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TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

John (00:00:38):
She’s upset, she’s more hot. You gotta just stay cool, calm and collected a little empathy. And don’t, you don’t have to like, have a outpouring. It’s just a steadiness. It’s a steadiness of not

Brad (00:00:50):
Listen-ers, welcome to a re-broadcast of the one and only Dr. John Gray, and show number three in a series of four on the podcast, detailing the essential male and female relationship assignments. And we get into a variety of topics, including diet, exercise, longevity. But really interesting is John’s assertion that’s been validated by respected study that perhaps the number one longevity factor of all is the quality of one’s romantic relationships or lack thereof. You’ve probably heard the widely cited statistic that a happy, fulfilling marriage add seven years of lifespan on average, uh, which by far trumps all the dietary and exercise advantages that you get from healthy and living. So I urge you to go back and please listen to, uh, to all three of the John Gray interviews I did, as well as my show. Uh, deconstructing all the insights with practical tips and takeaways, especially the essential male and female relationship assignments.

Brad (00:02:01):
I think about these every single day, and I share and discuss them frequently with friends and family. And boy oh boy, uh, you can disagree. And a lot of modern therapy is trending in a different direction. So when John Gray, uh, directs the mail to remain calm, cool, and collected, and maybe not share and dump all his feelings onto his partner, you can disagree and cite other experts that want you to be open and vulnerable and, and communicative rather than being that, that stoic male caricature from the past. But even if you disagree, we have to acknowledge that this, uh, progression of culture that we experienced today, where people can be whoever they want and be, uh, fluid with all kinds of things that were fixed and rigid in the past. If you’re embracing this evolution of culture and the freeing up of the strict male and female roles and characterizations of past generations, you have to acknowledge that you’re fighting your own biology.

Brad (00:03:04):
And that’s the important point that John makes that I want everyone to understand. So, he’s giving this advice framed in evolutionary biology and the fundamental differences in wiring between males and females. Here’s some, some epic quotes from John that we’re gonna get into, quote, most women lose their attraction to men when the men start to open up about their feelings. And then some quick highlights before we get into the rebroadcast. The males main biological drive and purpose in life is to make a difference and be appreciated for it. The female’s main purpose and main biological drive is to give and receive love from happiness, gratitude, appreciation, and respect. And then quick overview of the assignments. Remember, the male’s major assignment is to be the kung fu master remaining calm, cool, and collected at all times. And the female’s main relationship assignment is to express everything as a preference rather than complain.

Brad (00:04:06):
Oh my gosh, I’m thinking that he is maybe the most impactful podcast of everything that I’ve had, especially after that first show where I relate how I was compelled to propose to Mia Moore the next day. I was so overcome with the amazing emotion that John showed on the show, and the realization that here I had this wonderful partner. So what the heck might as not, might as well not waste time in life and go forward and be bold and daring. So you’re gonna love this tidbit of John Gray, and it’ll inspire you to go back and listen to all my recordings that I had the wonderful privilege of engaging with him on.

Brad (00:04:42):
Look at all those books on your bookshelf, man, <laugh>. And I’m so honored for you to come back and spend time with me, John, we talked about a year ago, and I gotta say our, our conversation was life changing. I’ve been talking about it since then. I’ve been thinking about it every single day. And I wanna start with that incredible insight that the male’s responsibility in a relationship is to be the kung fu master calm, cool, collected, going off into the cave to sort things out. And, uh, some of your great quotes like if you express, you say your feelings are hurt or you express anger, you said that’s death to a relationship. And the insight that I’ve been thinking about and talking with all my friends about is like, wait a second. How does this line up with, I guess, this cultural momentum toward the man being vulnerable and sharing feelings and talking things out, rather than going off in a huff? So I wanna kind of dig deep into that and reconcile the John Gray assignment with some of the, the noise that we’re experiencing from other forces.

John (00:05:49):
Okay, so there, there is a dilemma. All right. So, definitely my message is trying to find balance with all the forces in the culture. And it’s not that you can’t share feelings with your partner, it’s that they need to share feelings more. That’s the whole thing. So what I hear from women again and again, again, I’m just gonna look at just from observation, then we’ll look at biology, okay? Because biology’s a big part of this. But just observation. So many women lose attraction to men when they start opening up and sharing their feelings. They say they want you to open up and share your feelings, and then they lose attraction to open up. When you open up and share your feelings. If you feel hurt, then now she’s walking on eggshells. She becomes your protector. Now, you can feel hurt and you can always share hurt, but not when you’re feeling strong emotion.

John (00:06:40):
You can, you know what I tell women, even when they share their emotions, is to preface it with, this is not a big deal. So if you’re gonna share emotions, it needs to be when you’re not upset with her, when you’re sharing with her, when your heart is wide open and you’re not feeling needy. See, needy is a big thing. Women can’t stand needy men, women are terrified of being even showing that they need you. ’cause it’s very hard for them to determine the difference between needy and needing someone. Now, you can, it’s easy for men because we see women all the time being needy and, and it’s a turnoff. But when a man is a needy, is needy, it’s 10 times more turnoff. Okay? 10 times more turnoff to a woman. They just feel like, oh, I’m his mother. I have to take care of him.

John (00:07:29):
Now, some women, they get into this maternal thing, then they say, yeah, he needs me. I understand him. I’m there for him. And they can’t be turned on to you. There’s an energy of self-sufficiency, of self-reliance, of independence which makes men extremely attractive to women. But, you know, we can give this conversation about what makes the best relationship in order to maintain that attraction. But we can also look at it just from, I’m a man, I wanna be strong, okay? And as a man, I wanna be strong. And that will be the most attractive thing to a woman. But I do it for me first. So for me, it’s, well, I set goals and then fear comes up. That’s an emotion. So, okay, I feel it, but I act in spite of it. That’s like denial in a sense. But no, that’s called being masculine.

John (00:08:16):
That’s, don’t let your fears control your behavior. Look at them, listen to them. Try to understand them. Maybe talk about ’em with somebody, not your spouse. ’cause it terrifies them. When you’re in fear and then you take action without letting your fears control you now see what’s the, and everybody knows that. I mean, we all go out on stage or we go out to our jobs. We have some anxiety, some stress. You know, actors say they’re always nervous or something, but they do it in spite. That means you have a higher intelligence and you have a lower intelligence, which is your emotions. Your emotions just programmed into us from thousands of years, from monkeys to parents, people all this up. So you listen to it, you don’t wanna deny a part of you. You embrace it, but you don’t let it control you. So the same thing, when you have anger, you don’t let it control you.

John (00:09:05):
You behave in a way that’s civil, kind, courteous, and, and by behaving above your emotions, you now control your emotions. And you’re able to say, okay, let it go. You can’t let go of emotions unless you can act without letting them control you. Then you can let ’em go. And that’s the key for being masculine, is not letting your emotions control you. But then part of creating intimacy is revealing what’s inside of you. So you want to reveal what’s inside of you as a man. Only after she has revealed what’s inside of her. Then if there’s anything you feel you need to share with her, you’re doing it. But for not from the point of view of trying to change her. Okay? Because, you know, I can say, oh, it hurts when you say that I’m trying to change you. As opposed to, you know, I prefer, you know, when you do this and this, and this might be a way to do it better for me.

John (00:09:58):
It feels better. You do it from a place of preference, not attachment to changing. If you use emotions to manipulate people. And that’s ultimately what all emotions are when you’re talking about all the negative emotions, they’re manipulations, programmed into us. Think about it. Anger is to intimidate. And then people will bow down to you. Sadness is to elicit empathy. So people will help you. Fear is to get somebody else to do it, so you don’t have to do it. And shame is to build trust to see, I’ve learned my lesson. See, it’s, you can trust me again. So all of these things are prehistoric, basically evolved through monkeys to humans and so forth, because we didn’t have communication skills. But we don’t wanna turn off that part of the brain. That’s a very important part of the brain. It’s the animal part of us. ’cause behind the animal part of us is the unconscious mind.

John (00:10:55):
The unconscious mind does everything. Okay? We’re, we’re like riding on an elephant, a giant elephant. We’re this little guy up there guiding it. It does so much what you like, you what you want, what turns you on, what motivates you all so much programming is inside of us. Now we can change that programming, but gradually, slowly we can change it. But the first thing we wanna do is not let it rule us and control us. Now, what’s the benefit of embracing all those parts of us, being aware of them and so forth, is that’s where your body’s ability to regenerate comes from. See, if you get a cut, you don’t fix that cut. Your body goes into motion. If you get a cold or flu, your body does this whole thing. You’re in no control at all. You know, how do you grow growth, regeneration, development or degeneration?

