The Psychological Complex So Many Men Struggle With
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All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Conor Beaton here. Today, we're going to be talking about one of the most important psychological principles that you as a man need to understand. And it's a complex that I see so many men in our modern culture dealing with. It's something that I dealt with in my past. And that's something called the Madonna-whore complex or the Madonna-whore split.

Now, for the sake of this conversation, obviously some of you might not like the W word and hopefully YouTube and Spotify don't downvote this into oblivion because it's got that word in it. But I'm not talking about an individual. I'm not talking about a sex worker. I am talking about an archetype. So here the whore is an archetype. So we're going to talk about this because this is one of the main reasons why men often cheat.

This split has happened inside of men that has caused them to unconsciously, and maybe you've experienced this, put women into sort of two categories. One is this sort of archetype of this beautiful, wonderful, pure, loving, kind, compassionate woman that you fall in love with, but there seems to be something missing. You struggle to bring a certain part of your sexual drive or energy towards her. You struggle to be assertive or have boundaries.

around her, but she's sort of hyper pedestaled. And on the other side is the archetype of the whore. And that woman usually embodies or sort of engenders this archetype of a person or a woman that you can bring the full expression of your sexuality to. It's sort of unbridled. You can kind of express yourself however you want, do whatever you want. But these women are often characterized by you not really having respect for them

You're not really wanting to be in long-term relationships. There's not a lot of trust. You don't exactly feel safe in that relationship with that woman. And so there's no commitment. You don't want to commit to them. You don't want to be with them long-term. You don't really respect who they are, how they've lived their life. But the bedroom time can be a lot of fun.

And for a lot of guys, what happens is that they bounce back and forth between these styles of women or it causes them to cheat. So men that experience this type of complex usually struggle internally to reconcile the idea that any single woman can both be extremely

extremely sexually desirable and that you as a man can bring the full expression of your sexual desires to her and worthy of affection, respect, intimacy, et cetera. And so this split has happened with inside of these men. And so what I'm going to do for the context, I'm going to break down what

the complex is, how it happens, and how you as a man can begin to deal with it. Now, understanding what it is and how it happens is very important for understanding how that you can deal with it. So let's go a little bit more into what it actually is.

Generally speaking, this is a very unconscious framework. It might show up that you realize that there's women that you date and there's women that you just have fun with. I've got to censor myself a little bit for the YouTubes because they generally, I can't go buck wild on there. It gets censored. But generally, men that deal with this complex will consciously or unconsciously be putting women into these two buckets. There's the pure, loving, kind,

compassionate woman that is sort of the ideal, the real embodiment of the type of woman that that man wants to be with. And sometimes you might find yourself as a man in a relationship with that type of woman and it can really disorient you, you know, for the first

few months or a year of the relationship, you can kind of be all over the place, right? You can't bring the full of your sort of sexual desires to her. You might struggle to set boundaries. You might struggle to really express what it is that you want or need. You might feel out of control because it's just like this abundance of love.

And then on the other side is the type of woman that you feel like you are completely sexually liberated with. You get to explore whatever you want, all your desires on the table. It doesn't matter how gnarly or nasty they might be. And she's sort of this embodiment of what you fantasize about.

not in a loving, connected, intimate relationship perspective. But the archetype of the whore is really the embodiment of full sexual liberation with very little emotional connection, very little intimacy outside of the bedroom. And oftentimes, it's colored by a lack of respect.

So what usually happens is that the Madonna becomes the type of woman that you fall in love with, that you want to be with, that maybe you want to marry or have kids with, that you end up dating and really enjoying your time with. And the other side is the one that you feel completely sexually liberated with, but you don't necessarily want a relationship with. And men that have this complex will either bounce back and forth between the two in their dating lives or

Or in my case, in my past, I would date the Madonna and I would have affairs with the other archetype. And this kind of split can show up for a number of reasons. But in many ways, if you follow somebody like Carl Jung, who talked about the anima, who believed that we all have a masculine and feminine archetype within us, which he called the anima and the animus, right? The feminine, the masculine. This is a sort of

splitting of the feminine within you as a man. It's the splitting of how you perceive your own feminine nature that's being projected out onto the women that you date. And because this is unreconciled within you, because there's a feminine character or nature that is within you that is unreconciled, that then gets projected out onto women. And this can be very frustrating because it can be hard for men

to have real fulfillment with women when they have this type of split. And if you're one of those men, you probably know what I'm talking about because the real hallmark of this is that women

When you have this type of split, it's very, very, very challenging to see one woman as being capable of being able to be both, of being able to be capable of somebody that can be loving and kind and nurturing to you, but that you can also explore the depths of your sexual desires and your own sort of like shadow in that way. And so this colors how a man that deals with this split gets into relationships with women.

