people who don't know what the hell they're talking about are giving some really bad advice and they're promulgating some really bad ideas. And I want to be clear to everybody, right in the midst of a heated moment, trying to do something that's so artificial, it's the wrong thing. I'll preface my next statement with the clarity of the fact that, no, I don't think that a woman's job is to, you know, make a man happy and so on and so forth. Contrary to the messaging that is out there from all of these different things that you just mentioned. But I think that a big. Among the many issues, but a big problem that arises from this is the cognitive dissonance of young men growing up, seeing these messages and thinking, okay, well, you know, women exist to satisfy my needs and, you know, be in a relationship with me and so on and so forth. But then the reality, I guess, on the flip side is women are told the exact opposite, that they, you know, they should be independent women, they should be half naked on the Internet and do whatever they want and do whatever feels good. And I think that in part, that's what leads to things like this whole MGTOW stuff where men are going their own way because they feel that women just aren't. I don't really know enough about the movement to explain why they're they're going their own way. But I think simply put, it comes from incongruence of what men are looking for or feel they deserve versus what women are or are not looking for and feel they deserve. Right. And whether it's MGTOW, whether it's the Andrew Tate movement, whatever it is. You know, we talked before with Andrew Tate. Yes. People are getting these really mixed messages. They're they're getting message. They're so divergent from each other for the males and females that how can you have any compatibility. And they're often mixed messages. So men are told on the one hand, I want a man who's sensitive, who you know, who who respects me, who, you know, will cater to my needs or whatever. And then they're told, you know, either they see it or they're told, no, that's women don't want that. They want an alpha. They want someone who is going to, you know, be strong and do this, this and that. And once again, we keep talking over and over. If you take a black and white approach to every situation and paint it all with the same brush, you know, you're not you're going to be inaccurate 99% of the time, maybe 1% of the time. It makes sense. But in most other cases, it doesn't. So there's no simple solutions. And, you know, it's a cliche, but it's about communication. So, first of all, you know, and we talked about another podcast, Know your Worth. All right. And if you are around a bunch of men or women who are trying to either devalue, you are trying to make you feel that your worth, your needs, your wants, etc., are, you know, are secondary to theirs. Right. You know, or if if you're with somebody who I mean, that's all they care about is having their own needs met. You don't see any reciprocity. You give give and there's no, you know, you can't ever take or they don't give. Right. Then you have to realize, okay, that's not every single person. Maybe that's your experience with one person. Maybe it's experience with 30 people, I don't know. But and by the way, you know, with online dating, unfortunately, with app dating, that's going to be the common experience because there's no at the beginning, there's no commitment. There's no thought that they're going in. Everyone most people have this in the back of their mind. They would like to find a long term partner at some point. Okay. At some point they do want to settle. That's part of the human condition, not for everybody, but for most people. We're wired to want to be able to settle down, have a partner, have kids, whatever that that's a part of our of the human condition. Right. And maybe the person not ready for it, maybe because they're too young, maybe they haven't a great time, maybe whatever the case may be. But eventually we want to find that. And with app-dating, that idea of taking that risk and saying, you know what, I'm going to put aside all the other potential people out there. I'm going to fully invest myself in this one person, two or three months, six months, whatever, to see if we can be compatible. A) million people don't have that mindset. B) that that's the sentiment that people feel okay and it's monkey see, monkey do or social animals. So if you're thinking that everyone else is acting a certain way, you're going to think that's normal. I should conduct myself the same way. So I shouldn't have that loyalty, C) that lack of, and I’ve said this in a previous podcast, that lack of loyalty that lack. And I don't mean blind loyalty. I'm talking about just like this willingness to take to try commitment. Right? Not not blind commitment, but just to give it a chance when when no one's doing that. You're never getting a good sense of who this person really is, and you're not getting the sense from yourself or the other person saying, you know what, I'm willing to sacrifice a little bit. I'm willing to give a little, but I'm willing to, you know, to to do all these things to try to see if it can work, not because I think they're superior to me and I'm going to cater to their needs, but rather a healthy relationship. Again, we've talked about many times, but a healthy relationship requires that investment from both parties. So if I'm not willing to do it and they're not willing to do it, how the hell we have a healthy relationship? Or I can't see the beginning stages, the formation of