John (00:11:45):
All these things is from the brain, unconscious brain. But now we’ll talk relationships, sex drive, sex drive is all unconscious. Who do you get turned on? When do you get turned on? How do you get turned on? Big mystery, because it’s all unconsciously done. But you can control that part of you with wisdom above, you know, using the higher intelligence. For example, I see a woman, my body wants to conquer and take her. I don’t go do that. Okay? So that’s <laugh> again, but you embrace those feelings, okay, I’ve got, I’ve got a sex drive, I got passion. How do I maintain that passion in a relationship? Only can maintain it and have it grow. If it’s directed to one person that takes power. See, you know, young guy, I’ve turned on any girl that’s showing some skim. At least that’s what it used to be. <laugh>,

John (00:12:33):
I don’t know what’s happening really young guys. ’cause they’re seeing it all the time. So it neutralizes it. Yeah, <laugh>. And then they play the video games, and then there’s the pornography and all that, you know. But basically, sex drive is very, very important as a man. If you look at, and that sex drive is directly correlated with high testosterone. Okay? So you need to have, and high testosterone really, I mean, normal testosterone. It’s just today what we have is a drop in testosterone levels in men. So normal testosterone levels for your body type. And it’s different for every man based upon your body type. If you have a more, let’s call it a mesomorph body type. You have born with more muscle mass, you have to maintain more testosterone. If you have an ectomorph body type, which is, you don’t really have the genes for a lot of muscles, then you need to have less testosterone for your normal amount.

John (00:13:26):
So it’s different for different men. Having said that, let’s say you’ve got a lot of muscles and you’re a mesomorph, and you have to maintain higher levels. You have to then generate higher testosterone in your life in order to feel good. See, I’m not a mesomorph. I don’t have to generate a lot of testosterone compared to mespmorph in order to feel good. So what does that mean? That means I’m gonna pick a job, which might be different from a mesomorph. A lot of mesomorphs will pick jobs where they can easily become heroes, where they do things that are difficult, where they do things. If people go, oh, I’m so glad you did that, I didn’t have to do that. So mesomorphs pick sort of dangerous jobs, risky jobs, things that nobody else can do. Jobs, and that keeps their testosterone up to a normal level.

John (00:14:14):
So you’ll see a lot of prisoners, for example, are mesomorphs, not all, okay? You can be a criminal in anybody type, but, but you’ll see a lot of mesomorphs are there because they did risky things in order to create higher testosterone. Whenever you take a risk, testosterone goes up. Whenever you do something, uh, dangerous, testosterone goes up. So, and you don’t have to do dangerous things to have testosterone go up. You can do successful things. So you’ve got success stimulates testosterone. Danger stimulates testosterone. If I don’t feel successful, then I’ll go danger. You see, that works. So that’s why we have all mercy, these people. They, we men need messages that we’re successful, otherwise our testosterone goes down. So let’s talk about the crisis. You know, I wrote a book with Warren Ferrell called The Boy Crisis. We’re just seeing massive challenges for boys to become men with low testosterone because they don’t have fathers.

John (00:15:15):
See, you, you need to have a role model of a successful father in order to start building all the channels and everything to be testosterone. Not, you know, I’m not saying these are absolutes, but we’re looking at massive numbers. When you look in America, half the males, uh, don’t have a father living at home. That’s a huge statistic. So anyway, we, we got off on that book to avoid crisis, but it’s, it’s so significant. We’re talking about testosterone, building, needing messages that were successful. And so when a woman senses, we’ll come back to relationship, which is what we brought out in the beginning. When a woman doesn’t appreciate you, when she doesn’t hold you up and admire you and be grateful for you that you’re in her life, then your testosterone, if she doesn’t do that, your testosterone goes down. If she does that, your testosterone goes up.

John (00:16:07):
And that’s the point of a relationship, is it becomes a place when, when life knocks you down. Sometimes not everybody can be the richest man in the world, okay? So when life knocks you down, you come home to a woman that loves you because you’re dedicated to her. You provide something to her that she doesn’t have that she needs. So when you have more needs than her, then she becomes the man. Her testosterone goes up, she starts becoming mothering for you. And yes, mothering is an activity of being like the home CEO. So there’s testosterone that gets produced, but the child gives so much unconditional love, it maintains her female hormones. So she can be in this sort of wonderful place of having female hormones and male hormones. But when women have all male hormones or dominant male hormones, their female hormones go down. They can’t appreciate you.

John (00:17:00):
They can’t love you, they can’t accept you. They wanna fix you. They wanna change you. They’re dissatisfied with you. They project all of their disappointment in their life on you, because being only on their masculine side, making money cannot bring them inner fulfillment. The inner fulfillment for women comes from their female hormones. The mask and hormones can pay the bills, can get her successful, build her self-esteem. But boom, happiness, love, tenderness, vulnerability. That’s feminine energy. Now, we know biologically, this is true. This is estrogen. We see the female estrogen, hormones, progesterone, testosterone, all out of balance with women. And that’s whenever they’re stressed. So that’s our dilemma today is for men, we’re being told to be more emotional, express our feelings. Anytime you’re emotional expressing feelings, you’re making female hormones, just to put it that way. Now, is it wrong for me to make female hormones?

John (00:17:57):
No. It’s just that my male hormones always have to be much higher. And female hormones will start to lower your testosterone. So too much emotion lowers testosterone. And then what happens is, when our low te testosterone goes low, then our female emotions, like love and tenderness and happiness become negative. And they become hurt. They become angry, they become fear, they become anxiety, they become argumentative. And anytime, here’s a little, a little seed in there. And then anytime you’re arguing with a woman, you’re afraid, see, they don’t feel the fear. It’s in there. The fear is defensiveness. You only defend yourself if there’s a danger. So you’re preventing the danger. So it’s an unconscious fear. And so now what’s happening is your estrogen levels are starting to rise and rise and rise. When you’re angry, what’s happening is your anger your estrogen levels are starting to rise.

John (00:18:50):
And what happens is testosterone, when it goes down, you get the symptoms of shutting down. Your heart is closed. You just go, I’m gonna pull away. I don’t care. I give up. I’m not gonna do it. And the reason we go into I don’t care is because the female hormones are so high, we have to detach in order to bring our testosterone back. So that’s when, you know, when men just kind of go F— you, you know, this, this sort of, I don’t give a shit thing, you know, bullshit, crap. You know, all that stuff, which is extremely, by the way, disturbing to women. It’s the dark side of men. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. ’cause our heart is fully closed and it terrifies women. And so when you do that many times in a relationship, what happens is women start living in a place of unsafety.

John (00:19:41):
They start becoming worried about triggering the dragon inside of you. And you don’t think it’s a, I didn’t think it was a big deal in the beginning. I, look, I’m done with this. I’m gonna go, I’m gonna my cave. So how you exit to the cave is very important. But at the same time, how women pursue you into the cave. That’s the big problem, is women go after you. Why are you pulling away? I feel hurt. How could you say that? Why don’t you love me? Why are you not with me? But, oh, I feel so bad. You’re not with me. What am I supposed to do? All that stuff. That’s why Men from Mars was such a breakthrough for many, many people because women got it. Not all women got it, but the women who got it go, oh, great. It’s, I’m not gonna take it personally.

John (00:20:19):
I don’t take when he pulls away. It’s not about me. It’s about a need he has. And when women get upset about stuff, men learn through my books and my message. Don’t take it personally. You can’t control a woman’s emotions. You actually want her to be more emotional because she’ll be more orgasmic. Another part of women today is they’re so rational and logical. They suppress all their emotions. They can’t be orgasmic. Half the women in America have never had an orgasm. The other quarter of the women have never had an orgasm with their partner. They’re doing it to themselves, which is, again, there’s only like a quarter of the women, they can actually have an orgasm with a man. And almost all of them do it by having clitoral stimulation, which is only one of eight orgasms a woman can have. And too many clitoral stimulations without vaginal penetration and vaginal orgasms will cause her to gain weight.

John (00:21:08):
And now you got big women, they’re all masturbating. Ma, not, I shouldn’t say that. They’re not all masturbating, but women should know if they’re masturbating all the time, whether they’re clitoris and they don’t have the male energy, they will tend to, for many women, can’t say every woman, it overstimulates the adrenal gland, the kidneys. What that then does is causes water retention. When the kidneys are overstimulated by sexual energy, the wa the body starts holding onto water. And no matter how many dies they go on, they can’t lose that weight. Now, that’s not a scientific, uh, study that shows that. That’s from a 5,000 year old Daoist tradition on sex, where they talk about the importance of vaginal penetration, not just clitoral stimulation. ’cause every point, the clitoris and then the, the opening, the vagina, the G spot, the E spot, the cervix, and another spot, all these spots go to different organs in the body, and they get stimulated. And that’s a lot of sexual energy. Going to one spot means the other spots aren’t getting what they need. And so this overstimulation occurs, you know, stimulation is great, but if it’s overstimulation, it creates problems and addiction. Okay, I didn’t know, I didn’t think you were looking for that today, but it came out <laugh>.

