(dramatic music) Ladies, do you ever struggle to not be so selfless in relationships? Is it hard for you to step forward and say what you need from the relationship? Are you afraid that nobody's going to care about you or accept you when you do that? Today, we're bringing on Dr. Amanda Hansen, who's an expert in helping women step out of that self-contained prison and build themselves into full participants in their relationships. Today, Dr. Hansen is going to show us exactly what it looks like for young women and for women later in life to step forward into their full queenhood. - Well, there's definitely some things I want to touch on and the question of healthy femininity is one that's very interesting for me, especially for the younger crowd, you know, kind of Gen Zs and even millennials like still trying to figure that out. What do you think healthy femininity is? Is there such a thing as unhealthy femininity? Actually, it's a better question. - Absolutely. I think there is unhealthy masculinity, femininity, I think, expression, right? And I often want to first start this by saying, I think this has to lot to do with the examples that we are given from our mothers, from the women in our lives and from society and culture. So I think there's this idea of what has been touted as the ultimate feminine. And what I know in my 25 years of work with women as they're trying to live in this really narrow lane of what they believe is supposed to be the ultimate feminine, they are feeling like they're drowning. They feel like they're suffocating. And so what happens, there's often a reaction to that suffocation that comes out like a mess. But it's because we are living our lives as women when we've only been given 50% of the narrative. So with the patriarchal lens of life through religion and culture for thousands of years, women are trying to live for all intents and purposes in a man's world. And that's why you're seeing so much reaction to it because women are now starting to butt up against, wait a minute. I don't think that the rules by which I've been living are fulfilling my life any longer. So I talk a lot about the difference between these two archetypes in femininity that is the princess and the queen. And a woman who's in that princess energy, we can get into this further later, but she's more in that victim-y energy. She's in that seeking energy. She's looking for all of her needs to be met outside of herself, often through her partner, or through her place of work, through her friendships. And a woman who arrives into a queen energy is a deeply grounded woman who always sources from within. And from that place then overflows in her life to all of the people in her life. And that is the energy that is so incredible to be around. That kind of a woman is more joyful, more sensual, more clear on what is that she wants and needs. And she's not in seeking energy. So it's a different kind of relationship when you are partnered with a queen versus a princess. - So Adam talks a lot about secure attachment and how once you get into secure attachment and you're interrupting these kind of anxious cycles, avoidance cycles, you're going to start feeling an abundance of energy. You don't really quite use the same term, but there is, for sure, an abundance aspect. You're coming in and you're able to provide and protect and enable and inspire. Is this similar to getting into your queen, your princess out of your princess into your queen setup? - Well, Dr. Amanda, one thing I've followed on your research and the work that you've done is you talk quite a bit about your personal story, about feeling insecure on the inside, feeling that self-seeking validation through other people. And that definitely aligns, if you're familiar, with anxious attachment style, that preoccupied anxious. So many women today grow up with that. The research suggests that even up to 65% of people in Gen Z right now are anxiously attached or insecurely attached, it's definitely getting worse. And I know that as society, as it gets worse, as things aren't functioning the way they should, as people don't form those loving relationships, of course women are actually going to get worse in that. They're going to become more princessy. And I think your meaning is not princessy as in demanding stomp your foot and tell everybody to bring you what you want, but the young girl, the little person trying to grow into her crown, so to speak, definitely what I have found through my work is that women need to build secure attachment first, really, before they can emerge into that growth stage and be who they truly are. What I've found is that they need to find the right people in their life, though, who can help them foster that security. And I know you've talked also about looking around at the women in your life, and all of them were miserable. All of them were unhappy. You had nobody to really model that for you. Can you maybe talk a bit to the women in the audience about the importance of the loving connections in their life, the secure connections in their life for them growing into that woman that they want to be? - Yes, absolutely, and with the status of things, and speaking as someone who's worked with thousands of clients now, and the women that are coming to me, even the current day women, who often have very well-intended mothers, they still are learning from a woman who's in her own princess energy. She might be 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, but she's still raising a girl, a daughter, modeling princess energy. So while you may still have an attachment, and you're really close to your mom, and it might be a secure attachment, you're still not learning from a grounded energy of a queen, because we're talking about a larger system of a patriarchy that is filtering down the messaging of how to be as a woman, to be chosen, to be worthy, to be important. And so those are the women who are raising a lot of the women who are coming to me. So they might have a secure attachment with her, but the messaging is wrong. So what I'm talking about is messaging and secure attachment that begins within oneself. So for me, I didn't have a grounded, stable, queen-like woman to go to to learn from. I saw a lot of nervous princesses, and their 50s and 60s running around. After a divorce, or trying to be pleasing, or trying to look younger, trying to get someone to pick them, begging for that pay raise instead of building their own business. It's like, so I decided, after a few years of searching, to become her, I decided, what is everything you wished women in your life could have been for you? What are you ravenous for? What are you craving? I made a list of everything. And then one by one, I learned how to become her. So sometimes, the only secure attachment that you're going to have to begin with is within yourself, and that is the one that never leaves you. That's the one that won't abandon you. So I teach women how to source and build the queen from within, because it is very rare. You are blessed if you have it, but it is very rare to find it outside. Now I love this, 'cause I run a mentorship community called The Attachment Circle, where a lot of anxiously attached women come in. They're seeking that guidance, and they want that direct help, because they have, like yourself, they had nobody there to help them do that, and they don't know their first steps. Some of the first steps that I usually guide them through, exactly like you're talking about, is working on relationship to self. So big piece there, many of them in their princess energy, as you would say, but they have violated their own internal sense of right and wrong. They have done things they don't like to try to please others. They have given up on their dreams just to try to stay safe in this world, because they have nobody who seems to care for them. They violated all the things that made them a core self, so they don't have a core self. We have to identify that first, and build that. What are some first steps you might recommend to women out there right now who are listening to this, and women at home I can hear you coming through, asking like, yes, first steps. What are some first steps you would recommend, or that you took yourself to help them grow into that beginning? - Yeah, I would say get in proximity to a woman who lives her life that way. Get into proximity, watch, and listen, learn from her, because it is, again, in a world where the rules have been written very often, globally, by men, it's not working for women. It's why they are faking orgasms. It's why they're miserable. It's why they're having affairs. It's why they feel so anxious in relationships, because they are not sourcing in that relationship from a place that feels deeply within them. So embodiment work, learning to get into your body is the super highway to attachment and connection. So because women's bodies have been prophesied from fracked, from abused, and used so much in all of the wrong ways, most women I work with do not feel safe in their bodies, especially women who have been abused. So it is teaching women to build that foundation within inside of their bodies and inside of themselves. Again, deep, deep, deep embodiment work. I will tell you, just for the sake of right now, I don't have quick fixes. My work is not steps one, two, and three. We're talking about