Speaker 1 (00:00:00) - Yo yo, my man, what is going on? Is Sathiya Sam here? I'm the host of this lovely show unleashed the man within. And I want to thank you so much for listening. And I promise you, I promise you that you'll be so glad you tune in today to listen to my interview with Adam Lane Smith. Now, you probably have heard of this guy already, but he has exploded onto the scene in the last year. He's been featured on some major platforms Michaela Peterson, The Modern Wisdom podcast with Chris Williamson, and more recently, the guys at Mind Pump who have like a bit of a media empire going on over there. Uh, this guy is everywhere and he is changing a lot of people's lives. And he is known online as Attachment. Adam. And you guys know, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, I am unbelievably fond of attachment theory and the healing impact that it has on individuals, relationships, and families. And the reason I brought Adam in was not because he's a big name and it wasn't even because he talks about attachment.
Speaker 1 (00:01:02) - Um, the actual reason I bought I brought him in is because he, he tackles attachment through a neurobiological lens. So we've had other people on here before talk about attachments to people like Jake Porter, who have a very good kind of clinical psychology background on the matter, and there's incredible value there. But I thought it'd be really cool for you guys to hear about attachment through this neurobiological lens. I obviously am a biologist at heart and have an honours degree in biological sciences, and so I especially appreciated his take on it. And so that's kind of where we laid the foundation. And then we covered everything under the sun related to relationships, attachment, addiction. I mean, it just went everywhere in every kind of good way. And I just know that you guys are going to be so glad you listened to this. You're going to be challenged, you're going to be encouraged, and you're probably going to get spurred on to have a better relationship, and you're going to get some clarity as well. If you're struggling with addiction.
Speaker 1 (00:01:58) - On how healing from your attachment could really play into your recovery journey. So this is a scintillating interview. I know you're going to love it. Let's jump in, guys. This is my interview with Adam Lane Smith. So here's the million dollar question. How are men like us who work hard, have good motives and a God given purpose supposed to fulfill the calling on our lives and the dreams in our hearts, all while establishing sexual integrity, thriving relationships, and a meaningful connection with God? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Sam. Welcome to Unleash the Man Within. Perfect. Well, I'm here with Adam Lane Smith, and I cannot express what a privilege it is to have this guy on the show. I've been listening to you for a while now, and the minute I heard you start talking about attachment, I was just like, who is this man? So much wisdom and such a great slant on it. So anyways, we're going to dive into all that.
Speaker 1 (00:02:59) - But for the for the meantime, welcome to the show Adam.
Speaker 2 (00:03:01) - Thank you man. It's an honor to be here. I love your material as well. It's it's cool when two people get to meet and we get to love each other's work and then talk about it like this. This is fantastic. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Speaker 1 (00:03:11) - Yeah, yeah, me too as well. And, um, and I think, I think we're gonna we're gonna have some pretty cool places. Um, I was mentioning to you, my audience knows attachment theory, but when I heard you kind of integrate the more, um, physiological parts of it, I was really. I was really impressed. You know, I haven't really heard a lot of people do that. Typically, attachment theory is, you know, just the classic kind of, um, uh, you know, we're all trying to get towards secure attachment. We're either avoidant or we're anxious. And maybe some of us are, you know, completely, uh, disorganized in our attachment.
Speaker 1 (00:03:42) - But, um, you had a you had a different slant on it. And I wonder if we can maybe just jump right in to the physiological components of attachment. Can you maybe start there?
Speaker 2 (00:03:50) - Absolutely, yes we can. You ready for this? There's five big brain chemicals we want to talk about five of them now there's more than that. But there's five we need to really focus on when it comes to attachment. The first is oxytocin right. This is supposed to be released between mother and child the moment you're born, uh, when you breastfeed, when mom holds you, when she kisses you, when she talks to you, then we have mirroring neurons in our brain. When she's talking to us, we're supposed to mirror back to her and experience those feelings and those all of that experience. And if she's doing that and talking with us, we see that we are worthy of her time and attention. We get oxytocin. Oxytocin releases as adults as well. When we are warm, when we're cared for, we're loved.
Speaker 2 (00:04:27) - When we have great conversations during foreplay, during holding hands, taking a walk, all kinds of great times. Oxytocin is supposed to release, uh, Gaba gamma amino bi uric acid releases in the presence of oxytocin. So if you have a bunch of oxytocin, you release Gaba. Now Gaba is an inhibitory neurotransmitter that shuts down cortisol. It shortens the release of it shortens the amount that is the length that lingers in your system. It shuts down the severity of the release. So these two right here are a combination of saying I don't have to be scared or upset or depressed because somebody loves me, right. That's oxytocin and Gaba. And then you've got vasopressin. We call it vasopressin oversees. Uh, vasopressin is an is a hormone released when we solve stress together, we achieve challenges and overcome them together. When we fix problems together, it's your brain's way of saying this person is an asset. They're an ally. When I am stressed out, they will help. Men especially have more receptors for vasopressin than women do.