Brad (00:22:22):
Oh man, what I love the meandering journey of the John Gray podcast. It’s, it’s, it’s solid gold, man. That, that’s why I got you on here. <laugh>, not only, not only one of my favorite guests, but the easiest, we just wind you up and you go, <laugh>. But if I’m, if I’m doing my host role here, and I’m focusing in on that, that first insight, which, I said it was life changing because I realized that when I get that negative, negative emotional charge as you described it, if I do go off and do testosterone boosting activities, regardless of whatever the issue is, I’m following the assignment just because you gave me the assignment. Yeah. Let’s say for no other reason. I’m just saying, John Gray told me to do this. He seems to know what he’s talking about. And a lot of people agree.

Brad (00:23:05):
And so if you do go off and take that time, I’ve discovered that it really works. And you’re able to come back to whatever the picture is that you’re facing. And maybe if it’s a relationship issue, you can at least communicate with loving kindness. If you do have to share, yes, something that’s disturbing, such as I prefer to be on time to things instead of run around and being late. And then you can set that out there into the world. And if the person’s never gonna change the person, you learn to accept that yourself more. And I also find when I’m off processing things myself, I can always discover my contribution to the story. Yes. Rather than the immediate emotional charge where you’re looking around blaming,

John (00:23:52):
Well said, well said. And, you know, there’s a thing we’ll say to each other is, uh, or say to ourself, or we say to women when they’re upset, says, don’t worry about, oh, let’s, let’s get on with it. Let’s get on with it. And that certainly doesn’t work for them. In most cases. You know, if she’s not that upset, you could just kind of say, oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of that. And that would be nice. But if she’s upset about something and you say, don’t worry about it, then it doesn’t work. And so the tendency here is to minimize, minimize. Now that’s what we need to do, not what they need to do. It’s what we need to do primarily as a source of stress reduction. It’s what they can do to get us to listen. Now, this is the million dollar phrase for women, which is, and also these are good for men too.

John (00:24:35):
If you wanna express some feelings that are upset, you would, you’d only do it after you’re feeling better. Of course, then you would just say, this is not a big deal. I just need to talk about for a few minutes. And, and just so you know what’s going on inside of me. When we say this is not a big deal, it keeps all of the adrenaline responses from going escalating. And imagine, you know, your wife says, oh, you’re late. I can’t believe why, why are you get all upset? What if she said, you know, honey, I just need to talk. It’s not a big deal. I just need to talk so you understand what I go through. And you don’t have to do anything about it if you don’t want to. What an amazing invitation to transformation. See, if you try to change someone, they will resist.

John (00:25:18):
If you inform them, then it’s their choice and their freedom to give to you. We’re freedom lovers. That’s where we are now. And that’s why there’s so many problems in relationships. We feel controlled. And women don’t know, quite sincerely, most women don’t know that they’re controlling men. And the reason they don’t know it, they know that they’ll complain to get him to do stuff. They know they criticize him, so he’ll change, but they don’t realize why men feel controlled. But it’s because we want her to be happy. We’ll jump to hoops. We’ll go in the fire. We’ll, we’ll save her life growing into a building, you know, so a, a big part of who we are is about providing what she needs. So when she focuses on what she’s not getting, we feel this inner, I have to do something and to make her happy now. So that’s why they don’t understand why we feel controlled. ’cause their intent is not to control you. ’cause they wanna feel actually that they’re not controlling you and you’re doing all this stuff because you love them. <laugh>,

Brad (00:26:18):
They’re just giving you the list.

John (00:26:20):
<laugh>. Exactly. So, so, you know, there’s a lot of misunderstanding going on here. But she needs to know that her, when she’s unhappy, most men start to feel controlled because we feel like, oh, what do I have to do to change? And ultimately, what do I have to do to have a sexual partner instinctively? That is the strongest drive in both men and women is the drive for sex. Now, maybe it’s not completely correct. I would say the desire for women to feel loved then comes sex. But for men, it’s sex and then will be loved. Okay? So there’s a, you know, evolution runs the part of the brain, okay? So sex drive is so powerful, and sex drive raises testosterone or testosterone raises sex drive. So they all go hand in hand. So I was meandering off and lost my point. So my point was, do you have a clue?

Brad (00:27:15):
Well, I, the thing that’s popping up for me is how you describe that female CEO and the shutdown male who’s just a little bit distant all the time, and it seems to be such a prominent pattern. It’s so familiar from that wonderful, you know, romantic spark starting point. And you hear the research that after two years, the chemicals wear off. And then it seems like these business deals are succeeding everywhere we look, where you have a stable home life and the couple is together for a long time, but they’re missing that point. It seems like that’s your life’s work is to help us maintain that romantic spark, that attraction. And so, what you just said that, that these being the most powerful and most profound drives that we have, but it seems like collectively we’ve swept them under the rug in the name of succumbing to these major forces in society where the woman’s trying to control the man and the man’s trying to just escape and, and not not allowed to, and so forth.

John (00:28:12):
So, thank you. That’s why I meandered off. I I lost my point is you <laugh>, you definitely had a question in there. So I get it. And you brought me back. So well, I just got, there’s, uh, so many things we’re talking about here. I, I wanna come back to what I was saying. Control, okay? When we’re looking at control, this is a technique that really helps me as a man in a relationship, because ultimately I’m accountable for how I feel, right? I’m accountable for how I feel. And it’s my, ultimately, we may not know it. I can choose, but I have to find a pathway to get there. So that’s the place I wanna be, is I wanna be in control. If somebody’s controlling you, you gave up control. So owning that is very important. So if I say, oh, I feel controlled by you.

John (00:28:59):
Yeah, that’s how I feel. But that’s a monkey inside of me. I can change and not feel, ’cause I wanna be free. Everybody today wants to be free now. And then we, then we also want that spark of passion. And ultimately, it’s true that if you can be free, you can maintain the spark of compassion. See, that’s the whole thing. You see, I’m in control of me. I can now restore the spark. And that’s a big leap. I’ll get to that. So control, it used to be my wife would be upset, and then I would feel this downer inside of me, okay, ugh, what do I have to do? You know, what did I do wrong? What do I have to say? I’m sorry for, you know, this whole thing, this pressure would hit down. And then I realized that, of course, when a woman is happy, we men are happier.

John (00:29:48):
Okay? No doubt about it. When she’s having orgasms, I’m in heaven. If I come home and she smiles at me and happy to see me, I feel so good. And that’s a relationship when it’s working and that way of nurturing each other. But you can’t look to your partner for everything. So I teach women, you can’t look to your husband to be responsible for your happiness, okay? You’re responsible for your happiness. We all know that. If you were to ask who’s responsible for your happiness, and it wasn’t a relationship seminar, everybody would say, I am. If you have a success seminar, you say, who’s responsible for your success? Okay? You, if you’re blaming other people for it, you’re not gonna be successful. That’s a victim mentality. So you wanna be successful, you have to take accountability for making adjustments and changes within yourself so that you can be successful.

John (00:30:36):
It’s not working. If you keep doing the same thing, you’re gonna keep getting the same result. Okay? Good success principles, you’re accountable for the results you get. Then you get married. Couples who are having problems, who’s responsible for how you feel. He is, she is. I come home, she’s not happy. <laugh>, some guys will say, I’m such a positive guy, except my wife is so negative. Sounds like you’re blaming <laugh>. You’re not so positive. Okay? A woman would say, oh, my life is wonderful except for one thing. My husband, oh, baloney. You know, you’re blaming your partner on your unhappiness. Now clearly people can make you unhappy. I get, you know, somebody comes and steals from me, I’m gonna be unhappy for a while. Whatever. Okay? So there’s two realities here. Ultimately, if something bad happens to me, I need to come back to how did I create that?

John (00:31:22):
How did I can, you know, set up a situation where that happened so I can avoid it next time? And now I’m, now I’m back to being free. Okay? I can get what I want. So I tell women, you shouldn’t look to men to make you happy. His job is to make you happier. Your job is to be happy. His job is to make you happier. And sometimes he can help you be happy, but it’s still your job. So he’s helping, but it’s not his responsibility. Your responsibility is to be happy. That’s the most important thing you can do to make a relationship work, is to be happy. And his job is then to make you happier. Flip side of that is my job. Now, I, I have that message in my brain, okay? It makes sense, doesn’t it? She’s responsible for happiness. You fall in love and then you’re happier you’ve never been before.