resurrecting and excavating thousands of years of conditioning for women. So it begins on a very deep internal journey with women who know how to do this work and who are living embodiment of this work. - Dr. Mann, I'm actually curious. So you mentioned the patriarchy a couple of times. What do you think is the gap in the intentions between the patriarchal system as you see it and as you talk about it and the system that's supposed to be embodying and empowering and enabling women? Where is the biggest disconnect? - I think the biggest disconnect is that we don't have both voices, like in my marriage, I've been married for 28 years, right? And there are places and spaces in this marriage that it is hands down. My husband is a stronger suit. He is in the leadership role in certain aspects of our relationship. And then there are undeniable places where I as the woman, as the feminine, and in my leadership in the family. And so we have perfected, and what makes us a power couple globally is we've perfected our zones of genius and our leadership. He takes my counsel as much as I take his counsel. And that is what is missing. We don't create space for matriarchal leadership. We don't create space for the woman to be in her emotional leadership in the home, in the bedroom, in the society, in places of work. We put her as a support character to everyone else, but we never let her be the main character. That's where I think the disconnect is. The disconnect is when we, the most perfect couple, the most perfect union inside or outside of the bedroom, the workplace, the family, the society, is when the women and the men come side by side and both are shining light on each other's magnificence and leadership, not simply leadership of one or another. So I think what we're lacking is that blend and that flow, just like all of us as individuals, both of you and myself, I am equally masculine as I am feminine and to deny my masculine is not to live fully as a human and for you both to deny your feminine is to not live fully as a human being. So it's that beautiful dance, kind of like the tango where there are times where one is leading on the dance floor and then the other is leading. That is what we're trying to arrive at, is that beautiful energy together. - Well, as we know, the hardest part of every dance is the first couple of steps because that's when you're trying to find that connection and build the trust. And the trust actually is something that flows both ways because you're not only asking for the woman to trust you as a man, but you're also trying to figure out if you can trust a woman. And this is a major issue that Adam talks about a lot is the void in the anxious connection. It's a huge catastrophe right now is that you have a lot of avoidant men, you have a lot of anxious woman. We all have our origin stories and the challenge is not to have hope in the fact that we can all repair that and to get better, but the challenge really lies in the how, the first steps. So let's say that if you are in a situation where you are dating somebody as a man or as a woman, what is the right way to go about it? Because it's not as simple as coming in and saying, let's all be in our balanced feminine. I want to see the queen in you. And I've had that conversation before and the girl just goes, what do you mean? How? What does it look like? What are the components? It's not like it's quickly snaps in place as soon as you open the door, there is a process. What does that process look like? - I think that process looks like building very slowly, like micro layering moments together and learning to trust each other. And when I'm working with women and they're asking for feedback or guidance or advice when it comes to dating, I say to them, the truest thing you can be is yourself because if you start this relationship with performance, I have a lot of women come to me and say, is it too soon to text him? It's like we went out on two dates and then both times he texted me within like 30 minutes after. But my friends are telling me I should wait and like text him the next morning. And I said, so you want to begin a relationship based on playing games? And they're like, well, no, of course I don't. But that's what you're doing. So don't be surprised in six months from now and confused when the relationship falls apart because you've built it. The very first brick you laid was based on a game. So instead what I want you to do is I want you to put your hand like on your womb space, one on your heart, what does your body tell you? Are you so excited to text him back and be like, I had an amazing time. Then tell him that. If your body says, you know what? I didn't feel a connection. That's, it's not about anybody being wrong. All you have to say is thank you for the beautiful evening. I didn't feel an energetic match. So this is a place where I'm just gonna wish you well on your continued journey from here. Don't play games. But you play games when you don't know who you are. So you first have no business being out there when you haven't figured out who you are and what it is that you want because it's just a show for everybody. So it's like first she has to get clarity. And if you can't show up truthfully and authentically as yourself, you're not, you're performing. And then the whole thing, even in sex, the whole thing is just one big performance. Like be real, be grounded, be authentic because then the perfect match for you will be able to find you. When you're out there in the world showing up in your full truth, your full radiance, your full essence, your match will find his or her way to you. But if you're performing, you're gonna miss that person for a lot of years until you become exhausted with performing. - People play games when they're trying to learn, you know? People play games to also keep themselves safe because they at least can define a set of rules and say I went out pretty based on that. - Well, but even let's talk about trying to learn. Let's talk about trying to learn here 'cause I know a lot of the women at home are anxiously attached. They're listening to this right now and they're thinking, okay, that sounds great. Yes, I am playing these games. I wish I knew how to play the games 'cause I can't even do that. What do I do? And then they hear us saying, you know, we'll be fully yourself, understand who you are, and be that. And there's a pit that I know many of you at home are falling into right now. And you're listening to this going, well, what the heck is the difference? How do I do that? If I don't learn the rules, if I don't know who I am, okay, pause. You don't want to be overwhelming to the other person, yes. So you don't wanna be the worst version of yourself. That's fine, absolutely. But you can become the best version of yourself. - But who says overwhelming is the worst version of you? What if you're an overwhelming person? That's just your energy. - Well, I would say if you're trying to match correctly to somebody, the person, that would be overwhelming. If you're that way with everybody, that could be a problem, especially like coercive soothing, things like that, driving other people to soothe you in that capacity, that would be overwhelming. - I think it's overwhelming for a person who's not a mat. - So while we're talking about this, I don't, why is it so important for men and women to know how to communicate their needs to each other? And how do they even learn that? - The reason that most couples don't learn how to really communicate their needs differently, and the reason that so many women don't get better in their relationships is because they never experience anything better and experience people accepting them. They don't experience better conversations, and they don't practice those skills with somebody who's actually going to care. - Yeah, but where is anybody gonna be able to practice these skills? - So I have dealt with that question many times through my decade of working with thousands and thousands of women who are overcoming anxious attachment. And I am building the attachment immersion retreat this year at the Grand Hyatt up in Vale, Colorado, where women and men can come and practice these skills in real time with me and with other professionals who will help them. - That's amazing. So how long did that retreat for? - It's gonna be three days. It's gonna be an October, perfect time of year for this. When everything slows down and cools down and you're gonna see the best side of Vale. And it's going to being a small group of people, only about maybe 25 people together up in this community so that we can work together personally in that relationship building. During this retreat, we're gonna have over 15 hours of master classes, skill training, direct personal connections and many more hours of community building, community connection and personal growth. You're going to leave with an understanding of how to build secure attachment, what it feels like if you've never felt it before, how to find that place in you where you understand that this is the right piece and this is the piece that's always been missing. If you can feel good attachment because you've experienced good attachment, then you can use it forward in your life and really live it. If you wanna have a breakthrough transformational experience and in the course of three days, achieve perhaps years of growth, come to this experience, come to the attachment immersion retreat. There's a link down in the show notes to get you there. Do you think that there's a line where your behavior could be unhealthy and then you're seeking another unhealthy person who would be codependent to try to take care of you? - A hundred percent. - There we go, we're in alignment. I figured where is that line for you? 