Speaker 2 (00:05:26) - Women have them, but we get more. Um. Who knew? Men are goal oriented, right? The last one that we want to talk about here before the big one is serotonin. Now, serotonin is energy level. It's mood. It's it's your well-being. It comes from great conversation, from meditation, taken from walks in the park. It comes from good meals, right? It comes from rich, healthy, whole food. Serotonin is is your general sense of well-being. And the last one is dopamine, right. Dopamine is the sugar binge. Basically. That felt good. That felt good. That felt good. It's supposed to be an informer about what feels good for you and little bursts of energy. It's not supposed to be everything. But now when you have attachment issues, you don't connect much with other people, so you're not going to get much oxytocin. If you have anxious attachment, you're going to believe you don't deserve oxytocin. If you have avoidant attachment, you're going to believe oxytocin is scary because you're vulnerable.
Speaker 2 (00:06:19) - When you don't get much oxytocin, you become very mechanical, very tactical, very scared. You also don't release much Gaba. So you're going to be more anxious, more likely to get depressed. You're going to have, um, actually melatonin issues, most likely in chronic insomnia issues. Right. Also, lack of oxytocin leads to chronic pain or higher levels of pain. Um Gabba Gabba means that you're not going to process magnesium as well. So your muscles are going to cramp up. They're going to get stiff, you're going to get sore for minutes in the neck and the shoulders, especially for women. It's in the back of the skull, lower back, um, all throughout your body as well. When you don't solve problems with other people because you don't believe it's possible, you have to solve them alone, or you have to just run away and hide. Then you also don't get much by suppressing. And when you don't get much faster person, you really don't feel safe because you don't have anybody around you who solves problems with you.
Speaker 2 (00:07:03) - So when a problem hits, you're terrified again, because Gaba is also missing. Then you won't have much serotonin, because we get a tremendous amount of that through our relationships, and we're supposed to get it fulfilled through our relationships. A lot of guys who start off miserable and anxious and depressed, they hit fitness really hard and clean food really hard because it makes them feel good, because they get a little serotonin, but they don't get anywhere near the amounts that they're supposed to get through their relationships. So then your brain looks like this. Now. Dopamine is always there. Dopamine is your friend who never goes away, but dopamine is not supposed to drive the show. And when you have attachment issues, this is what your brain looks like. Is constantly cycling dopamine. I had a bad day. Dopamine to feel better. I'm really tired. Dopamine to bring my energy levels up. I'm stressed. Dopamine to cope. It's an endless dopamine cycle. So you're a dopamine junkie in your relationships and your addictions and your behaviors.
Speaker 2 (00:07:53) - That's the brain right there with attachment man.
Speaker 1 (00:07:57) - So beautifully said. Let's talk about actually I want to talk about all of these. Let's talk about dopamine. Maybe maybe first. Sure. So so dopamine I feel like the statement you just made about how reliant we've become on dopamine is that wouldn't have been justified 20 years ago. I mean, maybe to some extent, but not to the same degree now, I think, between Zuckerberg and some of these other guys, they very, like, astutely figured out that if they can tap into our dopamine, um, mechanisms, they can keep us bonded to these devices and these platforms for, you know, unhealthy amounts of time. Uh, is that a it's.
Speaker 2 (00:08:33) - Even it's even worse than that, though. Wait a minute, wait a minute. You're scrolling Twitter or X or whatever they call it. You're scrolling Twitter. You see a post, it's all about Bitcoin. You click on Bitcoin, right, you click on that, you read it, then you want to read a couple of the replies.
Speaker 2 (00:08:46) - So you go down and here's an OnlyFans girl that has posted herself. Butt cheeks spread wide and she says, hey, come check me out. Instantly you get a drip of dopamine and if your brain is like this, you go into it and it's very hard for you not to click that link. That's why those girls hire teams and bot and bots and everything to go out and spam their link everywhere, because it gives you a just, just a little drop of dopamine to pull you in. That's how dangerous this is. That's what our world is right now. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:09:13) - And and it's like you said, it's everywhere. And you don't even have to look for it now. It literally comes and finds you.
Speaker 2 (00:09:20) - You have to blind yourself to it.
Speaker 1 (00:09:21) - Yeah. Right. So okay. I mean, maybe we're here a little bit earlier than I was expecting, but that's fine for, for people who are experiencing, you know, porn addiction or some sort of repetitive sexual misbehavior. Um, how does that factor into this kind of concoction of neurotransmitters that you just laid out to us? Obviously, dopamine is sort of the the hook that kind of gets people in.
Speaker 1 (00:09:42) - But I have to imagine, like, I know oxytocin is sort of like the boomerang chemical, right? Like it keeps you coming back again and again and again. Obviously serotonin plays into that. Um, are these all at play in in an addiction cycle as well? Oh my.
Speaker 2 (00:09:56) - Goodness. So I have I have worked through the course of my 15 years of doing this. I've worked at times with people who are addicted to heroin. And they also had anxious attachment. And they also had porn addiction. Usually, often, um, they will tell that what they've told me. I've asked many of them just just to get clarification, and they've told me the dopamine out of all of those is the easiest to fix. The dopamine addictions, like they're they're little temptations, but you can set them aside. They don't run your life so and so I asked her.