a healthy relation to see whether we can be compatible. It's just that the normal process through which people used to be able to determine all of these things to see whether we should be progressing more seriously from these initial contacts, those are being turned on their head. It's not happening in a healthy way. And they look, we've taken hundreds or thousands of years to evolve to where we are now and to how all of this changed within the last 10 to 15 years. There's no your people are not capable of adapting that quickly. It's a shit show out there and I really feel bad for people. And again, I think I said this before, but when I was doing some research for a book I was writing about, it was just before Tinder came out. It was literally just before I think Grinder was already out. I'm pretty sure. But Tinder had not yet come out, and in the midst of my doing the research for this book, which I abandoned, but when Tinder came out, I said, Holy shit, this changes everything online Dating was bad enough. People were like, Commodities is just, you know, is like, do we talk? And if we talk within a previous podcast, maybe we did. I think when we're talking about social media and I believe that cheating. Okay, so perhaps. Yeah, So anyway, but as soon as Tinder came out, I saw, okay, now it's really it's like swipe, swipe, swipe. There's always someone better for me. Someone better, Someone better. Right. And I saw that that was going to change. And again, if I was more on my bike and on the ball, I would have written that book and I would have predicted all of this for sure. I didn't. I'm only saying this in retrospect, but everything I saw it happened because I was talking to so many people in depth and I was seeing their mindsets shift so dramatically that you're willing to just give up on a person that you're seeing, you know, quickly. But for the most minor, trivial or ridiculous of reasons. Right? Again, a relationship requires you to be able to overcome those things if possible or assuming that they're not, you know, horrible things. So anyway, so it's not healthy. And so instead of recognizing this, so many people just lie to themselves, say, Oh, no, no, I'm happy doing it this way. And yet so much has been written about it, whether in books or whether in research studies or whether, you know, people talk about it on social media, where it's a crazy dichotomy because on the one hand, so many people have gone through it, they've complained about it and they've talked about it. But on the other hand, people are pretending, No, no, no, no. It's good. It's good because they can't admit they have a hard time image themselves. And in therapy, we see this all the time as so many people are admitting this, that this is one of the reasons they're in therapy. They feel so hopeless. They're feeling distress, saying, what chance do I have if so many people say, you know, 1% of either males or females are gathering together or getting attention from 99% of the pool, So what chance do I have and I've heard this from both sexes and I've heard this from straights and, you know, from straight people, from gay people. This is the same many people have the same perspective. And it's it's a disempowering one. Yeah. And it's like so many things that we've talked about that these societal changes happen so quickly, and I'll use the word again, It is incongruent with our biology, right? And I'm not insinuating that everybody must partner up and have a family. Certainly not. But there are natural biological propensities that we have as far as, you know, finding a mate and being in a stable, healthy relationship and procreating and so on. But again, these these societal expectations are so far beyond that which is ingrained within us. And we started this conversation by discussing, what the role of like therapy speak. And, you know, being an expert without being an expert plays into all of this. So to draw it back to that and to draw it back to our usual, what do we do about this? I think it's incredibly important for people to, you know, before entering, entering relationships. We focus most of our time on on relationships today that you really need to evaluate what their values are, evaluate what their expectations are, and then be sure to articulate that to their prospective partner. And can that change over time? Absolutely. But it's an ongoing discussion of the evolution of that change in values that's going to be incredibly important as well. And that's how I think in part you avoid situations like what may have happened, may or may not have happened with Jonah Hill and his ex that these boundaries and expectations and standards were expressed out and then received as if it was a surprise whether those were his boundaries or not, if she wasn't aware of that, that's on him. Right. And by the way, again, it's it's received with surprise. And as we're saying, with disdain. How dare he express that? I always say this to my classes in therapy. There's never been a case where I haven't explicitly said to a patient, you know, that we're dealing with a boundary issue, right? And boundaries so people understand boundaries are not barriers. Boundaries are simply expressing to the person your wants, your needs, your expectations, the parameters within which you are operating with this person. I want to operate and what will. Work and what won't work. Exactly. That's what boundaries are. Okay? And if if if a person's always breaching those boundaries, then you may have to put the barriers. But boundaries are not barriers. By definition they can be. But