have different experiences, right? And so this is the path forward. This is why the answer is already there. We've already explained this. Now, hopefully, y'all can connect the dots. Dating a securely attached person will heal anxious attachment because you change the experience of the person.

If you're an anxiously attached person and you constantly date avoidantly attached people, or if you're an avoidantly attached person who always dates transactionally, you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy. We have piles of research that show that dating a securely attached person will heal your attachment.

Not necessarily, but moves in that direction. And you don't need to date someone. You can go to therapy. You can do work by yourself. There's all kinds of other alternatives, right? So it's not the only way and it doesn't work 100% of the time. And that's because we have to alter your experience. Once your experience will change, your beliefs will change. So I know that you believe what you believe and you're right to do so. But be very clear that if I think that a sunset is not beautiful because I'm wearing a blindfold all the time,

That doesn't mean that a sunset isn't capable of being beautiful. That means that I need to take the blindfold off. So the biggest tragedy of a lot of what I see here is that y'all really do create your reality. You have no idea how powerful you are. And that too is something that you've been taught because you've been given an experience of life where you've been deprived of your power. So you have no agency. And so naturally you think that you have no capabilities in this world.

But I want you all to really stop and think for a second about what is the difference between you and someone else. There's some amount of external circumstance which allows someone else in this moment to do more than you can. So if you have like no financial resources and someone else has $100,000 a year to work with, their lives over the course of this year will be very different from yours. There's no dispute on that. The question is five years from now,

Where can you be and where can they be? And this is the real tragedy is you think since there's a difference today, there must be a difference tomorrow. There must be a difference a year from now. There must be a difference two years from now, five years from now. And that's where things are wrong. That's where the key thing is creating new experiences. Then your beliefs will change automatically. The problem is that you let your current beliefs shape your future experiences.

This is the tragedy of red pill. They're right about so many things. They're wrong about one thing, which is that they create a self-fulfilling prophecy. And that's what we mostly do. Self-sabotage, self-fulfilling prophecies, so common in human existence. What does that mean if we really stop and think about it? It means the power lies with you. So if you're someone who believes you're ugly and that you're unlovable, I don't blame you for believing that, but be critical of it. How are you going to engage with those thoughts?

Are you just going to accept them? Are you going to go see a therapist? Are you going to go to an ashram and meditate? You must act. And as you have experiences, and we try to guide you as best as we can, but I'm some dude on the internet. I'm no guru. I have no power of spiritual healing. I don't even have the time to do psychotherapy with you. I'm not your doctor. You must have different experiences. That's the only way. And then now we get to the real problem, which is that when you strive for a different experience, what gets in the way? It's your beliefs. There's no point.

I'm unlovable anyway. This person will think I'm ugly. And then we get to the real crux of it, which is where is the problem? The problem is inside your head. And this is the real paradox. This is the irony. This is the tragedy is since it's inside your head, it's completely controllable by you and your life can absolutely transform. Crazy. All in you. Right. So it's very hard. The hardest thing to do as a human being is

is to act in a way that is contrary to your beliefs. That's the hardest thing. Very easy to listen to the mind. The mind says, oh, do this thing, you'll be happy. It's very easy to listen to it. Not listening to the mind is hard. To have bigotry or hatred or racism or homophobia or transphobia in your heart and to act with compassion towards another human being, that's hard.

And here we are blaming all these racists and bigots and whatever, but we have compassion for everyone who has body dysmorphia and feels like they're ugly. It's easy to have compassion for some people and hard to have compassion for others. And we celebrate that. It's crazy when you think about it. So what we're going to try to teach you all to do, this is our mission here, is to help you understand that you as a human being, you have a mind, you have a brain, you have a body, maybe you have a soul, who knows? And it's really hard sometimes

If it was easy, I would have done it by now. So I'm like this guy who's sitting at the bottom of Mount Everest and I'm saying at the top, the view is really good. It doesn't make it any easier for you to climb. Right. And there's something, there's something really powerful. You have a very powerful opportunity, which is going to be quite transformative.

Because here I am at the bottom telling you at the top the view is really good. And the real tragedy here is that if you choose to climb to the top and you look at the top, and even if you discover the view isn't that great, you'll be changed. Because then you've done something really, really, really important, which is you've climbed to the top of the mountain without knowing the view at the top.

So I know it's crazy, but if you really want to transform your life, it's not knowing someone is right and then doing the thing. It is doing the thing and not knowing. It is doing the thing anyway. If you are able to do the thing anyway, your life will be completely different. You will have control of your life. And what do I mean by that? So think about it, right? So if I have a good enough reason, then it's easy to do things. But if I don't have a good enough reason, it's hard to do things.

So then if we look at my actions in life, they're determined by my circumstances. That means I'm not in control. To have a small reason or a not good enough reason and to do something anyway, that's where you really get control because then you're running the show. You don't need something at the top to be a reward. You're in control.