John (00:32:10):
Okay? So this is the idea. So then I turn that around on myself, and I go, okay, my job isn’t to make her happy, my job’s to make her happier. So then I create a metaphor in my mind. I go, okay, a house, you got a plumber. I’m the plumber. If she complains about the plumbing, that’s my fault. But if she complains about the, the roof’s got a leak, that’s not my fault. So if she complains, she’s not happier, that’s my fault. But if she’s not happy, that’s some other guy’s fault. So, so I come in, I become impervious to a certain extent, to feeling guilty. When my wife is unhappy, I don’t immediately put it on myself. That’s not my job. It’s not my job. And it’s easier for me to hold that position. If I remember her job is, you know, her, my job is to make her happier.

John (00:32:58):
Her job is to be happy. And so what my job is for her is to help her. Now help is different from being responsible. I’ll try. I can help if I can, but my real job is to make you happier. So what makes it easier for me is to know the skills that I can help her to find her happiness. And that’s what listening is. And that’s what, not taking things personally is the most powerful thing we can do as men is don’t take it personally. You start it out with cool, common, collected, present. And that’s the Buddhist term for it. That is all over the place now, is be present, okay? Women love that. My term for that is cool, calm and collected. It’s be present. You’re not upset, you’re not disturbed, but you can feel some sense of compassion and empathy.

John (00:33:43):
You know, it’s like, oh, she’s having a hard day. She’s not able to, she’s struggling to find her happiness again. What can I do to help her create a space for her to be that way without trying to change her? See, that is, you don’t wanna be changed if you’re in a bad mood. You don’t want your wife poking her head in your case saying, what’s the matter? You should do this. You shouldn’t do that. Or maybe you’re not making enough money. Maybe you’re a little depressed. You don’t want your wife saying, you should call, you should go do this. You should go do that. You don’t want that advice at that time. She’s upset, she’s more hot. You gotta just stay cool, calm and collected a little empathy. And don’t, you don’t have to like, have a outpouring. It’s just a steadiness. It’s a steadiness of not taking it personally.

Brad (00:34:23):
Woo!! It seems like there might be some deal breakers coming into the picture here. For example, if you’re working with a <laugh>, you’re working with a relationship where your partner doesn’t seem to be really happy, You’re gonna have a difficult time making the partner happier. And then there might be something that’s out of your control, I guess. Do you ever address that in your Yes, yes. In your work?

John (00:34:48):
And so now we go into the yes butts, yes butts. And they’re all very valid. They’re all very valid. You know, there’s there, you know, there’s lots of routes. You know, if you get too far off on the left, what do you do to get back to, to, to the right route? There’s a road back in most cases, and sometimes there’s not a road back. And like you’re saying, a breakup is necessary. You know, if your partner’s just perpetually unhappy and you have done the right things for quite a while, in your heart, you’ll realize that I can’t get what I need in this relationship. And it’s time to break up. And I see what couples are doing today, to a great extent, is I heard, uh, one of the movie stars the other day saying, oh, we did conscious uncoupling, which I know the writer of that.

John (00:35:28):
She’s a wonderful woman. She did conscious uncoupling. And, and that’s a good thing, that if we’re gonna break up, we should do it, quote consciously and in a nice way. But often, why do people get to that point of being able to break up in a nice way? Because they’ve been denying their emotions to maintain their relationship. So they don’t have any passion. They lose the sex. Rarely have I had a couple break up, because without having, rarely have I have, I seen a couple who ended the relationship and said to me, you know, we have great sex. It’s just we have communication problems. If you have communication problems, generally you’re not having great sex. And if you’re not having great sex, you’re gonna have communication problems. And that is a little bit politically incorrect because everything is biased towards the woman. And I’m biased towards the woman too, in a certain way, but I’m biased towards men as well. So if you’re not having great sex, clearly there’s a communication problem, <laugh>, but you consistently have a communication problem. If there’s no great sex, great sex gives, opens men’s heart more than anything. Have you had great sex?

Brad (00:36:43):
Yes, sir.

John (00:36:44):
Do you notice how your heart opens more?

Brad (00:36:47):
Notice how the problems go away, like you said in the earlier show, whenever you were angry about two hours ago. Whoops. You, you said males have a short memory. I hope no males are offended by that. But that’s what John Grace said, and he is right.

John (00:37:01):
Absolutely. It is not even the short memory, it’s that we’re getting all these problems couples have until they escalate are nothing. We get upset over the stupidest things, over the dumbest things. We get upset about them. And because we misinterpret our partners. You know, there’s a Harvard study that was done on, and a study done in India as well. I’ll do the Indian study, but the same Harvard study shows it. If you’re on your boat and you’re going along the river and another boat accidentally bumps your boat, you have a little upset. But if somebody intentionally bumps your boat, you get really upset. The same thing happened, but it’s the interpretation of intention. And what happens is the intention we get upset about of, of men is often feeling that a woman, her in intent is to control us because we’re not good enough. Okay?

John (00:37:54):
We feel she’s saying, you’re not good enough. You have to change for me to love you. Okay? That’s our misinterpretation, is women get upset with us. My wife would get upset with me, and then I would go, oh, so I have to change in order to get her love. And that’s not true. I just have to let her be unhappy for a while and she will be happy again. But I have to do it in a way that’s present who will come and collect it. And that’s the change I have to make, is not take it personally. And most of the time, women are not aware. They’re just trying to get what they want. And they’re not making they will say, it’s not conditional. I love you. I love you. I just want you to change <laugh>, <laugh>.

John (00:38:37):
And, and many times, think of it like a mother over a child. You always love your child, right? Unless you’ve really been outta shape that day, but you deeply love this, this being you’re dedicated to them, but you’re trying to change them. You shouldn’t do this. You should do that. And I’m gonna take this away from you. If you don’t do that, they’re, they’re just mothering. This is like monkey business, okay? This is the way the monkey brain does, is that we love you, so we’re gonna change you. We love you, so we’re gonna protect you. Oh, you shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t do that. You know, I think if people look at my bio, they see my wife passed a year and a half ago. I would not be wearing this beard if my wife was still here <laugh>, because she doesn’t, she, she would not be into it.

John (00:39:18):
But now I could do without <laugh>. But, so she felt if I wore a beard, people would think less of me. So it would be her fear that was controlling me. Not that she didn’t love me, but she also is dependent on me. So, you know, we have a nice lifestyle, whatever. I contribute a lot to it. So she depends on me. So there’s all kinds of dynamics which bring into control. So when I talk about control, I, I wanna give some people a few techniques on this. This is for women, and this is for men. It works both ways. This is just straight communication techniques. Nobody wants to be criticized.

John (00:39:53):
Biologically, we’re wired up to not like criticism. We’re wired up for men to feel successful, not criticized. And for women, they’re wired up to feel good. When women feel good, they feel worthy, and then they’ll get what they need. So we’re just, we’re gonna repel that. We don’t wanna be criticized unless we have some sort of real self-esteem issue or something. Or, or we, or as part of a training program. I mean, if I’m learning from you, I say, okay, I give you permission. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Tell me what I’m doing wrong. Okay? So there’s dynamics here, but basically we’re wired up to be defensive. ’cause it’s dangerous. We lose love if we’re less than. So the technique looks like this, and it seems like, oh, overboard. But first I’ll give the technique and then I’ll do the yes buts. The, the technique would be, my wife used to complain to me about, John, you forgot to turn out the light and look at me.

John (00:40:45):
Are you wanting me to go turn out the light? You know, <laugh>? And I say, oh, I’m so sorry, honey, but I’m not sorry. It’s a little thing I can’t feel regret for about a little thing, enough to generate some feeling of, I feel sorry. So at a certain point, I said, I’ve said, I’m sorry, three times a day. That’s my quota, <laugh>. So then I gave it up completely. Unless I did something really hurtful, you know, like I was late for a couple hours, I feel really bad. Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I get it. I get it. But it would be only occasionally you get it. And I’m sorry for me, I had to stop doing that. I’m sorrys all the time. Now, some single men won’t relate to this, but married men relate to this a lot for the, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

John (00:41:26):
I’m sorry. Knocks you down and knocks your testosterone down. It’s, I blew it. I blew it. I blew it. I blew it. Instead, I’m the successful guy. So she would say to me, oh, John, you left the light on again. And she was, you know, she’d be very frustrated about, and look at me <laugh>, which I interpret as a look of disapproval, I got beyond thinking that, oh, if I don’t turn out light, my wife’s not gonna love me. She always loves me, but she has things that upset her. So let her be upset about it. And I would look at her and I say, basically say, I hear you. I’ll try to remember. That’s it. I hear you. I’ll try to, another one is, I, uh, you know, she’d say something, you should do this. And I would say, I hear y’all think about it.