'Cause I'm curious, 'cause it's different, it is to your point, it's different for everybody where that line's going to be. One person's codependent is gonna be another person's dream and it's sustainable. Where's that line? Where do you help people find that line, I guess? - Yes, that's so, I really, again, I do less about help women find that line as much as I help them find themselves. My work is really about helping women find themselves, so much so that when a lot of times in my mastermind groups where women come in and they're like, we have Voxer as well, where they can leave voice notes throughout the week and ask questions in between our sessions and our meetings. And I hear sometimes women say, well, I have a question because my partner and then in the next one comes in, well, my partner. And I remember several months ago I came into the Voxer and I said, stop, stop telling me about your partner. Your partner did not hire me. Tell me about you. Tell me about why you let that behavior continue for 20 years. Tell me about why you're so upset that your partner did that thing. Tell me about how you responded. I don't care about what your partner did or didn't do. I wanna know why you've allowed it for this long and why you seem to think that maybe you can find an excuse for it for another decade. Like, I work with women to help them get clear on who they are only and heal, heal from traumas, recognize patterns and ways that they show up and also fill themselves up in places where they feel that they are becoming dependent outside of themselves because also a slippery slope I see is a woman will attach to somebody. And he might be toxic in a lot of ways, but maybe he has this one trait and he's fulfilling this one need of hers. And she becomes so hyper dependent on it and will excuse away all the other bad behavior. And I help her see that do you understand that you now, because you've never given yourself that thing that you're seeking and getting from him, you now think it's him that you love. It's not him that you love. You love that that one micro thing is getting filled in you. You can fill that in yourself, right? So it's my work always comes back to helping the individual woman. I'm less concerned about the relationships 'cause the relationships always figure themselves out once she understands herself. But the work again and again begins within herself. Even if she has a partner there at home, you know, for a very long time, I had to kind of disengage a bit from my partner and say like, I am on a really deep dive into myself. I'm not sure where I'm gonna land. I'm not sure if you're gonna love where I land, but if I don't do this, it's not gonna be good for us. Like it's not gonna be good for our marriage because I am not happy. So I'm gonna figure out where I need to land and then you can figure out if it still lines for you or not. And if it doesn't, why would we wanna force something? - So let me ask you this, I'm really curious here, right? Because this is a question around the institution of marriage and there's, you know, two schools of thoughts and the traditional ones that marriage is forever and you're supposed to commit and that's it. And then there's also the school of thought that, you know, says, well, you can try and if it doesn't work, then you can try again and you can get better over time as you try repeated marriages. Why do you feel that maybe one school prevails over the other? What's the benefit? - I don't know if one school is prevailing over another. I think that we're kind of drawn down the middle right now. I think that to be honest in the work that I've been doing for so long, what I hear from women is they somehow feel, you know, we hear the story that men leave for another woman, women leave to be free. So I think that women are often really wanting to leave and they stay for all the wrong reasons. They stay because it's the right thing to do by the children. They stay because it's the right thing to do for religion. They stay because it's the right thing culturally. They stay because every other woman and their family suffered and it's just what women do. - So really quick, what you said, women leaving to be free and then they feel trapped in those ways, is that why you think we're seeing that reflected in that statistic that says 70% of divorces are initiated by women, usually years into the marriage, sometimes 10, 15 years in? - Yeah, I didn't even know about that stat. Thank you for sharing that. - Yeah, I mean, I would say that every time I've watched a woman leave, whether it's been in friendship circles or whether it's been a client of mine, they have left and there hasn't been a man in the wings. They've just left because they'd never been free. They'd always been serving or taking care of and a lot of women get to a point where they're just done. They're like, I don't even, I can't even hear my thoughts. I don't even know who I am anymore other than a support character in everyone else's life. - Yeah, that's 100%, that backs up by my work when I was a licensed marriage or family therapist for many, many years, through thousands of couples that I saw going through divorces as well. It's an anxiously attached woman who finds usually a very selfish, avoidant man who does not have any emotional intuition, any emotional care for others. He provides a paycheck and not much else. And then he yells at her anytime she tries to build any connection. Eventually the kids come along and where the woman can't advocate for self. And I think if I had to qualify this, I think what you're teaching there is that extreme advocation for self that so many women are missing 'cause they don't advocate at all. Only when children come along do they begin advocating for children and then they begin advocating for self to advocate for children. And that's where most women come wrap around to the end of it. And then 15, 20 years in, that's where they get divorced because they've been so broken down over those 15, 20 years of being married to someone that has no idea how to nurture them or why. - If I was so broken here that society is, this is a standard narrative in society. You said well at least 50, 60, 70% of couples are getting divorced and we seem to be repeating this with an increasing frequency with a much bigger impact on our kids and our families and whatnot. And it's just getting worse and worse over the years. So what's really broken in the way that we do things and the way that we teach our kids and the way that we bring ourselves up and the way that we support each other as people and as families that this is getting worse. - So it's actually 35% of first marriages are getting divorced is what it is. But to that point, yes society is vastly broken. We have men becoming more and more avoidantly attached. We have women becoming more and more anxiously attached. So Dr. Manner, your work's gonna be more needed than ever with Gen Z as 65% of them are facing those attachment issues. And so many of the women are just collapsing into service to others without even forming a self at all in their early years. Many women out there right now are like, yes, that's me. So that's there. But society has grown worse. When we see those attachment issues get bad like that, it indicates a social collapse. Normally under most circumstances, we would see our culture starving, getting invaded, all kinds of civil war and breakdowns. What we've got is so many systems in place keeping things running that we're not experiencing that. But the women especially are reflecting that where they're feeling starved, they're feeling alone, they're feeling terrified. So they are pulling within, they're serving other people without sense of self. And I think that's where we're coming. So Dr. Manner, one thing I've heard from my female coaching clients through the years is they say, how do I even begin caring about myself? And I really feel that's where you're dropping in, right? They're parachuting in for so many of them, saying this is how you advocate for self. This is how you begin caring for self. What are some, not first steps to do, but what are first things you see in a woman? When she begins taking those initial steps into her, into her Queenhood from Princesshood? What do you see women do? What are signs that she is on the right path? - Yeah, some of the signs are she actually starts to share her opinion when it's different. Instead of just nodding and being pleasing, she actually says, well, I feel differently about that. Or my lived experience has been quite opposite and I'd like to share. She's also leading more heartfelt conversations about what she sees in terms of the marriage. So a lot of the work that I do is in communication. Like I teach women a method for communicating to be heard and respected. And it starts with, if this is somebody you really want to spend your life with, or at least the next several years with, you have to build a bridge to them. You can't just come in