And even if the view at the top of the mountain sucks, what you've still done is climb 20,000, 30,000 feet. And that is something that you're going to take away for the rest of your life. That's the real advantage. Because once you did that, now you can do something else. Changing beliefs that have life experiences of evidence feels impossible. Yes. If that's all you operate on, it's going to be impossible.

But you can have different experiences. That's what you should focus on. Don't even focus on changing your belief. What is the experience? Even something like therapy is a great example of an experience that changes a belief. It's hard. You can critically look at your beliefs and change them, but it's very difficult, right? It's hard. I'm not saying it isn't hard. Very hard. Okay, we have time for one more. What happens if two anxiously attached people date each other? So sometimes you get this whirlwind of emotional neediness where like, I mean, it can work well.

It can work well. But oftentimes, the problem is that what an anxiously attached person really needs is someone to reassure them and provide them with emotional stability. And another anxiously attached person, depending on the day, may or may not be able to do that. So the real irony here is that anxiously attached people really gravitate towards avoidantly attached people quite a bit, and then securely attached people, and then lastly, anxiously attached people.

Oftentimes, you know, sometimes it'll be like, oh, this person is like me. This person really gets me. So there can't—I've seen good cases of that where they're like, oh, this person really gets me. We're like peas from the same pod and we can really grow together. I've seen that for sure. I see that most commonly in things like addictions, like not even attachment theory, but like this person really understands what it means to be addicted. And much like addictions, two people who are trying to be sober together can really help each other out or bring each other down. Oh, we've been sober for six months.

We deserve a weekend off. And both of your brains are like, fuck yeah. And now since your partner is on board, it's easier to justify. In that same way, when I work with anxiously attached people, sometimes they date other anxiously attached people and they're good enough at like swapping to where they can support, provide each other the support that they need. Other times though, what happens is they get too far in their own head. They're emotionally dysregulated at the same time to where it really like becomes a problem.

And then it can become this weird, it can become this weird, like demanding relationship where like both sides are demanding and neither side can get what it wants. I'm thinking about one patient in particular where, you know, they try it for a while and there are times where it works and times that it doesn't work and they want to persevere and they want to make it work. And so they work on it for a while. They go to couples therapy. And then ultimately I want to say, let me think about this.

Can I think of any of my patients who are anxiously attached to have stable relationships with other people who are anxiously attached? I can't think of anyone. It doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, but usually it's kind of like too much of a whirlwind. It has good moments. It has bad moments. And over time, people kind of come to the realization that like, this is not healthy for us. How does polyamory shape and fit in all this? Okay. Okay.

So let's talk about polyamory for a second. So the short answer is that polyamory is complicated. So all of our research on attachment-based systems and relationships are like presuming that there's two people. So when you add more people into the relationship and furthermore, like the fact that not everyone has the same status, right? So I've seen polyamorous relationships where like two people are a parent and one person is like kind of a third wheel. And then

So it just gets complicated. And the short answer is from a scientific perspective, we don't really know because there hasn't been a whole lot of research on polyamory and attachment that I'm aware of. I'm sure that people have done some studies and stuff. The really interesting thing is that right now the problem in the polyamory research is that there's big biases in my opinion.

But I saw an interesting meta-analysis recently that was looking at relationship satisfaction for people who are in polyamorous relationships and basically found that people who are in polyamorous relationships are quite happy with them. That's what the meta-analysis shows. So the problem, though, is that this is a relationship—I mean, this is a paper that is looking—synthesizing research from people who are in polyamorous relationships, right?

So there's a big bias in the literature right now, which is that people who are unhappy in polyamorous relationships don't stay in polyamorous relationships. So there's a selection bias because we have a survivorship bias, basically, where people who find a way to make it work are the ones that we're studying. And what I've seen clinically is that it's like,

doesn't work out, I want to say like 75% of the time is my gut check on a clinical experience with sample size of one psychiatrist. Now there are biases there too. So this is another thing that we have to keep in mind. It doesn't mean that polyamorous relationships are bad. This is also where we as human beings may be evolving. So there are probably periods of time when we had a very patriarchal society and when like

feminism was growing and stuff like that, that like there were a lot of independent relationships that, you know, divorce rates have increased. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Not necessarily. Right. Does that kind of make sense? Where polyamorous relationships may be fine, but they require my experiences that they require a level of sophistication and they tend to be more difficult to pull off.

And that oftentimes people will use polyamorous relationships to fulfill other kinds of needs. And generally speaking, what I've seen in polyamorous relationships that are successful is these are people who tend to be pretty satisfied with their current relationship. So this is the big irony. Like basically...

You know, will a polyamorous relationship work or not work? My gut check is if the relationship is currently working, then it has a far higher chance of transitioning to a poly relationship versus a relationship that has lots of problems and we're going to go poly to try to fix it. That usually doesn't work. Kira Chell is saying polyamorous relationships are like trying to save the relationship by having a baby. Absolutely. Absolutely.

But that doesn't mean that you can't have a baby in a relationship and it work out well. It just means the relationship has to be in a particular way. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.