John (00:42:11):
That’s it. You have to give a response to them. But it doesn’t have to be, I’m sorry. And it doesn’t have to be, yes, I will. Okay? Yes I will. They wanna change you. And they’re looking for you to say, well, when are you gonna do it? I said, well, I’ll think about it. Well, when are you gonna think about it? I’ll think about it. And then sometimes you go, when can I get back to you to know what you thought about <laugh>? That’s okay. Alright, I’ll give you a date, whatever. But you, you, you don’t wanna just feel like you’re this, uh, person being controlled all the time. Okay? So having said that, that’s one. Then we refined the technique where I didn’t even have to say, I hear you. I didn’t have to say I’m sorry. She learned, and actually to got me to turn out the lights, lights, that’s even better technique.

John (00:42:49):
And what it was <laugh> is, and, and there, there’s a study that says when you say don’t to a child, they’ll tend to do it more. Okay? Don’t run out in the street. There’s an urge to run out into the street. Like right now could say, everybody don’t think about a pink elephant. Now, don’t think about a pink elephant. Don’t think about that pink elephant. You know, that big pink elephant? Do not think about it. All you’re gonna think about is a pink elephant. So don’t, doesn’t always have the effect that you want. So when you critical of people, you tend to resist, you’ll get resistance back. Okay? It’s just resist you, resist you say, don’t do it. I’m gonna do it. You gotta push back because we’re all looking to be accepted just the way we are. That’s what we need. I wanna be accepted the way you are. If you’re gonna change me, control me, I’m gonna resist back. I deserve love the way I am,

Brad (00:43:38):
Especially in a partnership, right?

John (00:43:41):
Say it again.

Brad (00:43:41):
Especially in a partnership. I mean, if your boss tells you don’t do something, you’re probably gonna be pretty good there. Yes, yes. With that partnership, you’re always looking for that, that validation

John (00:43:51):
Connection. Yeah. Everything I’m saying here just applies to partnership, okay? When you have distance from somebody, you don’t react as defensively. Somebody at the streets says, oh, you wrote that book, didn’t you? Yeah, yeah. I got a divorce after that book. I say, A lot of people say that and walk away <laugh>. I, he’s like, I don’t care what that person thinks. I mean, a part of me cares, but not as much as I care about my children or my wife. Okay? So, and what, the closer you are to somebody, the less defenses you have to criticism, okay? Because you’re naked. You see you’re becoming one with them. And when you’re one with them, if they think you’re not good enough, then that knocks you down to feel like you’re not good enough. You have no defenses against somebody you’re having sex with. And so it’s the, it’s the potential criticism, control and loss that occurs in intimacies.

John (00:44:38):
Why we lose our sex drive. One of the reasons, okay, is that we, we get, we just, I can’t be that close to you. I have to back up. I have to back up. I have to back up. It’s too much to be that close. That’s only one of the many reasons we stop. So, coming back to practical technique. This one is, she started to say, she said, John, I know you turned the light out a lot in the living room. Sometimes you forget. And I’d really appreciate if you try to remember. And I would say, I hear you. It was a beautiful conversation. And in a short period of time, I started turning out the light. And even today, when my wife’s not here, I turn out the light all the time. It’s a sweet moment for me as well. But again, you might think, why is he talking about just turning out the light? Aren’t there bigger things? I go, no. When you have a lot. When you’re married to me and you have my lifestyle, women are gonna find little stuff. They have to find something’s wrong. That’s the nature of life.

Brad (00:45:33):
Why is that?

John (00:45:34):
Okay, well, let’s go into that. Um,

Brad (00:45:37):
I guess if you, you, what you’re describing is if you’re not immersed in a real struggle, like you’re about to get kicked outta your apartment and you’re wondering whether you’re gonna sleep in the car or, or a shelter, and, and we’re past all that. So we have to invent some sort of conflict just ’cause of human nature or something?

John (00:45:55):
Because of human nature, because of female nature. Okay? This is, there’s always gotta be a problem to solve. You need a problem to solve. And she needs to have a problem to look at <laugh>. Now, that’s just the nature of life. Now, I’ll go beyond with a reasonable explanation that’s not as reasonable as many people. Like, it’s true for me and my belief system. See, when you love someone, you feel one with them, your heart opens. You can feel oneness as you grow in your, what we might call spiritual awareness. You feel a greater oneness with the world. When I was a little boy, for example, I have a very big spiritual background. I was a, you know, spiritual monk for nine years, celibate and all that. And I met and started doing yoga at three years old today. You know, I was late for the interview ’cause I was lost in meditation. <laugh>,

John (00:46:45):
I meditate four hours this morning. You know, I just, yeah, I’m a master of meditation, okay? It’s effortless for me. So this big pa, so that’s behind the skill, behind the John Gray relationship expert. It’s love. And love is spiritual. Love is oneness. And so I can go into these meditative states and I, and I love it, you know, that’s my a great pleasure. I have. So back to the reason, the more spiritual we are, the more connected we feel to the world, to the people. So when we see, some people might see the suffering people in the Middle East, and they will feel pain. Some people don’t. They’re not spiritual. When you feel that, when you’re spiritual, you feel a compassion and empathy for the world, for some part of the world, maybe for children, maybe for animals, maybe for climate, maybe for the earth.

John (00:47:38):
My wife had a, a big compassion for the earth. You know, she tended the earth, cared for the earth. She demonstrated for, you know, cleaner water, cleaner air. You know, this is what you do when you have all your own needs met. You now care about all the other things. So there’s a, there’s a pain that’s felt in what is often called the collective consciousness. It was, it demonstrated in one of those Star War movies where the wizard guy, he goes, oh, there’s a disturbance in the force. ’cause a whole planet built blew up. So we are all affected by the pain of others. The Russians did studies of a mother cat with the baby cats, and they brought the baby cats in a submarine around the world, and they started to torture the baby cats. And the mother started to cry and be in pain.

John (00:48:25):
Yeah, this is, we are all connected. And to the extent that we’re aware and have the extent our heart is open, we’ll put it that way. We are always being affected by the pain of the planet. And so how do you, if you don’t know what you’re upset about, then you’ll find things to be upset about. So there’s always something to be upset about. And then you go on a wave, you process it, you talk about, you feel it, and you feel better. And then you get upset about you feel better, and you get upset about and feel better. So there’s always gonna be something coming up. That’s one way to describe it. Okay? There’s another way to describe it, which is we all have, psychology describes it this way, which is we have repressed feelings from childhood. Okay? So a dramatic example of that is I was seven years old and I was lost from my family.

John (00:49:18):
So I thought I never get back. That was a varied for seven days, I was away. Then I found my mother again. Okay? So that was traumatic, right? So what do we do with trauma? We bury it. It gets put into the unconscious, and it’s waiting to be processed. It doesn’t come up to be processed and dealt with until there’s nothing to be afraid of. And then any part of you that’s unlike your present state of mind will come up when it comes up. It doesn’t say, hi, I’m your unprocessed feelings from childhood. It gets projected onto the now. So it’s a sense of unease. You know, everything’s going in your life. You see people win the lottery, they go crazy, they get divorced, they lose their money, they have all kinds of problems. You know, you get famous. People have so much success, it’s literally they can’t repress anything anymore.

John (00:50:06):
See, repression is, I’m gonna push me down in order to get your love. But when you think you’re so hot and taught you don’t need money, you’re wonderful. Everybody loves you. I don’t have to push anything down. And so it starts to come up. One of the comedians said something on his, on his answering machine, which is, Hey, thanks for calling me. I’m probably here, but I’m not gonna run to the phone because I’m too important. <laugh>. So suddenly you become like a spoiled brat. When you have a lot of money, a lot of success, you can, it will come up. So what I find is that wealthy couples often have big problems about little things, whereas not wealthy people have big problems <laugh>. And sometimes that’s actually easier to solve emotionally than the other stuff because it’s so irrational to be upset with your partner because they don’t listen Well, what do you mean I don’t listen? Well, you didn’t turn out the light. See, that doesn’t mean I don’t listen. That means that my value system just happens to be different. And also I use all recycled electric energy. So what’s the problem?

Brad (00:51:08):
<laugh>. Oh, that’s a good comeback, John. Especially that first part. Can, can we use that? My value system is just different. Don’t take it personally.