and sit down and get into the attack of what they did or aren't doing. It really begins with sitting down and building an alliance and then building a bridge to build a next version of the relationship. So just like I always say in regards to, it's all about evolution. Like every great business I know has always evolved for the times, right? Like we can't necessarily, there's very few businesses that started one way and didn't pay attention to trends and market changes and adapt accordingly if they wanted to keep their doors open. And we need to do that in relationships. We need to look at, take stock at where we need to evolve and make changes. Are you happy? Am I happy? How can we make this even more fulfilling for both of us? So women who are starting to claim more of that for herself starts to lead those kinds of conversations. Like I am the emotional leader of our home. I am the emotional leader of our adult children, of the grandparents, all the sets of parents now. I am the emotional stronghold in regards to beautiful conversations, heart opening conversations. We don't sit around at the holidays and just talk about the sports game that's playing or how dry the turkey was or wasn't. I lead us in really profound rich conversations. So you can sense a woman who's starting to come into that for herself. She starts to lead a more rich conversation. So if she's craving emotional depth, then become the emotional depth in the family. If she is craving sensuality, learn about how to become a sensual woman through your five senses. If you are craving more sexual intimacy, become sexually intimate with yourself. Everything a woman wants from the outside. I can tell she's stepping into queen when she starts to become those things. And it then trickles out into her environment and her people. - Under I'm curious, as our resident avoidant guy over here, sitting here. I'm listening to this and I'm understanding that this is advocation for self and then, as you said, beginning negotiations from that place. And many of the avoidant men who watch the show as well, 'cause I coach many of you. Thank you. Hey, welcome. Many of them probably are listening to this saying, oh, great. Here is somebody teaching women to be selfish and demanding about their feelings. Here's somebody adding more layers of stress to my life. I don't know if that's what you're experiencing over there, Andre, but you are our resident avoidant man. How does this material resonate with you? And number two, 'cause this is important stuff for the women to be healthy in relationships so that avoidant men don't experience divorces at 20 years, so that we can't just silence the women. We got to bring them in as healthy partners. What would be a good way to bring some avoidant men in so that they could buy into this idea here, this program? - Well, Dr. Matter, there's, everything you said sounded great until you said one thing, and then it was all downhill for me. And you said, and I'm gonna paraphrase, something along the lines of, you know, I'm going through something very deep right now, and I will let you know where I land and if it still works for you. And for me, that was a big red X. And the reason why is because you're basically telling me, and I do have avoidant tendencies myself, I've been working with Adam for years now, and we've done fantastic work together, we've built businesses, I've repaired a lot of relationships using the proper secure attachment techniques, many of which I think overlap with what you teach. But I still have these, you know, kind of pangs where, you know, things like this come up. And from the way that I hear this, and I'm trying to give a voice to a lot of people who are experiencing the same avoidant tendencies in their own life, and I am gonna challenge it because of it, I'm gonna say, "Well, as soon as you say that," he says, "I hear this as you are going to leave "whenever you want." So you've asked me to commit, to commit, to have children with you, to change my life around, to change everything that's important to me, and offer that to you in a welcoming, and say, "Let's build this together," and you're telling me that one day, you're gonna say, "You know what? "I'm going through something, "and I'm not sure if you're the right person for me." Trust's over, loyalty's gone. That's it, that door shut, because I think you're just gonna be one more person who's gonna screw me over. So how do you get around that? - Yeah, well, I think that if you heard correctly, I never said, "I can see the difference, "the disconnect is you interpreted something," I never said, "I never said I'm going through something, "and I'll let you know if you're gonna be the person for me." I said, "I am going through something, "and I'm doing a lot of evolving and expanding, "and then you get to decide "if that still works for you or not." So there's no control, there's no threat. It is, "I am going through something, "and whether or not it's still gonna align for you, "you get to decide." Isn't that the ultimate relationship, the freedom to expand and become? And in my relationship, which is very securely attached, and my partner has constant and always been in his own evolution. And then the inverses, I get to decide if that works for me. None of us are bound tightly to, because then the underlying messages, no matter how I show up, no matter how I behave, we're in this together, no matter what. And we don't live that way, that is not how our marriage works. Our marriage works that we are so both so wildly free at all times. I never want to hold him anywhere to anything that doesn't feel like a place he's choosing to be in. So I think when there is motherhood wounding or other things that have happened in a man's life in regard to their first experience with a woman, it might stir up abandonment. But what my husband hears in that is, she's expanding and growing. And for him, it's always very exciting because he knows my expansion and my growth only brings him higher. But in a man who doesn't have the lens that he has, I can see how they would hear that as the threat you're leaving, right? Instead, the opportunity would be, wow, I'm so curious. If you're willing, I would love to learn. I'd love to hear like, what are you going through? What are you doing? Oh, you're going to that retreat. You're reading that book. You're listening to those podcasts. Can I be a part of any of that with you? Will you share with me when you get back what it's all about? Every time I come back from a retreat and I go to some really provocative things, my husband's the first one when I get home. He's like, tell me everything. What was it like for you? What did you experience? Because he is curious and he's of a growth mentality because he knows my experiences take us further and wider and deeper. So it depends, like what lens do you want to hear that message through or receive it through? So we also have to be responsible for how we receive messaging and can we flip the narrative and not hear abandonment but instead hear expansion and opportunity? - Well, let me ask you this one. Why was it specifically the language that you chose to use? And this is again, just to kind of continue the conversation was saying you may not like what I may become and you get to choose that. So why specifically do you see value in using those words? - Because I do think that's the reality because I am very clear that oftentimes where I'm going and what I'm growing into, he may be uncomfortable with. It may be a little too edge pressing. It may be a little out of his wheelhouse or his zone. And so I want him to know like you may not like this, but I have to do this because I can no longer abandon the truth of who I am and the desire of my heart and my life. So, and there have been moments. There are things he has not liked and we've come to the table and I said, then we need to decide what we do with this because I'm not not going forward with this thing in my life. So what do we do here? Are we at an impasse? And this is, if you want to talk about really hard conversations and what brings couples into the level at which we are living in our lives, it is because we're willing to sit and hold the tension and the energy at the table of very hard conversations. Nobody gets up, nobody runs away, nobody slams a door, nobody gets their car keys. We know how to hold the energetic tension of feeling that moment where someone is evolving possibly past us. 