that's not the case in most. We try not to make that the case. Right. So again, how dare these people just assume that because he set these boundaries in what seem like an amiable like what's the right word here, that he was trying to work together with her like a collaborative manner. Right. How dare they assume that that's, again, a weaponization of therapy or therapy speak or that is unfair, it's misogynistic, it's abusive and everything. Once again, an abusive person might put on unreasonable boundaries and they might do it either explicitly that it's so obvious that they're being abusive and controlling, possessive and jealous, or they might do it in a way that seems ostensibly to be good and they're using nice talk and everything like that. But behind that, really there are evil motives. Okay, But just because it's true in some cases, let's not assume that is the case. It's always true. And the arrogance I said earlier, the arrogance with which so many people determine that Jonah Hill is this kind of person. Right. With such certainty. They said it with certainty. We know this. And again, it's the same with all these other celebrity cases. People opine on things that they just don't know about and not And even if they're experts, by the way, that voice that she can interject. Right. We are experts. And by no means are we saying, oh, Jonah Hill is X, Y, and Z, because we don't know and we haven’t assessed him. So ultimately we don't know exactly. And when we see our supposed colleagues are supposed other experts making all these professional opinions about people that they haven't assessed I that's the Goldwater rule. You can't diagnose from afar in public. And even if it's not a diagnosis, right, to say that this is what's happening, this is their motive, this is a reflection of their character or something, that it's unethical. It's not helpful because you may be wrong and I can go a whole day- a whole other on Trump and how people made all these assumptions. I will just say that for one thing, just okay. And anyone who knows me watching my social media, I am not a fan of Trump's at all. I think I do have a pretty good handle on his personality, even though I haven’t assessed him. I know my biases, but I don't think he's the next Hitler. But when I saw so many of our supposed colleagues saying he's mentally ill, he's this and that, it's okay. Well, again, I'll be careful here having a personality disorder. You might call that mentally ill, but that's not what they're saying. Oh, they're declaring him a danger. Like, again, I want to be very mindful here. I'm not I mean, I'm saying this without so much nuance. I just saw so many supposed experts, psychologists, psychiatrists. This is the thing, right? We can make educated inferences as experts and educated observations. But to take it so far as to say things, you know, he has mental illness. Well, we don't know that. Maybe we can surmise that he does. And maybe there's some clues pointing that direction and maybe ultimately someone is correct. But we have a responsibility to not say such definite statements without having the data to support it. Right. Exactly. Okay. And again, as we've talked about in other contexts as well, when we are the supposed experts in this, we should be able to conduct ourselves better. And if we're not conducting ourselves. And then then what? What what right do we have to say? Wait, wait, give us some special status or something like that. We have to earn that status. And I think so many people in our field have failed in that. And by the way, just to bring it back to therapy and couple therapy and so on, and another podcast that we did, I cited Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, and he's quite black and white in many ways, but other times he's very perceptive. And one thing he said more recently and by the way, here's people schema. Anyone knows about Scott Adams, they're going to go, Oh, he's citing this horrible racist who said these terrible things about black people. Right? That's the typical black and white thinker, no pun intended. Okay. Because I heard him every day. He's my guilty pleasure. And some of the stuff he says, it's like something is so far off, it's wrong. It's just like we talked about psychology. It's just plain wrong. Okay. He called himself a grandiose narcissist without even knowing what that actually means. He brags about it without knowing what it truly means. It drives me crazy. And by the way, two and a half years ago, he claimed that narcissism didn't even exist, although he did admit later on they yet no idea what he's talking about anyway. So the point is this. Recently, I think in the last maybe month, he said something which I think is very important. He talked about maybe his talk with Jonah Hill. I think he was talking to Jonah Hill and and his girlfriend and he was saying that, you know, he said if you have a female couples therapist now, no offense to you, Malini, because. All right. And I want to be very clear here, okay. He said run. And you would agree with him not about the female therapist. Yeah. Okay. But tell me what you think he meant by when again, I know it's not you for a fact, but what do you think he meant by that when he said, run if it's a female therapist in psychotherapy for couples therapy. Sorry. Well, I'm going to say a couple of things surrounding that with the preface of By No Means do I want to speak ill of others in our profession. But I do think that some feminist therapists would be inserting, you know, some of the very things that we talked about here in this