And I see this a lot online where there's a lot of men who have this kind of animosity towards women, that all women are a certain way, right? All women are the sort of archetype of the whore. And that's getting projected out onto modern women because of the disdain and the animosity. Now, I don't disagree that there are some challenges that are happening in the dating world today, which I've talked about ad nauseum on many of the other videos, but that gets projected out onto women.

And that's usually the representation internally of that man's inability or struggle to bring his own sexual nature to women. And a kind of frustration, and this is part of what happens within the man that has a split, and I'm going to get into what causes this.

But part of this split that can happen within a man is that he desires to have a woman that he can be fully sexually liberated with and open with and free with, but he has a really hard time actually getting the type of women that he can do that with or that he thinks that he wants. And so it can build a tremendous amount of

animosity and resentment towards women who are sexually expressed and sexually open. So again, this is kind of a good versus bad situation. The Madonna is the good, the horror is the quote unquote bad, and that that feminine version inside of that man has been split. And there's many different causes to this. So I'm just going to go through a couple of them. I'm going to tell you what to do with this.

how you actually start to reconcile this, because there's a couple very, very, very important pieces that if you do not get into them, it will be impossible for you to reconcile this split. And for a lot of men, what ends up happening is that they live most of their lives from this split. And most of their relationships with women are some version of one of those archetypes.

You might find yourself falling in love with this wonderful, beautiful woman who you deeply care about and you respect and you appreciate her and you have this wonderful relationship, but sexually you feel deeply dissatisfied and there's a disconnection there.

And the mind, your brain starts to go into, well, is she the right person? Or I can never get my needs met in this way. And slowly you start to look out at other women, whether it's on the internet or porn or dating apps or at bars, and they start to embody this caricature of an archetype of your sexual longing.

and desires that she maybe can fulfill those things for you. So there's a couple of things that create this. The main one is parental dynamics, what we're going to call mommy issues or a mother wound. And

That is oftentimes texturized or colored by mom's inconsistencies. So a good example is mom was very loving, but she only gave love when you performed or mom was very loving, but

also shut down an absent or mom was an angel sometimes and a demon in other ways, right? She was very kind and nurturing, compassionate, but she would criticize you into oblivion and she would be excessively harsh.

and demeaning and shaming. And so there's kind of this duality of you not really too sure of what exactly you're going to get. So for me, I had a very loving, kind mom, but she was very shut down and she had some addiction problems. And so there was this duality in her that was really, really chastised

And it was really pronounced. She was loving. We had a great relationship in a lot of ways, but there was a part of her that was completely inaccessible and completely shut down because of the addiction and because of her own pain and her own trauma, etc.,

So that split, that duality in mom can sometimes be very, very confusing for a young boy, and it can split your image and your perspective of the feminine or of women into these two sort of hyper-polarized versions, right? Like the far left and the far right in politics right now. They become sort of two opposing forces and polarities that seem to be irreconcilable, that just do not seem to mix.

The next one is a very shameful upbringing. So if discussions of sex were taboo, if they were sinful, if they were heavily stigmatized, it can create, especially from mom, or if you grew up with a single mother and this was very, very shamed, especially sex being very, very shamed, it can start to build this perspective that sex is dirty and therefore any woman who is sexual is bad.

And it can start to create this shadow inside of you as a man that has a perspective that women who want that, women who are sexually free, women who are more sexually open, that they are somehow bad or evil, and that can become fetishized. And so some men that have this split have

have a real attraction to women that they know are not good for them. And they can see it. They're like, I know this woman's not good for me. I know that she's trouble. I know that that's going to cause so many challenges in my life. But there's this part of me that is so drawn to that in this really, really intense way that I almost feel like I can't help myself.

And so that, again, is another layer and another sort of pointing towards this complex. Oftentimes for men that have this split, there is this feeling like,

These two polarities are things that they are completely enamored with and drawn to in a way that almost feels, I don't know if we want to say unhinged, but it feels very, very hard to rein in. And it can feel like those women have an excessive amount of power over you as a man. And I see this all the time in men. I have a lot of men because of my past.

that come and work with me on infidelity, on affairs. And one of the things that I hear time and time again in men that have this complex is this notion of like, "I just couldn't stop texting her." You know, "I just couldn't stop calling her."