Speaker 1 (00:10:21) - And that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:10:22) - Yeah, sugar porn, video games, stuff like that little stuff. Right. It's a little stuff, but but you just jump into it a little bit.
Speaker 2 (00:10:29) - Um, what? They have told me that I said, clarify for me what's what's harder to kick is it is it is it heroin like opium or is it oxytocin? And they say, boy, heroin's tough, but once you withdraw from it and get off of it for a while, you're okay. Oxytocin never goes away. They said oxytocin addictions never go away. And it's always horrible and it's always worse. They say oxytocin addictions feel worse to come off of than heroin because you never, you know, it's never going to get better. It's never going to go away. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:10:59) - Huh. And can oxytocin be present in any addiction or does it depend on the nature of the addiction?
Speaker 2 (00:11:05) - What's fun is oxytocin. We get it with other humans. That's where we're supposed to get it. So a lot of people with anxious attachment, they they get a little bit as children or they get it inconsistently from their parents and their parents give some, but then pull back and get stressed out or angry, then give some, then pull back, get stressed out and angry.
Speaker 2 (00:11:24) - So the child learns I have to earn endless approval from other people all the time, and I'm helpless to get my addiction fed. I need to earn approval to get my addiction fed. So they become chronic, obsessive people pleasers men and women who are just out there doing anything for that next fix of being accepted. That's an oxytocin addiction. People will chase that for 70 years.
Speaker 1 (00:11:45) - Got it. So it's not necessarily the the substance or the behavior they're addicted to. It's actually the social component that keeps that kind of oxytocin.
Speaker 2 (00:11:53) - Prevalent, that release the release in their brain of oxytocin, which they usually also associate with feeling safe. And then that Gaba, it literally makes you feel safe to have it. And without it, you feel very unsafe and terrified. And the withdrawals don't go away.
Speaker 1 (00:12:07) - Huh? Now. So why is that safety part so important? Because there's like a huge message around psychological safety now. Right. And like whether it's a parenting context or dating or, you know, marriage, obviously.
Speaker 1 (00:12:17) - Um, why is that security bit so important for us?
Speaker 2 (00:12:21) - You look back, evolutionary psychology wise, you look back 20,000 years ago, we hadn't even invented agriculture yet. Hunter gatherer tribes. Our brains have not really changed much since then, to be honest with you. We have. We have bigger, bigger sticks and more shiny lights. But. But we haven't really changed much brain wise. And back then, your survival was your. Work. Your network was life. Your network was was life or death for you, especially as a tiny child. So if your brain is a tiny child, says, for some reason mom keeps loving me, but then not loving me and loving me and not loving me. If she stops loving me long enough, I will starve to death and die in the forest because she'll leave me. So it welds acceptance and love together with death, life and death. So it activates your limbic system. Everything. Everything ties in together for life and death. So as you grow up in the world, you don't feel safe.
Speaker 2 (00:13:10) - It clicks you into a survival state. That's actually based on what the research I've been reading, the reason it shows that this attachment issues are a survival state that are not supposed to be permanent. They're supposed to activate. If you grow up in an environment where people are unlikely to share resources or unlikely to support you or help you, so in that context, it makes sense, right? Vikings raid. They attack your village, they burn it to the ground. You're a little three year old. You're wandering around in the ashes. What are you going to do? Well, you're not just going to approach random strangers and say, hi, let's work together. It'll be wonderful. You're going to either be people pleasing to get picked up and kept safe. Research shows women are more likely to have anxious attachment that way, or you become avoidant, where you are more likely to maybe manipulate other people, or stay away from other people, or manage other people. You'll be very tactical. Only money and resources make you feel safe.
Speaker 2 (00:13:58) - You trust no one. Men are more likely to have that one. So this is like in the aftermath of an attack when everybody is destroyed and everybody is starving and fighting for survival. You get attachment issues and then you're supposed to click out of them. Once you develop enough of a social connection, enough of a village again, or bonding that you start releasing oxytocin, then release Gaba, then that releases the survival state and you go into a healthy state. All all the movies about warriors and and men, they look down on other men who settle and have a wife. They say, oh, he's got soft. That's his survival state has clicked off because he now has oxytocin with his wife. That's that's usually what that means. So it's supposed to be temporary. But for many of us that has become a way of living even in the modern world.
Speaker 1 (00:14:43) - Yeah. And, um, normalized. Right. Like it's almost like you said, like you're kind of the, the softy or the weirdo to just have a stable marriage and, you know, want to be with your kids more than wanting to be at work and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1 (00:14:57) - Right? Like the state of affairs have changed quite a bit.
Speaker 2 (00:14:59) - It's terrible. It's terrible. I have I've been married for 15 years, and my wife and I are expecting our fifth child now, and people look at me and say, well, thank you. People look at me and say how? And I say, well, we're just we're honest with each other about everything. We have meetings to discuss how the relationship's going and we both want the relationship to continue. So we do the work to make it work. And that sounds impossible for some people because they can't imagine being able to do that because because relationships happen to them, anxious, attached people, they don't know how to make them happen, or avoidant people, they don't believe that other people will work with them. So they try to solve everything completely alone. That's why relationships fall apart. That's why something an estimated 98% of dating relationships crumble and fall apart. That's why here in America, uh, 38% of all first marriages collapse into divorce is because people can't work together anymore.