John (00:51:16):
Well, you can use that. I mean, in your mind, you need to use that. But it is got, can’t be done to shut somebody down. <laugh>, the every comeback is done when people are just equal, when their heart is open and they’re being heard. But one of the big things is women feel over and over and over. I don’t feel heard. What that means is she can’t hear a word You say, I’m, say it again. Women feel, I don’t feel heard and she doesn’t. Okay. So I have to learn how to bring her to a place where she feels heard if possible. But in the process of bringing her to a place where she feels heard, she will not be able to hear a word you say, women cannot hear men unless they feel heard first. That’s the dynamic of it, because when somebody doesn’t feel heard, when you listen to someone, if I, if I’m listening to a woman talk or anybody, actually, the hormone that gets produced in them is estrogen.

John (00:52:11):
When you’re listening, you’re penetrating. And see, we go back and forth, but basically, and there’s nothing wrong with estrogen in men. It just can’t go too high. Okay? It just has to be in balance with your testosterone. But everybody has this backward. They think listening is a female quality. No. Listening is the most masculine thing you can do. Listening is cool, calm and collected, and you’re penetrating into someone. See, right now you’re penetrating into me. You’re listening to me. So you’re going inside of me and I’m revealing something in me. So I’m sharing. It’s like a woman when she’s taking off her clothes, that’s a very exciting thing for her. And I’ll throw this in through the mix. And part of my sex seminar is one of the good things to do men is undress her. She shouldn’t I, ’cause I just said when she’s undressing and that strip tease and that excites men.

John (00:53:02):
But if you wanna excite a woman, you undress her. Okay? It’s a very, that’s why they like to undress you in all the movies. ’cause they give what they want. What she wants is you to undress her and you to time it, because all about teasing her and creating desire in her ’cause your desire is 10 times more than hers, generally speaking. And, and what will happen then is she can’t get fully aroused. You have to become more cool, calm and collected. As your desire goes down, her desire goes up. Hmm. See, it’s always and desire is that rushing. This, I just saw that Ford Ferrari show. Great movie <laugh>. Anyway, we’re we’re race car drivers. You know, we wanna get right in there. So you gotta cool it down. You gotta slow it down. You have to be all excited. She goes, oh, he wants me then you gotta be cool until she wants you more than you want her. That brings her to a higher, higher pitch state of getting out of her mind, which the French call a little death.

Brad (00:53:59):
Okay? We got a lot of, we got not a lot of notes and stuff to reflect upon. I’m also thinking too that, that wonderful assignment to, to go off and, and don’t speak when you have a negative emotional charge. And then the other assignment that you delivered recently was don’t take things personally. And it seems to me in the first case, just to be able to execute, extracting yourself from a conversation or a situation. It seems easier to me to be able to physically leave the situation. But then when we’re talking about not taking things personally, how can we get to that point where everything’s, uh, falling off?

John (00:54:39):
Okay? It’s generally when you pull away, women take it personally. Not so much if a woman walks away, but if a woman was to walk away, that would be great too. And men shouldn’t take that personally. ’cause sometimes there’s a reversal and a woman will just throw up her arms and say, you know, I can’t talk to you. I can’t talk to you. And then what we wanna do is go in there and solve the problem. What we need to do is say, okay, let’s take a timeout. You, you, you take back in control of yourself is like, okay, let’s take a timeout and I really do want to talk to you when you’re ready. So you always sort of say something soft and reassuring if you can to a woman. But it’s a good thing if she walks away. Just, just don’t go after her and try to create more.

John (00:55:17):
’cause you’ll be angry if, if she starts to walk away and you’re not angry, okay? And say, oh honey, I can talk to you. I can talk to you. Really? And she says, no, I can’t. No I can’t. And I go, well, tell me, tell me about that. And then she’ll talk some more. See, the whole thing <laugh>, is to get women to talk, talk their feelings in a way where you can’t, you don’t take it personally. Now, ultimately, you’ll change any woman’s emotions if she revealed them. And she won’t reveal them if she senses you’re taking it personally or you’re gonna make her wrong for it, or you’re gonna try to change it. That’s why, back to your big question, it’s a big question, which is, you know, you, you’re with a woman and she’s just not happy. What do you do? Okay, so you, what, where’s your success, success come from?

John (00:55:58):
Well, the first thing you do is you don’t make her responsible for how you feel. You need to find your happiness without her being happy. That’s a key thing. ’cause if keeps saying, she makes me unhappy, you’re in victim. But okay, she’s, she’s in a wheelchair right now. I can’t expect that from her. But I go in my life. I find other places in my life that make me happy. You know, it could be working out, it could be a choir. It could be team sports. It could be studying anything that you feel good about. ’cause remember what makes men happy is achievement. That’s building the testosterone, accomplishing doing something physical or something mental that you’re good at. When I say that, I, I, there’s a, there’s a but on that one, which is video games. Okay? The problem with video games for, they do bump your testosterone up, but they overstimulate your, your, uh, dopamine production in the brain.

John (00:56:49):
Uh, when that happens, then you desensitize dopamine receptor sites in the brain, and then you become addicted to the video game. And that prevents you from feeling normal connection to life. Okay? So everything needs to be done in moderation. If you find that you do excessively something, then it’s an addiction. And video games and masturbation are the two most powerful addictions There are. They, they produce massive dopamine. So you’ve got porn and you got video games. Digital stimulation we’re overstimulating the brain creating addiction to masturbation or addiction to video games. And these are big problems today. It lowers your testosterone. And what, what we’re seeing today is a abundance of people online are now talking about it. I’ve been talking about it for 20 years, ’cause I saw it coming, is when you masturbate to video porn, you get an addiction to it. And that desensitizes your brain receptor sites to normal levels of dopamine, normal levels of dopamines when a woman can produce. So you eventually become impotent to a real woman, but not infinite it to the internet. And that’s happening now. And, and many need to know that. And ultimately how much time we have left.

Brad (00:58:06):
Well, uh, as, as, as long as you, as long as you need to finish your point and come, I appreciate your time so much. And it’s just, there’s so much to take away here. I’m fired up. I am referencing Dr. Robert Lustig’s book, the Hacking of the American Mind, talking about this dopamine pathway getting flooded not only with porn and video games, but social media, uh, uh, street drugs, prescription drugs, sugar, all that kind of stuff. And it’s all getting flooded into that, that same problem of overstimulating the pleasure sensor, uh, at the expense of feeling happiness, contentment, and long-term things like that.

John (00:58:44):
Nicely said. You said it better than I did. He is, it must be a good book. So that’s exactly the whole thing that’s happening now. And it happens in relationships. So here, I’m gonna say something very controversial, okay? But it’s all based on science. So we’ll go to it. A big part of what everybody wants. We started out couples today, we want to feel free. And I said that that’s the foundation of lasting passion. But regulation of our energy, our brain is also very important, which is this whole thing about addiction. And that we wanna have those feelings that we had in the beginning. People want that. So is it possible? It’s never been possibly four. Okay? People were not ready for this ’cause they didn’t have the freedom. Okay? You have to have this sense of freedom. ’cause if somebody’s controlling you, feel repressed.

John (00:59:30):
Your emotions get repressed. You need to be free to express yourself. Your choice. You’re coming from choice. Now, that’s one part of it. But the other part is regulation of sexual energy. Now, what we know scientifically is that if you had sex on Saturday night with your wife, say, what will happen is you’re during that sex, your testosterone levels double. Okay? They go up and you’re all excited. You’re in a peak state. You feel fantastic. Uh, that’s for people that really have good sex. Okay? So that happens. Then they measure after that. The next day, your testosterone levels are half, okay? They’re half what they were when you were having sex. Then for six days, they will slowly rise a little. And that’s kind of your usual testosterone level. Remember, when you’re having sex, they’re going way up. But on the sixth day, they’ll double again. Not while you’re having sex. When you wake up in the morning, if you don’t ejaculate during those six days, if you have sex and on Saturday night, and then you have sex on Monday night or Tuesday night and on Saturday night, it doesn’t double.

John (01:00:41):
You have to go for six days without ejaculation for your testosterone to go high and have sex and go high. So sexual energy is creates vitality. It creates life force. You know, it’s, it’s like nature. Maybe we just theorize this, but nature says, if you’re making babies, we wanna give you a lot of energy. And if you’re not making babies, we’re gonna give you a surge of energy. But if you don’t use it, you lose it. Mm-hmm. So you stop having. So just not having doesn’t keep your testosterone up. You need to have sex. And when you, ejaculate only one ejaculation a week. So you already look at what happens for couples in the beginning of their relationships when they’re hot and juicy. They’re having sex all the time. And then the testosterone goes down and it’s done. See, if we want women to be more loving, the real reality, when I think of myself as the plumber in the house, she’s gotta have more orgasms, at least one on Saturday night. And it’s because my energy helped her to get there. And it’s, women have to get out of their mind. Now, ultimately, what you want is to give women multi orgasms, but start with one orgasm. Then you start doing sex during the week without ejaculation and then on Saturday night.