I couldn't stop meeting up with her. I couldn't stop doing these things with her. And partly it's because usually what a man is getting from the whore archetype, he feels like he's fundamentally missing and lacking with the Madonna, with his sort of primary partner. It's very rare that it's the inverse. It's very rare, or I shouldn't, it's not very rare. It's just less common that a man is with a

the whore archetype, but pining after the Madonna archetype. It's just less common. Uh, it's not that it never happens, but more often than not, what happens is a man finds himself with the Madonna archetype, really likes her, really loves her, appreciates her, respects her, uh,

you know, admires her in many, many ways. She becomes pedestaled. He doesn't feel like he can get his needs met from her. And over time, what happens is she starts to either one of two things happens.

Number one, he feels like this helpless little boy, which is very indicative of what happened in his childhood with mom. I feel helpless to be able to get her attention, to not have her shame me. I feel helpless to get her love consistently. I feel helpless to be able to deal with her emotions because one of the big ones for men that have this split is that mom was

almost like bipolar a little bit. She was very calm and grounded and compassionate and loving and kind. And then other times she was just wild and off the hook and emotional and angry and sad. And he felt helpless to actually deal with her emotions. And it caused this big split. So what can happen is a man that has this complex in his adult relationships,

will oftentimes be with the Madonna, doesn't feel like he can get his needs met. And so it builds this desire internally over time of, I want to or I need to bring this energy somewhere. And it's oftentimes a more primal energy. It's oftentimes this more sort of shadow orientation of, there's this bad thing that I want sexually. There's this

bad way of being in a relationship, right? Maybe it's his potency or his power or a desire to really explore and be more dominant in the bedroom. And that has been colored as something that he can't do or he doesn't want to diminish the Madonna archetype. And this upholds it, right? Your unwillingness to bring and communicate

Some of your more, we can say darker desires, some of your more primal ways of being or sexual urges, all of those things help to maintain this image that she is this pristine, pure, you know, this is sort of like purity image of the Madonna.

And it starts to grow this desire to look outside of the relationship. And this is why men end up, you know, they're married, but they end up paying for sex. And, you know, they end up getting into a sexless marriage or relationship. And it just causes more stress and more desire to go outside of the relationship. The other thing that can happen is that the Madonna slowly turns into Medusa. The Madonna slowly over time is that man doesn't feel like he can get his needs met, but he feels trapped.

because the whore complex or archetype is out there somewhere, but she's not a part of the woman that he's with. And because he feels trapped, resentment can build and animosity can build, and he holds in more and more what he desires and what he wants, or he feels like she won't meet those things. And over time, that starts to grow and fester, and it begins to poison the water in which they

that archetype of the Madonna is swimming. And she slowly turns into a kind of Medusa figure in that man's eyes, that she becomes sort of evil or that she's punishing him in some way. And

And so she starts to flip from being this very angelic figure into this kind of demonic force. And the other way that it can show up, the last way that can show up for a man is that it reinforces this very belittling, shame-fueled version of himself that he's never living up to this beautiful, perfect,

angelic woman. And so it creates this imbalance in a power dynamic. Oftentimes, that man will find himself with a woman who has her own father issues, who is afraid of men who are in their power, who are afraid of men who have connected with their own sense of potency and strength,

and who oftentimes are hiding their own primal physicality, their own primal emotional expression, and their own primal sense of sexual expression. And so these women find a kind of safety in this dynamic

with a more docile, more sort of, and this isn't like shame anybody, but like a more sort of flaccid orientation of a man who is disconnected from his primal orientation and has told himself it's very bad, it's very wrong, there's a lot of shame around it. And for that type of woman, she usually has her own daddy issues or father issues.

that are very much indicative of somebody that was dominating, forceful, et cetera. And for that man, he constantly stays in this place of shame, of never being enough. And maybe this is you, never feeling enough, never feeling good enough, always feeling like I'm so lucky to have her and she's not lucky to have me. And so he never brings the depths of his desires

You never bring the depth of your desire into the relationship and express what it is that you want. Lastly, what creates this complex is a kind of psychological defense mechanism. And the splitting that happens is a psychological defense where a person unconsciously divides into all of the good and all of the bad.

And what can happen for a man is that he starts to project all of the good onto his partner. And this is very, very indicative of men who have had maybe sexual trauma or experienced abuse or just got really criticized and shamed as a young boy. It turns into this dynamic that she's all good, he's all bad.

And anything that would be him sort of embodying potency, embodying his own strength, embodying direction or assertiveness in any way, shape, or form is offset. And she becomes the good and he becomes the bad. And this splitting can serve as a way to manage his anxiety. It can serve as a way to avoid any type of conflict, a

around sexuality, sexual expression, sexual desire. And it can be a way for you as that partner, as a man, to highlight

hide the things that you think are going to get shamed, are going to get seen as bad or wrong, or even that it might cause her to leave you. This is a big thing for a lot of guys who've experienced a lot of shame or trauma. There's this perception that if I let myself have boundaries, get angry, express what I want sexually, be assertive, be more direct,

there's a perspective of this beautiful, wonderful, perfect feminine being will leave me.