episode today about, you know, what a marriage should look like and what the man is doing wrong. And I imagine that there's probably some assumption of a female therapist pointing the finger at the man. Exactly. So he said, yeah, if the man does something, you know, then she'll tell what he's doing wrong. It's also trying to get the man to operate like a woman and so on. And so, yeah, so. And the woman has a complaint. It's a valid complaint when the man has complained is being manipulative, misogynistic, etc., etc.. And again, for me to say that's that's all female therapists, that would be stupid and it would be just inaccurate. Right. But yeah, whether the feminist or not, I mean, that's what we talked before many podcasts ago about the feminization of psychology or psychotherapy, which is and again, when I say feminization, it's not about a female, it's about a perspective, it's about an approach. And if you're being overly soft, overly compassionate, making a whole bunch of assumptions and everything like that, and assuming that one operating system is going to work for all types of people, that's wrong. And so, yes, so I'm going to say and this is one of the things that this that this Jonah Hill thing might have brought up. I wish we had an honest I wish all of these people who are you know, again, opining about things they don't know anything about, I wish they would say, well, let's take a look. Let's open it up. Let's have a good discussion. Let's look at different types of couples therapy right. Let's look at, you know, where the family therapy couples therapy approach it, you know, different approaches, the the reasoning for it, the effectiveness of taking certain approaches. Because if I can just give you one example, I think the most famous and historically I think Virginia Satir, she used to be a couples therapist. I'm not sure she's a psychologist, but I know she did couples therapy. And I remember reading about her many, many years ago when I was learning to do couples therapy. That was just one of the sources. And what she said in the midst of or she was talking like I remember the old content of many years ago. But the idea was and I'm just again, it's a bit out of context, but this is the point. She said that, you know, that these two couples were fighting with each other and they were like, there's just so much anger and everything. And in the middle of this, in a middle of a dirty, ugly fight, she had them do something. And and I've asked this too many couples and many patients and students and so on. I asked her, what do you think about this? I think maybe one person thought it was a good idea, but everybody else just looked and said, What the hell's wrong with her? You know, she has two couples do, and or she had couples do it in the midst of an ugly, dirty fight. I want to say hug, or hold hands, or probably something to that effect. Excellent. Okay. That's not what you said. It's even worse. Okay. Oh. Oh. The hugging part is funny because you took it. You took. You answer my next question. Okay? And it came up. We talked about this before, but what you do is you stop this, okay? I want you to look at each other in the eyes right now and lovingly look at each other and remember, like, look. See the. Remember why you fell in love with each other, Right? And that's great in a different moment. But in that moment when your limbic system is on fire, when you're in fight or flight mode. I don’t know if it's a good idea to have them make that connection, too. Right? Yeah, exactly. Because now that’s being tainted potentially. Right? Right. Yeah. So it was just ridiculous. And it's funny because what you just said right now, okay, I have to be careful because of confidentiality. So I'll just I'm only telling part of the story. The second part, which is just much better, but that's too specific, so I can't get into it. Okay. But I've had so many cases where and have only except for one case, I think it's only one case. I've only seen women do this. And again, I've asked this to thousands of students and it's the reason I always say this, so people understand. It's not just it's not me. If I just said research says this, I wouldn't give it much credence. Not all research has credibility. If I told you this is just my anecdotal experience with two, you know, two patients or something like that, don't give me any credence if I say I've spoken to literally thousands of people and many, many, if not most people give the same answer, then it's reflective of something about the human condition if we all get it. What's happening in real life? Exactly. So, you know, my sample size, the end is huge. So, yeah, so again, almost except for one case only women would say in the middle of a huge argument with their partner. And again, we're talking ugly, dirty argument in the middle and you already gave the answer. The female asks her partner to give her a hug. And I say right now, in that moment, his physiological impetus right then is not to hug you, it's to strangle you. Okay. So, all right, you know that they're navigating that, just to be clear here. Okay. No, but then as right as the shift gears like that later on, fine. You want to hug? Great. But in that moment. So again, for a normal person to say that it's it's it's crazy. It makes no sense. But I understand for and supposed expert a mental health expert to say that ridiculous and then worse than a mental health expert sorry not worse more prevalent would be then it would be a TikTok star or an influencer. Right. A celebrity saying these kinds of things goes back to what