Speaker 1 (00:15:49) - That's a wild well, how much of that do you think has to do with the fact that. Well, actually, that's that you just said like, people are not growing up seeing healthy marriages modeled for them. Right? And sometimes they're not seeing marriage at all. Like we know Fatherlessness is unfortunately at an all time high. How much does that factor into people's expectations? And, you know, idea of what marriage should be and look like?
Speaker 2 (00:16:09) - Yeah. Oh, man. I've worked with people who were adopted at birth and placed into a loving family and adopted family that didn't tell them they were adopted till they were 18, but the kids still had attachment issues and no one could figure out why. They were a nervous, anxious mess. And I've worked with extensively with that up to who find out later that they were adopted. It's not it's not something that that we can treat lightly because everybody is experiencing the loss of a biological parent. Right. The research now shows it's interesting that a baby knows its moms smell when they're born.
Speaker 2 (00:16:46) - So when the baby is adopted at birth, it smells that none of these people around it smell. Right. So it believes it has been stolen. This is why a lot of kids adopted at birth actually have dreams or or daydreams that their real family will show up and they don't understand why, and they always feel like an outcast. Or they feel different, even if they're genuinely loved. It's because they remember that smell. Their family is not, is not them. Um, it's so powerful. This is weird. But the research shows that when a strange parents and children link up later in life, if the child never met them, there's a very high risk of of misdirected romantic and sexual feelings that can often lead to incest in those cases, because the feeling of reconnection with someone who smells like you and has the same pheromones is so overwhelmingly powerful. But so if your father is gone and you're raised by a stepfather, you know, where is dad? Why didn't dad love me enough to say something? About me is unlovable.
Speaker 2 (00:17:41) - Where dad left me, it's this little two year old brain. It starts doing that math and it doesn't understand. Oh, dad had social issues. Dad had economic issues. Dad is an alcoholic. Dad is off over here. Mom and dad don't get along. Mom is the problem. The brain doesn't understand that. The brain starts at the default of I am the problem. That's anxious attachment. Or if everyone's a mess and they're all screaming at each other, the brain says, I can never trust anybody. No one solves problems with me. People treat me like crap. When a problem arises, I get treated like garbage. I have to solve problems silently in my room without anyone finding out about it. Avoiding attachment. It's getting so much worse. Yes, it's the way that we are raised, and it's also the way that society then progresses and continues, where people then just shuttle off and they they work alone. They live alone, they do very, very little. That's interactive. They are terribly afraid.
Speaker 2 (00:18:28) - The research shows about 66% of millennial men now have crushing loneliness every single day. 66% of men. Now it's it's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. And yes, it's getting worse.
Speaker 1 (00:18:43) - Huh. Let's talk about that. Because the if I were to survey my clients and, you know, the thousands of people we've worked with over the last few years and ask them, hey, you know, when you look back on maybe some of your worst relapses, what was the main trigger, you know, what was the what was the state or the condition that you were in top of that list, I guarantee you, is loneliness top top three for sure. Boredom, loneliness. Those are always like in tandem. Why are men in particular so lonely now? Like, you kind of alluded to the fact that obviously we become a very independent, valuing kind of culture. And so in becoming more independent, maybe that's a little bit extreme. And now guys aren't getting married. Uh, we're working from home. We're stuck out in our little offices, not really interacting.
Speaker 1 (00:19:27) - Uh, my wife and I were just having a conversation about, um, someone in our family who is, you know, he's a 15, 16 year old kid. And we just realized the other day, like, oh, my gosh, he does not know how to hold the conversation. He's a sweet kid. And it's it's not that he's antisocial, but like, you see the way he interacts and we're like, were we like that when we were 16? You know, like kind of seeing a shift generationally. Um, is there anything in particular you've observed that stands out for why men in particular are struggling with loneliness so much?
Speaker 2 (00:19:56) - This is going to be really, really controversial and really unpopular. So you and I are going to get yelled at for this. But men in the West are raised to appease women as our method of safety and of getting our needs met. Men in the West for generations have been lost and lost and lost. Killed in wars, walked away. Driven away.
Speaker 2 (00:20:18) - Masculinity has been driven out to the point that men now grow up as boys, primarily with single moms, or with really strong moms and weak fathers and emotionally absent fathers, or physically absent fathers. Men grow up without a male network anymore. They're not initiated into vasopressin bonding. Men need to be initiated into vasopressin bonding with other men and know how to do that. They know how to solve problems with other men and they are instead trained. I need to stay safe by pleasing the women around me mom, grandma, my aunts. I must please women and neglect and decrease my masculinity and increase my appeal to them and make them happy so that I will be safe. And some men dive into that. Some men play that game long enough to get their own power and strength and then run away. Some men become really, really angry and flip the other direction and try to become the one with power and take control. But men are not taught to be men anymore, and men need other men. And there's very few men to connect with right now.