'Cause what is the alternative? I stay in my shell and I don't evolve into more of me. Sometimes more of me may be too much for him and that's a reality of human life. - What is it that's driving this evolution? At what point does your focus on what is right for you start outweighing what is right for you as a family or maybe as a unit or as a connection to each other? - I would say if I was so selfishly evolving, I wouldn't still be in my marriage. So that's actually a fantastic place to ask then. What is it the entity that makes you walk that boundary without making the wrong decision for yourself? Because I've seen many women get caught up in passions and get caught up in whatever they thought was authentic at the time and it really wasn't. It was something else was acting and then we're on them. - I see what you're talking about. I see what you're talking about. So when I have couples come in for coaching and they're not unified, she feels like she needs to, she's been stifled and she needs to grow, he's feeling like he's trying to hold things together or sometimes it's the opposite. She's trying to hold together, he's trying to grow out. The first thing that I have to unify my couples around and I'm sure you'll understand this, Dr. Mendez, a goal. I always ask them, what is the purpose of your being together? Is it to just give each other good feelings until you don't or good feelings until you die? Or what is it? Are you gonna live together in a hole and be miserable? What's your goal? And when they unify around, usually it's something about a family, a healthy loving family, right? And kids and grandkids and great-grandkids or it's building a business, building a cause, something like that. It's something beyond just good feelings. They must have a purpose. And when they unify around that purpose, then they grow into the best version of themselves that can fulfill that purpose. It's still not denial of self for cause. That is part of themselves. That's what I have found that works with the probably 99.8% of couples who come in is unifying around that. But Dr. Mendez, over to your point, he asked you this question. Where do you feel that dividing line is for couples? Is it- - Let me even ask it this way. How do you achieve selfless evolution, not selfish evolution, which can be often destructive, where you put your needs ahead of everybody else and you say, I don't care. I made obligations. I'll walk out on them. You know, life happens. I'm not the same person anymore. How do you act selflessly while still taking care of yourself? - That's a really hard balance. And I don't advocate for selflessness. I think that's been a bumper sticker for women for entirely too long. Cause essentially it is without a self. And if I'm only in selflessness, I'm not a beautiful, amazing life. I'm just not. I'm resentful and I'm harboring that underneath. I'm not, I'm a burden as a mother. If I don't have a sense of self, do you know that is the greatest burden for a child is an unlived life of a parent to quote Carl Jung. And so I am also aware of being, I see it to be very needy when you're in selfless energy and you're constantly giving, you're giving to seek your worth out of what comes back and return. And that is just, that's not energy that I advocate for nor believe in. However, I do think there's a balance between being someone who is self advocating and going after their dreams and their life and finding that balance and how it works for everybody in the family unit. You know, certain people have had to start in our family, certain people have had to sacrifice certain things along different parts of this journey. As a family, my husband and I've been together married 28 years and we have children ages 25 to 17. And at different times, different people have had to pass on an opportunity or sacrifice something because whether it was time or energy, finances or a career thing because of what somebody else needed. That is what the unit does for one another. But if it is only ever one person constantly being selfless for the sake of everyone else, that person, that's an imbalanced system. So I've raised my children that we all take radical responsibility for the fact we are a unit. Of course, my husband and I are at the leadership helm of that unit. But we are all like leaning on each other for different aspects and different things throughout this family journey. I recognize that 90% of my needs can get fulfilled through myself and through this family. And I will choose that all day every day because we're building a legacy. And what we are doing in our generational line in both directions, forward and backwards, right, is huge and revolutionary. And that means more to me than the 10% that I do not have being fulfilled. So not selfless and not selfish, but self informed is what it sounds like. Yeah, and I'm also radically responsible. So there's that little bit of a gap of like, oh, there's this gap of, if it was up to me, do you know what I would do? I would be on this call with you from Zanzibar right now. And then a couple weeks later, I'd be in Portugal. And then because I am a free spirit. So at times it is hard for me to live a more traditional life because I have a very free spirit. I am a lover of people. And so I've had to reign and tame that part of me in because that doesn't coexist well within a married lifestyle. That's just the reality. But that doesn't mean that I don't love my husband and my life. But if we're gonna have really honest conversations, let's have really honest conversations. I don't have a single female client who isn't ravenous outside of her marriage for more. But often, just like men do, we get to make decisions. Like, okay, what am I gonna choose here? So I think it's important that we have these conversations that women have a lot of desire to. And often we are putting the lid on it so that we can keep a family together. - And so that's why it's so difficult to find the balance, right? Is to say, look, you are supposed to go on this journey of self-discovery. But there are many forces that act within us that we do not understand. We have our habits, we have our wants, we have our needs. But we also have the things that we are taught we should have or should want. There are things that we desire for simply no reason other than the biological. Or maybe there is layers to the way that we think in terms of attachment, in the way that we connect with people, that we may actually want things that are bad for us. And really coming to parent yourself, really, to grow yourself, to take good care of yourself is probably one of the key experiences of being a human. We actually need to learn what is like to be dissatisfied but so productively and non-destructively, both to ourselves and to others. There's a lot of factors to balance. One thing you've mentioned that I really like is the idea of legacy. Of what is going to happen after I am gone and what is going to happen when I'm simply no longer able to produce what I'm producing right now. Adam, you talk about legacy a lot. How does legacy come to play when it comes to deciding what you should be doing, what you shouldn't be doing? Well, I can only really speak to my marriage and the research and everything therein. But to me, my wife and I must both be active participants in that legacy. It can't be my legacy. People get that wrong on the time with my business 'cause she's a stay-at-home mom. She was offered a full ride to Harvard for a business school. She turned it down. She opened her own business instead and helped support me through graduate school to help me do this. Now she's a stay-at-home mom who homeschools our kids and I run a business. So we've definitely swapped places in that regard and I could not have done what I do now without her. I still couldn't. So it's not my legacy when I'm out here helping people fix attachment. I help thousands and thousands of people out there do this. It's not just me. She's fully present. So I can't, to Dr. Mann's point, I can't simply shackle her to that wagon and yell mush onward, horsey, and make her pull endlessly and never care for her in any regard. I have to listen to that. She has to be invested. And she is as integral a part in that legacy as I am. I think one more piece to that is many of my coaching clients and the couples who come to me, the man, they're in their 40s or 50s and the man, he might have 20 or 30 years left based on life expectancy if he cares for himself. The woman probably is going to outlive him by 10 to 15 years is what the research shows. So if a man ignores and silences a woman for those all of those years of the marriage and builds his legacy, she is the one who decides what happens to that legacy and what it gets handed down and what changes. Eventually the woman has the last word anyway. So it is much smarter for Mann to get her involved and invested appropriately throughout. So it's a shared legacy so that when he is gone, she oversees that transition to the next generation from him to his children to whomever is next. That is that target. So when we talk about protecting a man's legacy in regards to that, again, he's not protecting his legacy, but him making sure she's fully invested and that there co-equals in that legacy, mandatory or his legacy will be. Well, I can't even say the words on here, but garbage, basically. Does that answer your question? - It does and it ultimately starts formulating this idea of a family as first of all, obviously a voluntary union. People actually forget that part very quickly after they tie the nod and do the wedding vows and that's it. They forget that it's a voluntary union, but it's a voluntary union based on an obligation and an obligation to yourself, to your as soon as you have children, to your children, to your past generations, to your future generations and the layering really starts. Now the layering is really something that can be not navigated only through authenticity, which I think what Dr. Mender really does advocate for extensively is that unless you own every aspect of that layer, conscious, subconscious, internal to you, external to you, you're not going to be able to decide how to navigate that system properly and that system is simply going to own you and you will live your life a slave to