we were talking earlier. I'm trying to draw this back to, you know, the original topic, which is people who don't know what the hell they're talking about are giving some really bad advice and they're promulgating some really bad ideas. And I want to be clear to everybody, right in the midst of a heated moment, trying to do something that's so artificial, it's the wrong thing. Having said that. It’s not going to help anything. It's not going to help at all. You're going to breed is resentment in the other person because you're forcing them to act in a way that goes against what their needs are in that moment. And if I can just sort of shift gears mentally for a second now, okay, Because again, I want to get people because we know we always talk about what can you do about this? Right. Well, again, it's you said earlier about the communication with the other person if needs change and everything like that. But as you as we've talked about so many times, you can't have that discussion with the other person unless you've recognized it in yourself. You have to stop lying to yourself. You have to say, you know what, Maybe this isn't working. As scary as it is, as terrifying as the unknown is. Right. I think I've said this before. You know better the devil you know than risk not finding an angel. Right? So if you're saying I don't want to leave this terrible partner because maybe I'll never find someone as terrible as them again, okay, Like I get all of that. But to live in a lie, to live in a delusion, you know, it's not going to do you any good. So before you can even have a communication with somebody, you have to be able to know yourself. You know, if things aren't working, you know, it doesn't mean just give up, but it means to to acknowledge what's really happening. But that's not what he's going to say. You're going to say, I talked about this and I got this from that. I'm paraphrasing, but Dr. Les Greenberg, again, the emotion focus therapy to working with couples, I say I better say this to you in a previous podcast. I apologize. But if they say if I say something to my wife, I say in a certain tone, okay, you know, if I say something to one tone, that's because of our history with each other. That's going to cause a trigger in her. So that's going to trigger that's going to cause a reaction in her. That's a reflexive. She has no control over that. That first response can't help it. It's going to happen regardless. Okay. My tone set her off. Her reaction, Maybe she's going to look at me a certain way. Maybe she's going to say something that's going to set off a reaction in me. So now we have to reactions to triggers one, too. And I say to couples all the time. The first two, again, you can't help it. And to expect the partner to accept your trigger, your reaction, your reflexive response. Okay. And not to expect them to have that response to your response. That's being selfish. That's being narcissistic, quote unquote. Okay. That's not healthy. If each of you can recognize that it's beyond your control. Those first two responses. Okay, Just say, you know, that's baked into the relationship at this point. It's baked into the dynamic. Unfortunately, we have to cut ourselves slack. We have to give ourselves, you know, allow ourselves to have those two responses. Okay. Because against reflexive, it's so subtle. Like, sorry, that is such a subtle sorry. It's just beyond our control that we can make this automatic. We can be more mindful, we can watch our tone, whatever else, like that. But sometimes it happens. To think there's not going to happen would be ridiculous. So here's the thing I say those two triggers are okay. It's that third one. I say once you hit the third trigger, the response to the response to the response, Yeah. I say once you've gone there, I say then the actual unhealthy dynamic, the spiral, it started and I say I say to patients all the time, once it starts to go, you can leave the room. I don't need you anymore, because that dynamic is beyond the two of you. It's it's, it's you've created the two, you've created it and it's out of your control. And I say once that third response happens, I say every single time it's a bit hyperbolic, but it's pretty close. The fight, the argument disagreement is going to go the same way. It always goes once you add that third time. Okay, if I said I don't care what the topic is and I don't care, you know, what it looks like underneath it all is the exact same. It's like it's about the thing that they're fighting about and more about than being triggered and triggering each other back and forth. Exactly. And and again, the important thing I would say is, again, this is not me. It's based on the emotion of therapy. But I say the thing is, it's it's something that you two have created. So the reason is so important to say that is that there's no blame. It's we both created it so it doesn't matter who started it. It doesn't matter. No, we create it together. So when people say that, it puts them on the same page, because when you come to couples therapy, usually they're trying to convince the therapist that the other person's in the wrong right in most cases. So it's like, No, no, you're both in the wrong. You both created this. And that's why I say you can both leave now once it starts. Okay? And I've actually I've said that sometimes and they look at each other and I've had people start to get up and everything like that. They go “Is he serious?” I go, No, no. I just think, you know, it's a point I'm making. But here's the thing. So I say to people, if you know that if you can