Speaker 1 (00:21:19) - Yeah. So I'm curious, and I'm glad you mentioned the vasopressin bonding. And for people who didn't catch that, that is bonding by solving problems together, which is meant to exist probably in pretty much every dimension of relationship you'll experience, right? Like professional, marital, and certainly with your parents or your and your dad in particular. So is it that men are not experiencing vasopressin bonding as well, in addition to the overvaluing of that kind of oxytocin bonding and appeasing the maternal figure? Is there then, that lack of vasopressin bonding?
Speaker 2 (00:21:51) - There's a couple things that we need to track, actually, and I'm glad you asked that question. So the male brain, it tends to go forward and back. It goes back to observe our observation areas in the back, observe problems and then forward to act upon those problems. Now the female brain goes back to observe and then back and forth across the hemispheres to analyze and analyze, analyze. That's why anxious women, they get paralyzed because of that. But men we are supposed to observe and then act upon.
Speaker 2 (00:22:13) - Now we're supposed to have data solutions in our head to solve problems, right? We're supposed to have the information. But men are not evolved to reinvent fire, reinvent the the spear, reinvent the wheel, reinvent every solution ever made. Men are designed to pass down information. We also vasopressin bond and oxytocin bond by teaching, by mentoring, by guiding. A lot of first time fathers, myself included, don't bond with their first child right away because they don't know how. Because men aren't necessarily meant to bond just through holding your baby and kissing its face and cooing at it. We can a little, but we were meant to bond with our child, mostly by teaching them. Usually about 6 to 12 months in, you can start teaching them things and then the bond just explode and you start teaching them everything and they eat it up, and that tells them they're worthy of your your time and attention. So they bond with you and feel safe and secure, but it bonds you to them as you teach and pass on your knowledge.
Speaker 2 (00:23:09) - I call this the male solution network. The male solution network is. All of our brains are meant to link up in this massive data node cluster and share solutions among all of us. And men don't have that anymore. Instead, we link up to women and say, please rescue me, please help me feel better. Please make me feel happy. Please take care of me. Please what am I supposed to do? And women just pat you on the head and treat you like a child who needs help. But most men have no idea. They are meant that you're not meant to be an island. You're meant to connect to this vast network of men sharing solutions. So now we have 3 billion men on this planet, 3.5 billion men wandering around not sharing solutions, completely isolated their little individual data nodes that are completely disconnected from everything else. And we're all running solution finding processes. And none of us know how because we're missing so much data. So we just get trapped. We fall into despair.
Speaker 2 (00:24:00) - We get hopeless. We harm ourselves. We erase ourselves, all kinds of things because we just give up. That's why in the state we are.
Speaker 1 (00:24:09) - It's so interesting what you said about teaching because I like I, I definitely like for me, I feel like teaching is like the thing that God put me on this planet for, you know, I love it. I love it so much. And when I just had my, my first, um, last, well, a month and a half ago.
Speaker 2 (00:24:24) - Uh, relations.
Speaker 1 (00:24:25) - Thank you. Yeah. Really exciting. And it's so funny because, um, just seeing the differences between what my wife and I did instinctively, like you said, my wife obviously very affectionate, you know, kissing and cooing and cuddling. And obviously I love that, too. Like, who doesn't want to cuddle a newborn? But, um, I found myself and my my, my wife took videos of it. She thought it was the funniest thing, but I found myself teaching him things, obviously teaching them things that he cannot understand or comprehend, like how to drive a car.
Speaker 1 (00:24:50) - But it was so bonding for me. I loved it, and I actually just thought that was because, like, I'm a teacher, but you're saying that. Actually fathers in general like this is part of vasopressin. Bonding is just teaching and imparting that knowledge to your kids.
Speaker 2 (00:25:01) - A lot of fathers contact me on all my various platforms, Twitter or Instagram or wherever, and they say, Adam, I need to I need to ask you something. It's really sensitive and I'm afraid. I'm afraid that I'm doing something wrong. I just don't feel as close to my child as my wife seems to. Am I doing something wrong? Am I a bad dad? And I say, no, you're a great dad because you actually care that you're not feeling as close to your child, but it's that you haven't been able to teach them yet. So get ready. My. My oldest son is seven. When you can teach them, the more you can teach them, the closer you're going to feel to those kids.
Speaker 2 (00:25:30) - It's the teaching is is almost everything for you, man. Just lean into that. Enjoy it.
Speaker 1 (00:25:36) - Yeah, that's really cool. So okay then the I guess the other facet of vasopressin bonding that I found really helpful. I heard you talk about this on mine pump, um, is how men men are big on vasopressin bonding even in a marriage. That's really what they need. They need solving problems together. And I can't think of how many times I've told my wife where I'm like, you remember the one time that we, you know, we did this project together like we're both musicians. You know, I used to be a professional musician before I got into this career. And so we've done albums together and stuff, and I love it because I feel like, yeah, we're we're doing something and we're doing it together and we're going places. And it's not that she doesn't love it because she she definitely does. But I can tell that, like, the whole, like doing things together is not the same for her as it is for me.
Speaker 1 (00:26:22) - Uh, for her, it's more about the oxytocin bonding, right? It's about she wants to hear about my inner life and how, you know, how did your interview with Adam go? How did you feel while you were doing it? Um, can you talk a little bit about just that dynamic that exists in a marriage and how to especially, I think, from a male lens, like we really need reminders about this to really do this. Well.