And that is very, very common in this psychological defense mechanism that usually that boy grew up in an environment with a mom that would withhold love, that would use connection, affection, nurturing, love, safety as a weapon. She would weaponize those things against him. And so he kind of felt like, I'm all bad. Something's wrong with me. She's this perfect being, and I'm always in this position of wrongness.

And that power dynamic will play out. He will find, you will find a woman who embodies some of those things. She might be extremely dominating. She might be very forceful, or she might just be sort of very loving and kind and soft.

But you, regardless of the type of woman that you're with, start to project her perfection onto her and that you are always in the wrong and that you're wrong for wanting certain things. So generally speaking, men that have extreme levels of internal shame or guilt, that see themselves as being bad, that see themselves as being the cause of

mom's pain, mom's suffering, unable to save mom, unable to save mom from her emotions or her pain or from another man, they end up developing this very deep split within them where women get categorized into these two places. So what do you do? How do you end this? Because for a lot of men, this is deeply, deeply frustrating because you're stuck in

And you never actually get the totality of what it is that you want in a relationship with a woman. And you end up finding that you kind of have to offset, like, I'll get something from this woman over here, and I'll get the rest of my needs met over there. Or you have this perspective that I'm just going to have to settle with this woman, even though the majority of what I need and want isn't being fulfilled in this relationship because I'm

I'm too terrified or she judged me or she'll leave me or I'm bad for wanting those things or whatever it is, whatever the story is that's reinforcing that. So the first thing you need to do to escape this complex is to develop awareness around the origin of the split.

Number one, you need to develop awareness around the origin of the split. What actually caused the split to happen unconsciously in the first place? How did the split show up in your childhood? Was mom really erratic? Would she flip-flop back and forth between being this very loving, very nurturing, very kind embodiment of a woman? And

And then all of a sudden she was yelling and screaming and throwing things and being extremely volatile or being very hyper emotional and you couldn't save her from those things. Would she be loving on one moment and then shame you and criticize you into oblivion the next? Was she very controlling? Another one that I see, I'm going to bring this up. This is going to be tough for some people to hear, but we're going to talk about it anyway. A lot of men that I see with this complex mindset

grew up in a household with a mother who was a single mom, who was telling that young boy to be a certain way, be nice, be kind, be loving, be good to women, be all of these things that I'm telling you that you should be as a man, but then who she was dating was the dominant, aggressive,

hyper-assertive man, right? She'd be telling that young boy, "Success doesn't matter. Money doesn't matter. Women just want men that are love and kind and caring." But then she's dating the high status, you know, sort of, I don't know what to say alpha, but like the high status, wealthy, in great shape, really assertive, dominating guy.

And for that young boy, there's like this disconnection of you're wanting me to be this way, but that's not who you're dating. And sometimes that young boy would see his mom being used by these types of men. And so he would have this split of mom's telling me to be this very good, very pure, very kind, very nurturing, kind, compassionate man, but who she's actually dating and how she's actually acting is something completely different and different entirely.

And so what happens for that man is he splits by trying to become the type of man that his mom told him to be and how he acts out.

is by being the type of man that she actually dated. Okay? So that's probably a big oof moment for some of you. I'll just let you take that in. So develop awareness around how the split occurred for you as a boy growing up. And yes, the majority, almost all of this has to do with just mom. This is like the epitome of a mommy wound. That's what we're really talking about is that the split is a wound with the feminine, with the mom, with your mother.

So that's number one, really good develop awareness around it. Step number two is start to identify what parts or characteristics you hide

from the women that you date in order to gain approval or in order to feel safe. So what parts or characteristics do you hide in order to gain approval or in order to feel safe in those relationships? So for example, the majority of men that have this split, they will hide

emotions, they will hide depth of intimacy, vulnerability, those types of things from women that they perceive to be the embodiment of the whore archetype. And then on the inverse, when you are dating a woman that sort of represents the Madonna, you might hide certain behaviors, certain truth.

certain choices. You might hide boundaries. You might hide any type of anger whatsoever. You might hide a more primal version of your sexual desires. And so you're constantly trying to find them in porn or OnlyFans girls or sex workers and

And so really start to define and write down as many of the things as possible. What do I hide from the Madonna? And what do I hide from the whore? What do I generally feel like I can't bring those things into relationship? And then start to write out what are the threats? What do I think the perceived threats are about me bringing those things into the relationship? Lastly is you need to start to reveal

the hidden elements of yourself in the relationship. So for example, if you're with a woman that you really love and praise and you respect and you appreciate her, she sort of embodies the Madonna, and you have sequestered away some more of your sort of assertive qualities or boundaries or sexual desires, you are going to need to start to bring those into the relationship. You might have more...