predict and if you actually look at it, you can predict, you know, each other's triggers and so on. I say one of you, there's two of you right now. One of you has to be able to make the move to prevent that third response. And I say either use a safe word and it's got to be a funny, safe words. Go do something personal or whatever else like that. And you both have to agree that when I say it or you say it, that we understand is collaborative, it's not okay, number one. Or the second thing is one of you, one of you has to disengage in that moment, whether it's texting with us on the phone, whether it's in-person, you have to do here's the thing that I say. I say the worst thing in the world, literally. I mean, not sorry. I'm very I was going to say that I like to be anal about language. So let's strike from the literally. That was just that. That was a reflex. Sorry. Okay. I'm going to say one of the worst things that you can do in a relationship, one of the rudest I don't mean was one of the rudest things you can do when you're having a discussion. What's the rudest thing you can do that's walk away? Walk away? Exactly. That's where literal is, correct? Okay. Yes. So if one of you walks away, you're being triggered. Like what? How dare you? But if you guys both agree that this is the intervention, I'm not walking away. I'm saving the relationship. Okay, number one. Number two, you don't just walk away. You say, you know, again, it's good to have a safe way to advocate a time out, whatever else you do that or once you walk, we say, hey, just so you know, I'm doing this, you know, as we learned in therapy or as we agreed and so on. Right. But in that moment, you don't say it. You just quickly disengage for a second. Just to get that break. Because in that moment when your limbic system on fire so hard to activate that prefrontal cortex. Right. And to say it in a productive, engaging way. So and then three really important thing, one of the most important, if not the most important thing, is that each person knows, especially the person is being walked away from, knows that walking away doesn't mean that we just leave it there. We're not sweeping under the rug. We're not just leaving on the table. We're going to come back and discuss this when we're both in a better state. Yeah, right. And these are the things that have to be agreed upon in a good time, right? Exactly. In a good time. Exactly. And that's why, you know, and again, I say and just expect to fail. I said, I don't expect you guys to use a safe word. I don't expect someone to walk away in the moment. It's going to take time. But you're building a habit. You're building a new habit because the alternative is, again, I don't know how long it's going to take for you guys to do it. I don't know how well you're going to do it, and I don't know how well the subsequent discussion is going to go. I said, But what I do know is once you hit that third response, I know exactly I was going to go every single time. I can predict it perfectly. So anyway, I just want to throw that out there for a second because the idea of we always say, What can you do about this? I want people to have some tools here. So. So, Oren, I like how you tied that to what I had mentioned in terms of clear communication of boundaries and clear communication of expectations. And I hope what our listeners maybe gleaned from this part of the conversation is that although we started talking about something in the beginning of the episode that was, you know, a little bit more surface level, just like in True Therapy, we take it several layers deeper because there's never a clear cut answer to a question. So my hope is that our listeners are able to discern how we arrived at where we did just now in terms of what you can do about this. And you know what the the best steps forward can be exactly. And yeah, even a superficial celebrity moment or something like that, you know, that in and of itself, that context is not what's relevant. It's what it represents. And you can take you can find insight, you can find motivation, you can find solutions from anything. If you look really hard and you have the right perspective. And we're you know, we do that in therapy. We do that when we talk with each other and we do that on the podcast. I hope that we can model that type of, you know, we can just go on to these different layers, these tangents or whatever, and just trying to find meaning where you may not expect it. So as always, Malini, I always appreciate being able to have these discussions with you, whether again, is off camera or on camera. And I hope that the people who are watching feel the same way. And with that, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. As much as we love listening to ourselves speak, especially me, we would love to hear from you as well. So our emails are in the description below. If you would, please write to us with your questions, feedback, comments, topics that you'd like us to cover. We can do this together. The two of us, but it's much better if we do it together. So we look forward to hearing from you. And we are going to have a segment called Roundtable where we're going to discuss the the feedback and the questions and so on from our audience. And we will we will take it to the next level. We're going to help you be able to deal with some of these issues that you might be bringing us or it's going to be a topic for us to explore together. And we really look forward to building a community, a community of like minded people who want to do right by others, not just for themselves.