Speaker 3 (00:26:40) - Um hum.
Speaker 2 (00:26:41) - Um, so I was reading an interesting research paper not that long ago that shows that vasopressin is one of the key indicators of a long term successful marriage, that you need to initiate that vasopressin bonding periodically to build that bond again and renew it so that when a big crisis hits, the man doesn't go get comfort from his secretary and then wander off and have and marry her instead. Right. It's it's you. You lean in together and bond together. And women know this instinctively, which is why when they feel bored or stuck in a rut, they introduce a new set of stress and say, let's do something new.
Speaker 2 (00:27:15) - Let's try something fun, let's do something experimental. Let's. And they start introducing a little bit of stress that you solve together to try to vasopressin bond you. So you need to be doing challenges and tasks and goals. You know, rebuild a car, redo your house. You know, build something back, repair something, you know, break the faucet and then fix it together to couple whatever you've got to do. Because the research also that I was reading was interesting. It said that that actually activates for men that vasopressin bonding, but then they feel closer to their partner. So then they desire oxytocin bonding to feel close because the brain says, I want that person with me all the time. Let's initiate oxytocin bonding so they feel good. And then you start becoming very affectionate, very warm, very caring. You're more likely to share because you also trust them and feel safe with that person. Then you initiate that oxytocin bonding. And this is actually what rekindles the honeymoon phase. You know how everybody says, oh, the first year is great, and after that you'll never reach that level of love and passion ever again.
Speaker 2 (00:28:09) - No, no, no vasopressin bonding and then oxytocin bonding. It renews the honeymoon phase. You can have 20 honeymoon phases if you want, throughout the course of your relationship. Um, but men, men value solving problems together. Unless they're avoidant, then they have only value solving problems alone. And they don't solve problems with their woman at all. And so women will feel left out. They'll feel useless. They'll feel like you have no, no desire to connect with them. If you don't oxytocin bond with them. The message you send is, I don't want to be close to you. I don't want you to be irreplaceable. I want you to stay replaceable in my life. I want dopamine from you. I only want to feel good from you and then go do my life after that, away from you. And that's the message men accidentally send to their wives when they don't oxytocin bonds. So you must prioritize opening up about your stupid feelings. Open up about how you think, how you feel about the sandwich you're eating, right? All this stuff men are like, why don't you want to know this? Because you become predictable.
Speaker 2 (00:29:03) - You become safe. She becomes useful. She becomes valuable. She actually becomes irreplaceable. The more that she knows you, the more she can predict your needs and care for you. The more she can comfort you, the more she can be your constant, faithful companion. Then when she's 45. And sorry ladies, but you get a little bit wrinkly around 40, 45, 50, right? You start things just don't hold up the way that they used to. Things don't quite look the way that they used to. When that happens, she doesn't have to compete with the 20 year old women because she's not replaceable. If she's replaceable, she has to compete with them endlessly, forever. And she's always unhappy and always unsteady. But if she's irreplaceable to you and she's got 20 years of data on you, and she is that level of a faithful, loving companion who makes your life better and solves problems with you, and that you're invested in her and you are showing her that you're invested in her.
Speaker 2 (00:29:54) - Then she is calm and. And she knows nobody can compete with her. It's a huge, huge level of security for women.
Speaker 1 (00:30:01) - That's a big deal. And I guess that's really interesting because I think I think that actually answers a lot of questions for guys about, you know, longevity in a relationship. And the key of having kind of bonding on both fronts throughout it. Um, you use an example of how if you don't get the vasopressin bonding, um, a guy is maybe more likely to, you know, have an affair or start looking elsewhere. But affairs and those kinds of things, I have to imagine that's more dopamine bonding than an oxytocin bond. Is that correct? So is that kind of your brain working against you?
Speaker 2 (00:30:33) - Yes. Now, you're not wrong. Men often will have an affair during a crisis when they're they're stressed out. Uh, men will have an affair when the dopamine wears off. If they're avoidant attached, the dopamine wears off at about 6 to 12, so about 6 to 8 months.
Speaker 2 (00:30:48) - Which is why we say the first 6 to 8 months of a relationship are fake is because of attachment issues. So men with avoidance, they're dopamine dependent in their relationship. So they'll often have an affair, maybe at one year, maybe at two years, right. When it doesn't feel good anymore. It depends. Um, but especially, um, when you have your first child. A lot of men have affairs during the birth of their first child because they're not bonded with the wife. They haven't solved problems together as a team. So he feels lonely. He doesn't have her attention. It's harder. It's harder to be physically intimate. And you know this. After the first six weeks of being having a baby, after the first six months of having a baby, it can be very difficult.
Speaker 1 (00:31:25) - It's pretty dry over here right now. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:31:27) - She she she's got a living creature attached to her at all times. It's hard to pry them apart. So you're you're pretty much left living like a monk, right? For six months almost.