the thing that you were trying to build. I see this a lot with businesses, with content creator businesses who often build brands and they try to create a legacy and that thing runs their life, but it's something that stems from our desire to build something greater than us without actually wanting to become greater selves and that's a challenge, right? So I think the first step to forming a relationship that is going to satisfy your needs as a human, you need to be able to step into what Dr. Mender says, gonna be, you know, kingship, queenship, right? Becoming great and always becoming better. Now, what is the first step towards doing that for somebody who's young? We have Gen Z years, we have millennials who's starting that, so Dr. Mender, what do you recommend to connect with that desire for greatness? - Well, gosh, I really love what you said is like, I see this happening a lot with the younger generation, wanting to have this fame or wanting to like create something to be known or recognized, but not wanting to build that inner strength within, right? So it's this house of cards and it so often falls apart. And so it's really about building that internal strength and compass as a human being. And so the best way to do that, I remember when my daughter was 15 years old and we were on a trip as a family with some other families to Costa Rica. And I couldn't find her, she wasn't coming outside, she wasn't coming outside. And so I went back into the villa and I was like, she was sitting there with her friends and they were all on their phones scrolling and they were 15 at the time, she's 21 now. And I said, what are you doing? What are you all doing? And she's like, oh, we're just, you know, we're looking at all these beautiful bathing suits and these models and this. And I said, for what? Well, we just, I don't know, like I don't even want to go outside 'cause I just don't think I look that good. And I'm like, hold on a second. So we're in Costa Rica at a beautiful beach with all these people who love you. And you're gonna sit inside and look at other people who are posing in bathing suits rather than run freely on the beach or grab a surfboard and be living in your bathing suit. And so do you, and I started to point to them and this is what I'm saying to the youth who's listening or the younger generation, pay attention to what you're consuming. Pay attention to the ideals you are feeling yourself with and the same way that if you eat a bag of Cheetos every night for dinner, you're gonna have a different result in your body than if you eat veg-themed vegetables every night for dinner. The same thing happens when you take information in. So if you are filling yourself, your emotional cup up with watching other people live their cheap lives or watching entertainment, reality television, which is, I think, the downfall of human society, you are not going to be sourcing from a place of greatness. Get next to thought leaders, get next to public intellectuals, get next to people who make your heartbeat with excitement when you look at what they've created and done with their lives. Get next to leaders who are generations above you because they've lived enough life, they've had enough experience, they hold the wisdom to have sourced through so many decades of their life, they're probably gonna have a lot better foundation for which you can build your life on. So if you're in your 20s and 30s, stop watching other 20s and 30-year-olds live their life on social media and go and get next to people who are really doing the things off camera that they supposedly say they're doing on camera 'cause we know a lot of people show up, I know in my world, a lot of people show up one way on social media and when you pull back that Wizard of Oz curtain, there's somebody totally different operating. - Yeah, so I know that a lot of my married women who come into me for coaching, tell me they watch this show, hi ladies. They watch this show and then they wanna share the episode or share snippets with their husband and they want information to share with him. I've learned this, this is why a lot of women listen to podcasts is to find information that their husband needs to be hearing himself and then bring it to him. So, okay, let's do this for them. What role do men need to play in facilitating either a safe environment or a loving environment and encouraging environment, right? What role do men have to play in this growth with the women in their lives, the women they love, their wife, their daughter, whomever it may be? - Wow, that's such a great question. Stop seeing the woman's growth. Stop seeing the podcast she wants to share with you or the book she wants to tell you about or the retreat she wants to attend. Stop seeing it as a direct threat to the relationship or as a direct threat to you. If you do, pay attention to the fact that that's a red flag already signaling that your something inside of you has equated growth and evolution to mean breakup, growth and evolution to mean impossible for you. So, she will outpace you if you're not willing to be curious with what she brings to the table. If you're not willing, my husband and I have not evolved in the same linear way whatsoever but we've evolved enough that we can hold space for each other but we are still in very different individual paths. Now, with this piece right here, when you say don't take it as a threat, we could go another step and say don't take it as an attack because a lot of times a woman brings you a resource and guys go, well, what does she mean by bringing this to me, right? Whereas my wife in our marriage, she brings me something and even if it hurts, right? It could be anything, it could be anything I need. She's bringing it to me because she, and I have to stop and say why is she bringing this to me? I'll even ask her, okay, what's making you bring this to me today, what is it that has brought this, you know? And she'll say, oh, because I think this could help you X, Y, or Z, or this could help us achieve this. This could even help me do this and therefore I can be better for you and show it better because X, Y, and Z. Many men don't even take that extra step. They don't say why is she bringing this to me? They say she's bringing this to me as an attack and she's already called a divorce lawyer and has them waiting right now on mute. If I don't take this right, so screw you lady and they go and the man defends why he doesn't need this thing she has brought to him. Meanwhile, he's dying without this thing and she's trying to shove it down his throat like a dog to take a pill that's about, you know, it's gonna save its life. - Let me ask you this though. Out of all of the couples you've coached, in how many cases have the thing that, you know, somebody, woman, or man brought to the table? Has been sometimes detrimental, sometimes bad, sometimes wrong. - How many times, so sticking with this theme, how many times have I seen women bring something that is bad to the relationship? - Let's go down that path. So sometimes, you know-- - I can think of plenty of times the male clients have brought something terrible-- - And that's what I'm trying to keep it equal as well, right? 'Cause I do agree with what Dr. Mende says and says that men all have to also take ownership of stuff, 100%, but let's take, you know, the example of the woman. You know, a woman brings you something and why is there a first reaction of denial that's what I'm trying to get to? You know, it's also one of the things that we're kind of talking Dr. Mende about earlier in this episode was if a woman brings you something and says I'm not sure you'll like it, we see a threat to the relationship, okay? We see a threat to the relationship because not everything that somebody brings home is always good. And I know that because when I go out and I look for things, often I encounter things that are bad and I actually have an internal mechanism that says am I even supposed to bring this home? Is this good or bad? - Ah, but here's where we're breaking down. So if the man has a belief that the woman is an open vector for disaster and now he has to filter her because she has no filter, that is the problem. He has a cortisol association with her. His brain says she is not an ally who helps me solve things. She is a problem I have to solve continuously. He's actually seeing that she is the threat. The thing she's bringing isn't the threat. She is the threat and now she's bringing a secondary threat into the relationship, that's the problem. - Adam, every human can be a threat, whether to like it or not, right? And this is part of the challenge actually, this is not even part of the challenge, it's part of the responsibility that I have in a relationship, in a business relationship, in a friendship. It is my responsibility to have somebody come to me, yes and be an open door, but then say, are you potentially causing a risk for yourself? Are you caught up in an idea or a passion? Are you potentially caught up in something that is gonna hurt you? If you show up to me and you say, "Well, I've decided," and I'll give you an Israeli example. "I've decided that I'm gonna go spend $100,000 "in plastic surgery tomorrow "because this is gonna make me feel beautiful." I'm gonna say, you know what, that sounds like you might be trying to solve something for a different reason. Maybe you