Primal sexual desires and wants that you have in the relationship So you will need to have a conversation because you can't just do that You can't just trying to bang differently. I mean you could I mean just depending on your relationship It's not I'm not telling you what to do This is not financial advice But the best thing to do oftentimes in these situations is to have a more direct conversation because that is going to put you in touch with

with that more primal, assertive part of you, with this more direct part of you of saying, "Hey, here are some of the desires," or "Here's the way that I would like to explore in the bedroom that we haven't before," or "I want you to get to know me deeper in a sexual way. Are you open to that? Here's what I would like to explore. Here's what I want you to know about me that I haven't brought into the relationship."

and then explore that with her, especially if it's been a long-term relationship. It's one thing to start off a relationship like that and to just explore and go forward. It's another thing to be in a relationship for four or five years and then start to make a big pivot, especially when it comes in the bedroom. So more transparency, more communication is better than less. I know some of the videos out there on YouTube are like, don't say anything, just start acting this way in the bedroom.

Generally speaking, I have not seen that go well for most couples. And I work with a lot of men that are making this shift.

and starting to bridge the gap and merge the Madonna and the whore or like the good and the bad woman. So have the conversation. These are the parts of me that I haven't fully brought into our relationship and I'd like to start to bring them forward more. So that piece is first. And then secondly, really start to set more clear and concise boundaries. Say no to things.

especially if you're with the Madonna archetype. It's very common that when a man has this split, he's like the classic people pleaser. He's the classic nice guy, right? He's the classic yes man. So you have very porous boundaries usually. You don't say no a lot. It builds resentment.

You don't really enforce what it is that you want in the relationship. So really start to set some clear, concise boundaries in a respectful way because the hallmark of a man that starts to bridge these two is that he's able to bring his own potency to

to the woman that he's with, especially the woman who is the Madonna archetype. Because the perspective with the whore archetype is, I can bring my full sexual potency to you. It doesn't matter. There's no real threat there because

you don't really get to know my heart. You don't really get to know how I feel about things. There's a huge part of me that is locked up and put away from you. Whereas with Madonna, it's like, you get to know my heart. You get to know that I love you and how I feel and that I admire you and I appreciate you and that I really respect you. But oftentimes that man is like, I struggled to bring

my like, you know, primal desire towards you and my primal way of being as a man, which can oftentimes include setting boundaries, saying no, being willing to disappoint her so that you're not chronically disappointing yourself. Because that again is one of the hallmarks of a man that is with the Madonna. He is chronically disappointing himself, letting himself down,

reinforcing his own shame in order to try and appease her and make her happy. So really get clear on the origins of the split. And if you're not able to kind of identify it, find somebody to work with. Find a good psychologist, therapist, or coach that knows how to deal with this. Usually somebody that specializes in attachment that can help you to identify where this split happened. Then go into the parts that you actually had to hide or that you do hide.

around the Madonna and the whore so that you can start to integrate those and then start to bring those into your relationship. Now, again,

Really important piece, have conversations. I love this notion that the best relationships are the ones where there are no guesswork. So especially if you are a man that is with, I mean, if you're a man that's with either of these, more transparency is going to be good because if you're with a woman who sort of represents that whore archetype, it's very likely that you never talk about how you feel

You never talk about how you feel maybe for her or the struggles that are going on in your life. You don't really share a lot emotionally. And the one caveat I'll put in here is if you are a man that is dating a Madonna, it's very likely that you respect her, but you're going to have to let her fall from grace in your eyes a little bit. And if you are with someone that embodies the other archetype,

then you are going to have to see whether or not you can develop respect for that woman. And the only way that you do that is through transparency. It's by being transparent.

about what it is that you want and need and desire, not just in the bedroom, but the type of closeness that you want to develop within an emotional intimacy. And so in that way, you are starting to bridge the gap between the two. So on the one hand, you need to bring more assertiveness, more directness, more potency, more primal sexuality to the Madonna. And on the other side, you need to be a little bit more emotionally transparent.

And you need to start to see whether or not that woman can meet you and vice versa on the other side. So share your comments below. Don't forget to man it forward. Don't forget to subscribe. And as always, Connor Beaton signing off. See you next week.