Speaker 2 (00:31:36) - It's it's difficult. Um, a lot of men don't survive that period. Faithfully. A lot of men, because they aren't oxytocin bonded or vasopressin bonded. They don't know how to talk with their wife. They don't know how to ask for their needs to get met. They don't know how to work with her to solve the problem or build a compromise. They don't even believe she will. They just say, oh, I guess no one will ever love me again. And then they just sit there miserable and get more and more hopeless until someone else gives them some dopamine, and then they start saying, hmm. That feels pretty good. And they'll follow that other person out and have a dopamine relationship. Interestingly, that's why a lot of men will come back and say, hey, baby, I she didn't. She meant nothing to me, I swear. Well, he's actually right. She didn't mean a human connection like oxytocin. Usually she meant dopamine. He was binging her the way he would binge, uh, chocolate cake or porn or a video game.
Speaker 2 (00:32:24) - It's. It's a binge.
Speaker 1 (00:32:25) - Hmm. So that how how does somebody reconcile that? Like, you know, you're talking to an audience of, you know, people that that have probably were exposed to porn at a young age? I've been watching it quite a bit, are fighting that conditioning that obviously goes deep in the brain stem. And, um, it sounds like you're saying that the oxytocin and the vasopressin bonding is, is stronger, but is it strong enough to just if you do that really well, can it supersede the dopamine mechanisms in your brain or how do you fight that?
Speaker 2 (00:32:55) - The vast majority of my coaching clients and the male coaching clients who come to me have porn issues, they have porn issues, temptation issues, they have some kind of dopamine issue. And it's usually related to porn because porn is so easily accessible at any moment. Like I said, you have to fight it off. You're just you're cruising comments section with like covering your eyes, like, um, so many of them have that porn issue and they ask me, Adam, how am I going to fix this? And I say, you're you're trying to treat a symptom.
Speaker 2 (00:33:21) - The porn issue is the symptom. Yes, we can treat the symptom, but then the issue is just going to come back. It's going to keep coming back. The issue is your brain doing this. And then it's just I need to feel good while porn. I need to feel better. Porn. I'm really tired. Porn will help me. I'm really sad. Porn will help me. I'm really lonely. Porn will help me. But when you have all of this, it's like. Do you constantly crave candy? All the time? 24 over seven? Well, then you probably have massive deficiencies in your diet that are not being covered, and there's probably a huge problem in your life. Stress issues and nutrition issues, right? When you eat clean, healthy food, when you have rich protein and you eat steak and vegetables and you fill your diet with these things. Number one, you don't have much room for candy. But number two, you won't crave it anywhere near as much, and especially if you also decrease some of the stress load in your life, then you also won't crave that candy.
Speaker 2 (00:34:12) - You just you just won't. It's not that you'll never eat candy again, but you. The cravings won't be there where you feel compelled to eat candy, especially all the time. Same thing with pornography. When you fix your attachment and then build healthy, fulfilling relationships, your nutrition and your stress gets massively improved, then you're not craving the candy of pornography all the time.
Speaker 1 (00:34:32) - Yeah, that makes perfect sense because like we say, porn is fast food. Intimacy, right? Temporarily satisfies the cravings, but they're going to come back. It's when you really get those needs met in more meaningful ways, like the vasopressin, oxytocin, oxytocin bonding. That's when things can change.
Speaker 2 (00:34:48) - Um really quick go ahead. Some something that I think you'll, you'll, you'll you because you work with people and you extensively help men with porn issues and I. Love your work on this. It's so needed. Um, have you noticed that a lot of young men, sometimes in their 20s and 30s, have erectile dysfunction and don't know why? Yes, yes.
Speaker 2 (00:35:05) - So a couple of things that they're doing. Number one, they're fetishizing the pornography, actually the experience of of masturbation themselves that has become their only mechanism of understanding how to release and how to have that release. It's also a dopamine cycle where they're obsessively with the dopamine. But here's what's interesting is once they get into a sexual experience with a partner, a lot of those men will fixate on body parts or on specific actions that now have have programmed with that dopamine. And so they're trying to get in her body parts and look at her body parts and feel her body parts. And the actions themselves have to have novelty, so things have to escalate. Meanwhile, she's sitting there like, I'm still here. Hi, hi. And he's like, oh, I forgot you were in the room. And that's why a lot of times when, when you have a massive porn issue, unfortunately you will not be very good in bed with a long term loving partner who wants to connect with you. Now, the research is interesting on this.
Speaker 2 (00:35:57) - Oxytocin can be a huge driver of male erection, and a lot of those men have incredibly low oxytocin and then very high stress and performance issues and performance anxiety. So they get into a relationship, they have performance anxiety. They try to act like the porn actors. They have very low oxytocin. Your erection is almost doomed from the start. And then you're going to just fixate on the worst experiences. And she's not having a good time. You're going to get feedback that she's not having a fun time. She's just staying, staring at the ceiling, waiting for it to be done. And you're going to think it's awful, and then you're going to back off and run away. And every time you do and have a bad experience, it's actually going to make you more afraid during the next experience. So number one thing I train my guys on when we fix attachment, if they have that erection issue, is start leaning in and having oxytocin during the foreplay process. Build your oxytocin on purpose. It's not just for women.