shouldn't do that. So if you show up to me tomorrow, Adam, and say, "I've decided to sell all of my attachment businesses, "move to Bali and become a monkey trainer." I'm gonna say, you know, that's probably not very well aligned with the legacy that you told me. So there is actually a responsibility we have to each other to help each other protect from bad decisions. - Sure, but I'm gonna challenge something you just said that everybody can be a threat. I don't consider you a threat in my life as my friend and business partner, because if you're not likely to come to me and say, Adam, I've decided to stop helping content creators and shut down my business and go raise monkeys in the rain for us, you're not going to just come and arbitrarily give me a decision you've made, you're probably going to come to me at some point and say, "Hey Adam, I'm having this idea "that I kinda wanna float by you, "and I'm thinking, you know, monkeys in the rainforest, "they could use some training, "and I think that they would be more loving "than content creators." So maybe I'm thinking in this direction, what are your thoughts on this before I even form and jump to an idea? And then I would trust you to give me some input on that so that I can talk you through that before you fall off a cliff. This is actually a great pleasure when you throw it back to you, Dr. Amanda. So at one point in a relationship, are you supposed to responsibly show up and say, "This is the direction I would like to head in, "I would like your input," as opposed to simply informing them, saying, "Hey, you know, especially, "this is what I'm fearful, "and I'm gonna say use the word fearful of as a man, "is that, you know, my wife or my girlfriend's gonna show up "and say, I have decided X, Y and Z, "because some guy in some retreat or some girl in some retreat "or somebody I heard online said, "I should do this." And I'm gonna say, "Well, to be honest, "I'm also hurt because our connection, our relationship, "has not been respected. "You haven't asked me for input on something "that also affects us, and you've just decided things, "and that's not right." - Yeah, and I think that if someone is that easily able to say, "I'm gonna do this thing because I heard it, "and they're that easily influenced, "you have a bigger concern." I also think if you have someone who is just not bringing it as a bid for connection, what I often find when women are bringing things to their partner, they are almost always bidding for connection with him. They're saying, "I'm bringing this thing "because I want to create more emotional intimacy "in our relationship. "I'm bringing this because I thought this could be helpful "for your back pain. "I'm bringing this because I thought this might be "a better way for, maybe this would be a fun thing for us "to try in our sexual relationship." More often than not, women are bidding for emotional intimacy. It doesn't mean always, of course not. Does it mean that you shouldn't have an opinion about it? Absolutely not. But I think that to be in a curious energy versus a critical energy in regards to like all human communication is always the best way. To be like, "Oh, I'm so curious. "Why are you bringing this to me? "I don't know, what's going on here?" Rather than, "Why would you bring this to me? "What is even the point of this? "I'm so sick of you bringing to me constantly. "Like you're never happy." Right, and I think the best thing is to ask yourself two simple questions. A lot of guys have a lot of trouble switching out of protect mode into discover mode. Maybe it's attachment, maybe it's the way we're wired, maybe it's whatever, and I am not a big proponent of fighting significant uphill battles. I do think that people should play into the strength in order to grow, and yes, they can use that to overcome challenges very effectively. So sometimes telling men specifically saying, "Oh no, you're supposed to be in a curious, "you're supposed to be in a discovery." You don't have to. Just stay neutral for 30 more seconds and ask two questions. What are you looking to accomplish with this? And why are you looking to accomplish this? And if you can hold your response for 30 seconds, it's not that hard. 30 seconds is not a long time and get the answer to those questions. What are you looking to accomplish? You're bringing this into the bedroom. What are you looking to accomplish? Are you looking to accomplish a better orgasm? Why? Because you want to have a better connection with me. That's not so bad. Maybe you can calm down and take it. But if you're saying you're looking to spend $100,000 in plastic surgery so that your friend Becky can think that you're prettier than her, and you say that out loud to me, then maybe we won't even have to have an argument 'cause you realize that it's not the way to go. Or at least it'll equip you with the right conversation. So that pause button is very important in relationships. - And I love this because asking, what is the purpose of what she's bringing to me? This is what so many of the men, thousands of couples I've worked with over the years, the man doesn't understand the role of a woman's feelings in the relationship at all. At all, he has no idea. He thinks they're stupid. He thinks it's arbitrary. He thinks it's just gonna pull them off track that they were completely fine. Status quo is great. Let's never deviate. And he doesn't understand the role of a woman's feelings is, it's much, okay, like a car. Guys, let's go with this analogy. Guys out there, if you are driving a car, the relationship is your car, you are both in the car. A woman's feelings are all of those sensors throughout the car that detect when things are breaking down, when it's getting too hot, when it's getting too cold, something's about to explode. It's all the gauges on your dashboard and forming you of various things. Her feelings are the information about the car you're driving. So if you are ignoring every sensor that's screaming at you and there's smoke coming out from under the hood and the lights on your dashboard, say get out now before you die, right? And she's warning you loud and clear, then you need to be very, very, very aware of what the sensors are telling you. Does that make sense, Dr. Mann? Am I getting that? - I love that so much. And I think that it really does come back to the respect of women. The respect of if men could even, and my husband always says this, you know, he's like, I can't fathom, Amanda, what one day inside of your body must feel like, inside of your body, your mind, and your soul. He's like, I can't even fathom it. Because one simple conversation with you is more than more thought than I have in a whole entire day. And the places that you go and the levels that you go into it and the emotionality around it and what you carry. And I think being able to see that and honor that as this wildly beautiful superpower, as opposed to undermining it, is what has been so successful in my relationship, is that my partner sees it as something, like this special detector system, or some kind of a litmus test that he doesn't have access to, that we rely on, right? And it has, and because we have so much evidence and so many proof points and ways that I've led our family that the outside world looking in probably thought it was complete and utter ridiculousness, or really questionable. I had people really questioning my sanity on certain things. Then we get these unbelievable results that happen. And then, only then, when the results are there and the proof is in the pudding, everyone's like, wow, that was amazing. I'm like, yeah, well, that's what happens when a woman sources from such profound instinct and trust. Anne has a partner who's like, yes, let's do that. So, we've had just enough experience now that he comes to me for a lot of those things, and he's like, I know you're gonna know the answer. Like, what do we do in this situation? So, I think we need to stop seeing women as lesser or her feelings being unimportant and recognize that the potential of what she can bring to you in your life, just as you can for her, it's beyond stratospherically comprehendable. But until we stay in these roles of Princess and Prince and we're fighting in the sandbox about who brought the shovel and who gets to take it home, we're just not gonna get very far. And that's why I love the work that you're both doing. It's so important, men need more spaces like this, more conversations like this. - Well, thank you, Dr. Amanda. That's very meaningful to us because it just helps people have the ability to imagine an alternative. And there's something very similar we've actually discussed as an analogy, I call it the black box analogy. And my background actually is in process engineering. I worked for large corporations and consulted for a long time before I got into this content game with Adam and many others. And we had a concept called the black box process. What we did is that usually it was, for those techies out there, there were systems that were built in the 70s by people who were long dead and they never left any notes. So we have a giant supercomputer that runs a bank and it works and nobody knows how. And they just know it, they respect it, they love it, they name it, they feed it, they clean it, and it just does its thing. And as a first, very foundational, very basic concept for a couple who is starting to build a relationship, as someone's go to the man and say, "Your wife, girlfriend, whatever, partner, "is a black box. "You have to care for her and love her "and you don't need to know how she works. "You just need to trust the output and watch the lights. "If it's, this light is red, that is bad. "If there's smoke coming out, that is bad. "And if it's working fine, don't touch it. "Don't fix it, don't improve it. "Just let it do its thing." - We do this with our cars. Most guys, most men today don't know why the check engine light comes on. They don't know the conditions under which that happens. They don't understand that the anti-lock brake system and why that's flashing or why it's going there. They don't even understand many of the gauges on their dashboard, but they trust those gauges with their life. - But do you know why? So there's actually a design component to this. And the design component to this is that your car has a capacity to tell you exactly what is wrong with it. - Oh, that's beautiful. - So it can actually put on the screen, you know, replace this knob in this part of the engine. And it doesn't do that because it doesn't want you to touch it. It wants to be brought into a professional who knows how it works so it can be handled with care. 