Brad (01:01:59):
So the woman, we want maximum frequency. And the man’s sweet spot is once every seven days in terms of ejaculating orgasm.

John (01:02:07):
Well, the sweet spot for men too is sex every day without and once a week.

Brad (01:02:12):
Okay,

John (01:02:13):
Okay. There’s nothing. And that, that could just be in the beginning. Now I teach a whole class on how to do this. I’ll do another podcast and teach this, which is how to have orgasms without. Because that’s the ultimate. First is the learning. Just to have sex. You have to go on stages. You have sex Saturday night, and you don’t for six days or have sex for six days. And that’s a big jump for a lot of people. Uh, you know, a lot of men, they have sex with their wife, but then their wife’s not interested and then they masturbate. Well, their wife’s not interested. ’cause your testosterone’s not double see it. This is a relationship. Interdependence is your testosterone has to be high. That will raise her estrogen, or her estrogen is high. That will raise your testosterone. So they go back and forth, because I’m not putting this all on men or all on women.

John (01:03:01):
It’s, but if I’m a man and I wanna have great sex, I wanna make sure my testosterone levels are high. So if you’re having regular sex, but you’re not every time your testosterone will stay high. If you have sex on Saturday night, at least on Saturday night, your testosterone levels are gonna double. So she’s gonna feel alpha man is here with me. And that’s a conditioned response that she is loved, she’s safe, she’s taken care of, and that will raise her estrogen to high levels. See, when a woman has an orgasm, her estrogen levels double. This is all biology, biology, uh, and this is, you know, the, the, they’ll naturally double around time of ovulation if she’s ovulating. But bio. But we’re adaptable beings. We’re not just animals. She can ovulate all. I mean, she can have high estrogen all the time if she’s balanced in her testosterone.

John (01:03:49):
So again, everything is balanced. But when it comes to sex, sex once a week is the first step with no masturbation for men. Then the next, and no masturbation for her, you know, the internet porn for men, the equivalent of that for women is the vibrator. This is so un so politically incorrect. Women are attached to their vibrators. Like men are attached to their porn. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You see, when you’re, you’re using a vibrator, you’re doing it yourself. You don’t have a man doing it.. There’s no relationship there. So what you’re doing is becoming more and more independent, not depending on men. You gotta depend on ’em for something. And sex is one of the best things to depend on him for. You know, you can go, I, I teach a lot in China. I learned a lot of this stuff from the Taoism. It’s a 5,000 year old system of spirituality, but also sex. You know, they’re, they’re all into longevity is by ultimately you, you get to the place where you rarely ejaculate. You learn how to have many, many orgasms without. So I learned how to do that.

Brad (01:04:50):
Oh, so we we’re gonna do another podcast on that and, and talk through that strategy. But from, from you having your foot in, in both the east and the west, uh, and you said this is controversial because I guess the mainstream western medicine would probably discount some of these ideas that your testosterone’s gonna be aligned with your frequency or the

John (01:05:12):
No, that’s science. Okay. That was, that was Japanese. Did several studies showing that your, your testosterone drops after one. Then it takes six days to recover. And now I’ll add to it, the psychology of this is what’s called conditioned response. Okay? Now, this is delicate. We all know there’s a conditioned response when there’s pain or pleasure. Okay? Particularly pain. We have a bias towards danger and pain in our brain. If something causes pain, we will then try to avoid it in the future automatically. So if every time you come home, your wife, uh, complains to you after a while just coming home, you’re gonna feel tired. You don’t even know why you feel tired. You’re coming home. And then suddenly you walk in the door, you feel tired. Well, there’s another conditioned response, which is, if every time you have sex with your wife, your testosterone, let’s say on Saturday night, which is the common thing for couples, you have sex on Saturday night, your testosterone levels doubled.

John (01:06:10):
So you felt really great, then the next day you don’t. Okay? So you, that’s why you pull away. You wanna sort of pull it, face the other direction or pull back. You’ll cuddle for a little while. Then you need to pull away. You have to come back to your independence. You have to come back to yourself to rebuild your testosterone. So if you just lost your testosterone by having sex with her, there’s a conditioned response over time that when I have sex with her, when I’m with her, I lose my energy. I lose my energy. So most of these guys who’ve been having married 20 years, 10 years, sometimes six years, they come home, they’re just tired. They were sex, they were feeling sexual outside the house. And this happened to me too. I would be outside the house and about six years of my marriage, and I’m looking around going, oh, I can’t wait to go home and have sex with my wife.

John (01:06:56):
I walk in the door and I’d be tired. And so it’s not like I went, oh, my body goes, I don’t wanna have sex with her because I’ve ejaculated so many times with her. It’s just my body’s tired. That’s conditioned response. There’s something called counter-conditioning. Counter-conditioning is you create the opposite. So if on Saturday night my, my energy level goes down, if I wait a a week, my energy with her goes up. So now I’ve just countered the conditioning. So I don’t get this long-term conditioning of losing interest in my wife. But the same guy that says I can’t get it up with my wife, he looks over there. He can get it up with her. He can get it up with her. So this is why, you know, it’s, it’s not like he’s impotent. It’s just that he has a conditioned response that if I have sex with my wife, I lose my energy.

John (01:07:41):
What you want is I have sex with my wife. My energy goes up and then it goes down. Then anybody comes back. But it comes back, comes back. So there’s a conditioned response that it comes back, that neutralizes the conditioned response that it goes down. That’s counter- conditioning. The flip side of this is women, why they lose sex drive. Now there’s other things involved here, but one of the things is this conditioning. If every time her estrogen levels double, that means she has an orgasm. He pulls away, his testosterone goes down, she orgasms, he’s done. ’cause he orgasms too. His energy goes down. So her body goes, oh, if I go open, I lose love. I lose attention. So eventually she’s not gonna open up all the way ’cause she’s gonna lose him. And she loses interest in sex. And losing interest in sex means a lot of other things.

John (01:08:27):
The vaginal lining gets thinner, the estrogen production goes down. So we see all these women going through menopausal problems. And yes, your body does make less estrogen after menopause. But it doesn’t mean you, you, you, you’re gonna have these problems. It doesn’t mean you have to have hot flashes. It doesn’t mean you have to have thinning of the vaginal lining. It doesn’t mean you lose your sex drive. But for women today, it just happens to co coexist around that time where they’ve got this conditioned response. They lose, they lose their vulnerability. They say, I can’t open up to you. I can’t share my feelings with you. You don’t listen. So I’ll just make the best of it. You’re the person I picked. I’ll live my life this way. And many people today are just going, I don’t wanna do that. So they get divorced. So now we have, you know, so much divorce and you know, people say divorces kind of stayed at the same level, but actually it hasn’t.

John (01:09:13):
Second and third divorces are even more common than, you know, second divorce is 60, 70% eight. Third divorce, third marriages, you know, sometimes 80, 90% in different parts of the country. It’s because people didn’t learn the techniques of making it work. Okay? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Problems. That’s gonna get worse. Changing partners isn’t gonna do it. You have to see how, what you do to contribute to your partner’s unhappiness or craziness or whatever. ’cause I can’t make my partner happy, but I can certainly make her unhappy. I can’t make her happy. I can make her happier, but I can certainly get in the way of her finding her happiness. And you know, I back to why women start complaining about the little thing is they gotta find something to process what’s happening inside of them. And this is another really horrible thing that’s happening because women are way on their male side that’s very logical and rational.

John (01:10:03):
The ability to find balance. Now, these are the two forces, yin and yang. Yin is feminine, yang is masculine. If you’re way on your masculine side, what we all want is to find our balance where I’m both male and female, both parts of me in the right balance. So if you go way on the male side, you have to go way on the female side to find balance. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So a female is emotional. Emotions are not rational. Okay? Emotions are not rational. We have rational, logical thought. This dissipates emotion. You have emotion that’s non-rational towards the middle. You can have logic and emotion at the same time. But if you swing over here, you, you’ve lost your logic. So when women are seeking to find balance, which is they’re finding the body wants to find balance, the heart wants to find balance. So they come home and what happens, they swing over here, these emotions start to come up.

John (01:10:53):
And there’s nothing to put ’em on because she has a good life or whatever. So she’s gotta find something to put it on. And so she’ll target, you know, the lights, she’ll target the house is a mess. They’ll target the government’s terrible talk the president, you know, whatever they’re gonna target. They have to find something to be upset about. And most of the time they find their husband to be upset about. Mm-hmm. And they’ll find logical reasons to validate what their emotions are, rather than to recognize. Right now I’ve got these crazy emotions and it’s not a big deal, but I need to share them, explore them, and sort them out. And let somebody be there for me. Because when you have emotions, again, this is all psychology. When you have emotions, somebody can validate that by feeling what you feel. Not saying it’s logical. See, we all got caught up into logic. Validation means you have a logical reason to feel that way. Well, I give you a logical reason. You’re temporarily a little crazy ’cause you need to go over here. That’s the reason you’re finding your balance by expressing things. And we have common phrases. I’m just venting. I’m just venting. But the more successful a woman is out there in the world, often she doesn’t create a space for just venting. Everything has to be logical. ’cause her self-esteem is based upon, I’m a scientist, I’m a corporate. This, I can do this, I can do the accounting. So logic, logic, logic. The emotions come up. I have to find a logical reason for them. It has to be somebody makes me feel this way. Nobody’s making you feel that way. There’s no logical reason for you to feel this way.

John (01:12:24):
Maybe if you’re in balance where your heart was open and you had some emotions, negative emotions, they could be somewhat logical. Otherwise they’re way over here, completely blown out of proportion. And Freud tried to approach this by saying, it’s overreaction. That’s politically incorrect. You can’t say it’s overreaction. Oh. But basically 90% of anything that’s upsetting you is an overreaction. Uh, for men or women. We’re overreacting all the time. Our lives are so much better. Put your go, go get a refugee camp. That’s, that’s suffering. And those people sometimes are happier than us because they have real reasons to be unhappy. And there’s something they can do or try to do or get help or whatever. We have such a good life, but we’re feeling the pain of the planet. That’s, I come back to my spiritual reason for it. And women are way on their male side.

John (01:13:12):
The emotions come up. They trying to find a logical reason to justify why I feel the brain will do that. Otherwise, the brain thinks it’s crazy. What I’m giving as a logical reason that says, you’re temporarily not logical. These are just emotions. You need to feel them. You need somebody else to feel them. And it discharges the tension. It discharges the tension. And that’s the tension of hormonal imbalance in the body. Cortis, cortisol response back to, wow. Back, back <laugh>. I just wanted to say, back to this thing about conditioned response. Hmm. So over time, women lose their interest. ’cause men pull away, men lose their interest because every time he gets connected to her, he goes back down. So they start to find they need distance in order to maintain balance. They just lose that attraction. So what I’m saying to men, if you’re a married man, don’t masturbate..

John (01:14:06):
Don’t masturbate. And if you’re away for two weeks, you’re gonna have the best sex ever when you get home. Okay? Just don’t and, and don’t definitely don’t even look at porn. And is masturbation bad? No. You shouldn’t have shame. It’s a natural instinct. We’re talking about optimization. We’re talking about hacking the whole body, brain for lasting romance and love. Something nobody’s ever done on this planet. It’s never happened. Maybe a few rare instances, women often say, what about Romeo and Juliet? I say, yeah, they died after they got married. <laugh> after one day, <laugh>. Nobody has sustained this. And people shouldn’t, you know, we shouldn’t really feel bad about ourselves at all if we can’t do it. Because the best people on the planet, the smartest people, most successful people on the planet can’t do it. And they all, you see divorces everywhere. This is new knowledge, new knowledge that we have to learn and apply and experiment with and overcome. And it makes us better as men. It makes women better as women. But it also allows us to maintain that, that passionate connection. So I’m really into balancing good communication. And I gave a good skill today, which is always, and it seems trivial, but it’s important. Say something. I know you always do this, sometimes you forget. I’d really appreciate it if you would think about doing it this way. It makes me feel happy.

Brad (01:15:22):
Little sandwich there. Yeah.

John (01:15:24):
That nice little sandwich technique with and for women that just to know men wanna make you happy. And if they don’t, it’s ’cause they’re feeling pushed down. And women have love in their hearts. They seem like they’re not loving because they’re on a wave needing to process these irrational emotions that come up and then come back into balance.

Brad (01:15:43):
That’s a beautiful summary. John, I am just so happy to get all this knowledge from you. I, I wanna know your secret man before I let you go. You have the same amount of energy that I, when I first saw you, probably in your first videos, what, 25 years ago or something. And, you know, with that loss that you described and having to move on and carry on, you, you seem like you’re, you’re so positive. And I’m just, uh, I’m, I’m asking you like, what’s it like to, to try to move on from that, that long partnership and now you’re here facing the day with such energy and enthusiasm. Still,

John (01:16:18):
It’s not as easy as I I, you know, we all have channels where the energy flows. This is, this is just the energy flowing. I’m good at this. I loved, one of my passions in life is teaching. So it comes through. I’ve never had a more bigger challenge than the death of my wife. I’ve, um, been depressed, but I can process depression. I cry, I wail, you know, I’ll write a book on it called How to Say Goodbye. Um, I’ve written a book on healing. I used to write, wrote a book a long time ago called Healing the Heart. So I’m good at this. But no matter how good you are, it’s painful. It takes time. It’s an adjustment. And thank goodness I have work. ’cause grieving is estrogen. Okay. And for a man, you, you, you know, I don’t like, normally I write a book every year. I haven’t written a book. It’s almost two years now. I won’t write one probably for another year. Yeah. I don’t have the same motivation I had as you know, I was late <laugh> to the interview. I was meditating. I

Brad (01:17:17):
Really a great, what a great reason. A four hour meditation to get him in the right mindset to go off for nonstop for the whole thing.

John (01:17:24):
<laugh>. So I, I’m, I’m grateful for the knowledge of emotional processing and I’m grateful for my work and I’m grateful for my ability to meditate. These things have helped me through. This is a very challenging thing for me. I deeply, deeply miss my wife every day. I have tears flowing. You know, the the sweetest thing is, um, you know, I have to cook for myself. I have to look through the mail. I have to balance the checkbook. These are all things she did. And so every time I do all those things, I’m reminded these are the things she did. And, and that it used to be a lot of pain. ’cause I’m missing her. And now it’s just strong emotion and sadness and tears. But it always very quickly turns to love of gratitude. And that’s the whole process of grieving.

John (01:18:12):
If we learn how to grieve properly. And I, you know, people say people grieve in different ways. Yes, we do. But so many people don’t know how to grieve properly so that they spend the rest of their life feeling pain. Hmm. Now I don’t feel the pain that I used to feel in the first year of this. The pain is healing. And it doesn’t mean I have to go numb on my feelings about her either. I have her pictures everywhere. I haven’t gotten rid of anything yet. She’s with me all the time. At the same time, I wanna be able to be with her and not feel any pain. Not sadness, but just joy that she graduated, you know, she graduated and hooray for you honey, and I’ll see you soon. Kind of a thing. I’s a, you have to create stories in your mind according to your belief systems.

John (01:18:55):
Uh, and I have done that. At the same time, the brain has to adjust attachment. We become attached to somebody. There has to be this process of letting go. And the letting go of attachment is feeling the pain through a variety of emotions. The emotions are basically feelings of sadness and regret and fear and anger. And, oh, there were times I was so angry, I just wanted to turn back time. I just wanted to put my hand through the time. Take away. Now I wanna be there. And I was just angry about that. Uh, it’s so funny because there were so many cliches from songs that I heard in the past that automatically came up. <laugh>, like turn back time. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I can’t live without you. You know, <laugh>, all those phrases we hear in the songs are actually a lot of the phrases that come up naturally.

John (01:19:44):
If you’re grieving, what I would say is properly in a way that heals the pain rather than becomes addicted to the pain. And that’s the flip side of this, is that they’ve done research now on people’s brains who grieve their whole lives. You know, they have a big loss and they feel pain whenever they think of that person. And they look and they see that in the brain. The same part of the brain lights up that if you had had a cocaine addiction, because pain is, it can be addictive as well. So you have to balance it all the time. Everything is about balance. You have to go into it, then you have to go and be happy and do good things. And you have to go into it and be happy until the brain finally adjusts. And let’s go. You know, for Bonnie, it’s a 40, 40 year attachment, you know, 40 years. She’s the most important person in my life. And we share such a life. Anyway. So that’s part of the grieving process.

Brad (01:20:34):
Thank you. Thank you for asking,

John (01:20:35):
For sharing. I appreciate being able to talk about that.

Brad (01:20:37):
Thank you so much for sharing this. Wonderful John Gray, the one and only with us again. We took it to another level. Just as I expected. I gotta tell you before I go, today’s my birthday and I can’t think of a better way to spend it than with you. So thank you so much. And you teed us up for some future podcast topics too, I noticed during the recording. Okay.

John (01:20:56):
Alright. Sounds fun. Thank

Brad (01:20:57):
You. Have a good one, John. Thank you everyone for listening. Bye-bye.

Brad (01:21:01):
Thank you so much for listening to the B RAD podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.