'Cause as soon as it tells you what's wrong with it and you try to fix it and you put in the wrong knob in the wrong place, you're gonna break the whole thing. There's actually a reason sometimes why trust requires ignorance. And ignorance not necessarily in a bad way. It's ignorance in the perspective of, "Hey, I trust you to repair itself or help you find something. Give me a hint, you know, take me to a mechanic, change the oil that allows us to co-exist synergically in a way that is going to benefit everybody and get us to a final destination. The reason that you and the car exist is so that you can get to your final destination together. You're two different entities. Now, not to say that one person, the relationship is the car, the other person is a human. You guys are both playing, you know, just different roles. I really like the idea that Dr. Manda has brought out is that you actually different things entirely, but don't assume that what works for you works for the other person and don't assume that you have to be the same. Just sometimes be a blog box. - I think it's beautiful. I think that, you know, also, I had to explain this to my husband a long time ago in our relationship that he makes sense of the world as a very analytical person, that A plus B equals C, right? And I don't function that way. That doesn't mean that his way is wrong or my way is wrong. Actually, both of our ways are right for the way we perceive the world. And I'm not gonna question how he gets from A to B equals C. And I was like, and I need you to not question, that because I can't show you on a graph or a chart and it's somewhere inside of my body, I need you to trust that this feeling is as strong as your mathematical equations that you work out to get to your answer. And that really helped him to understand the process lives internally inside of me because in the very early days, it was so infuriating. He'd be like, well, now, how do you know that that's the right decision to make? Like, have you done the research? And I'm like, well, research, even Google is patriarchal. So Google is filled with information that's been put in by men, so, and which is a whole 'nother tangent for another day. But, so no, my Google system is my internal GPS and I can't put it on a graph, I can't explain it. I just need you to trust. I need you to trust that this is such an over, and I think this is part of like, why the witches were burned at the stake because they had access to information through a knowing, through a bodily wisdom that could not be explained on a graph or on any other way. It's just a knowing. This is the way we need to go. I can feel it. And so when we can harness those dual energies of each other, my gosh. - The things happen. - That's awesome. Well, that was a fantastic episode and all the insights into how the female psyche works and to how to make the relationships balanced. What is even appropriate in terms of obligations and loyalty to each other and when selflessness is a bad thing, they're fantastic insights. So Dr. Amanda, thank you so much for joining us and I wish you knew. And can you tell us a little bit more about where we can find some more of your works? You have a beautiful event coming up. Love to hear more about that and just how do women get to work with you? - Yes, thank you so much. So you can find me on social media and midlifemuse and my website is amandahanson.com. And my live event in November is in Phoenix, Arizona, November 2nd and 3rd. It's for 1,000 women to come together and really learn. I will be demonstrating from the stage and also in the room, on the floor with people, really taking them through all of the embodiment exercises to literally move your life from princess energy into queen energy and to show women how to source that magnetism within themselves that has been really disconnected from many of us after around the age of 10 years old. So. - Thank you very much, Adam. - You can find all of my work on adamlanesmith.com where I help people build secure relationships and take those next steps into building loving connections for life. I'm also at Attachment Adam on Instagram and at Attachment Adam on YouTube. - Yep, and Adam also has an amazing retreat coming up in late October as well. And part of the retreat is going to involve us actually having role play conversations where we will have people talking. Can you believe it? Actually talking and actually practicing these conversations, real scenarios, learning how to communicate because it's so much harder than people think. Because the first, I just said the pause button is the hardest one to press because you are forced to offset a decision until you know more. And we teach people how to do that and we're going to teach them how to actually connect with each other in meaningful ways. So we hope people join. You, Dr. Amanda, for yours, it sounds very powerful and very important. You know, Adam, for his, there's only I think 26 spots in total. Definitely not a thousand. We're starting small. - As a filming right now, lots are filling up fast. - And it's true. So definitely very important lessons to learn. For me, you can find me @Andrekorokov on Instagram and very just creative.media for the work we do with content creators. So thank you for joining us all on "I Wish You New." This was Dr. Amanda Hansen. She's fantastic and a wonderful woman. This guy's all right as well, but we know that already. And we'll see you all on the next one.
🎙️ In this episode of "I Wish You Knew," Dr. Amanda Hanson, a leading clinical psychologist, joins Adam Lane Smith, the attachment specialist, and Andrey Korikov, CEO and co-founder of Veritas Creative Media, to confront the hidden dangers shaping modern relationships.
Dr. Amanda Hanson exposes the toxic influences of femininity, self-sacrifice, and the patriarchy, unmasking how these forces impact every woman’s life and relationships. Together, they dive deep into the roots of these issues, exploring how societal expectations and outdated gender roles can create destructive dynamics in love and life.
Tune in to this eye-opening discussion to understand the psychological and emotional triggers at play, and learn how to foster healthier, more authentic relationship dynamics. Discover the crucial steps women can take to advocate for themselves, reclaim their power, and break free from the constraints of toxic femininity and self-sacrifice.
✨ Moments You Can’t Miss ✨:
👉 How toxic femininity is sabotaging relationships and personal well-being.
👉 The hidden dangers of living by outdated traditional gender roles and societal expectations.
👉 Dr. Amanda Hanson exposes the deep-rooted impact of the patriarchy on women’s lives and identities.
👉 How women can reclaim their power and step into their true Queen energy.
👉 The link between attachment styles and how they shape relationship dynamics.
👉 Why selflessness isn’t always noble and how it can destroy your relationships.
👉 Practical advice for women on how to advocate for themselves in love and life.
👉 How embracing vulnerability and emotional honesty can transform relationships.
👉 The importance of breaking free from traditional constraints to live a more authentic and fulfilling life.
Don't miss this urgent conversation that challenges the status quo and empowers you to live more fully and authentically. 🎧
If you enjoyed this episode, you will probably love our episode titled ‘Men, Listen Up! Dr. Alyssa Marie on Female Brain & Emotional Struggles’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6GjOfwdGs4
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Want to become one of the 2% of content creators who make over a million dollars a year? Veritas Creative Academy offers exclusive access to resources from industry experts. Master the latest trends, learn proven strategies that work, finally hit the 7-figure mark, and become internationally recognized and celebrated: https://veritascreative.media/creator-academy/
Need more help with your attachment? Work with Adam: www.adamlanesmith.com
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