Speaker 2 (00:36:45) - Do foreplay during the oxytocin. During that process, start enjoying that. Start talking with her about what she actually enjoys in bed, because it's going to be very different from jackhammering during pornography, so you'll be very different and then start kissing more, start spending more time on on her face and around her and have an interactive human experience. And you will find that your erection is much, much more powerful and her desire goes up. Her enjoyment will go up. That will loop back and increase your arousal and your desire. Everything will work better, but it has to be an interactive human experience with conversation and with foreplay. Both of those have to be at play, and when you do that, guys are like, well, that's all for women. Well, it helps you get an erection. So if you want to have an erection, do this process.
Speaker 1 (00:37:27) - That's beautifully said, man. And I mean, the stats are pretty clear. Like, uh, erectile dysfunction is at an all time high.
Speaker 1 (00:37:33) - It's not exclusively because of pornography. You know, there's a higher stress levels and other things. But, um, let's not kid ourselves. We know that the deconditioning of porn is, uh, is a huge player. So I think that's that's really insightful in a, in a healthy relationship, is there like a good ratio of vasopressin to oxytocin bonding? Because I when I reflect on my own marriage, um, I don't feel like we do nearly as much vasopressin bonding is oxytocin. And I'm totally fine with that because I think, I think when we when we are doing something together, it's usually something a bit bigger and it's significant enough. But I don't, I don't I just got me thinking like, is there a ratio to this that we should be aiming for? Or how do you know when it's in a good balance for the relationship?
Speaker 2 (00:38:17) - I haven't seen much research on a ratio yet. I would love to see if we could do that research.
Speaker 1 (00:38:21) - That'd be hard to quantify. Probably that would.
Speaker 2 (00:38:23) - That would be hard. Um, I will say that the measurements they have taken in couples who stay together long term, it's high, vasopressin is high. So just keep doing it. Whenever you don't feel connected as a man, usually that means you need some vasopressin. If you ever don't feel loved, you probably need oxytocin. Same thing with women. If they feel like they're stress free or their their trust in you is going down and they're snipping at you a little bit more oxytocin. Usually they need oxytocin if they feel uncertain of you. Usually vasopressin is what it is. If they if they aren't feeling trusted and safe around you, vasopressin if they aren't feeling cuddly and warm in your presence, usually oxytocin. Those are the things that you need to track. Just the more you can do of both, the better. Something super easy that couples used to do that they don't do much anymore. But, uh, jigsaw puzzle. All right. Oh, you think of old people sitting there in the evening.
Speaker 2 (00:39:16) - They have their jigsaw puzzle and they do the little pieces together, and that's actually vasopressin solving a puzzle together, uh, playing cooperative games together on your phones.
Speaker 1 (00:39:25) - Cooperative games. Emphasis on cooperative.
Speaker 4 (00:39:28) - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:39:29) - Um, but doing a little cooperative gaming a little bit doesn't even have to be hardcore games, right? I hear all the wives up there saying, I can't play. No, you can, you can play. There's there's plenty of cooperative games out there that you can play. Um, just solving little things together. Hey, you know what? How can we improve the house today? What? Can we pay off a little debt together? Can we work on some projects together? Little projects? Totally fine. But the more you feed that just continuously do it, it's like getting your oil changed in your. Car. You don't. You don't think about it. You just track it and you keep doing it. Do the same thing with oxytocin and with vasopressin. Even going camping, even going camping is a little bit of vasopressin, because you all have to survive the experience together.
Speaker 2 (00:40:06) - And that is useful.
Speaker 1 (00:40:08) - That's really cool. That makes a lot of sense. I heard you use a term recently that I've never heard anybody used before, but it really connected some dots for me. And that is the concept of micro cheating, which I think has become, um, you know, almost mainstream today and especially with what we talked about earlier, just the prevalence of pornographic content in, you know, seemingly harmless places. Can you talk a little bit about that? And if a client is coming to you and you observe this kind of micro cheating behavior, how are you helping them stop that behavior?
Speaker 3 (00:40:38) - Mhm. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:40:39) - Micro cheating is an interesting term. Women know exactly what it means the moment they hear it. And guys are like that is not real. It's either cheating or it's not. Um, it's, it's when you are sitting there on the ends of the couch and you're not talking to your partner, there's a movie on and you're cruising porn and she doesn't know it. It's it's also women, though.
Speaker 2 (00:40:57) - If you're talking to your ex and your partner doesn't know it, and you're in a rough patch and you're texting your ex just as friends, just as friends to catch up and see how they're doing right. And you're not telling your partner explicitly, not letting your partner know what you're doing. They don't know you're in contact with an ex, right? It's when you sign up for an OnlyFans and your partner doesn't know it and you're enjoying that material on the side. It's the secrets that you are doing that is filling your dopamine and making you feel a little bit of sexual energy, a little bit of romantic energy, just a just a little bit to feel a little bit better. It's you. It's it's the it's the equivalent of stopping on the way home, picking up McDonald's and wolfing it down in the car so that your wife doesn't know you ate at McDonald's that day. Right? It's all just a little bit won't hurt. She doesn't know it's the she doesn't know or he doesn't know a little bit won't hurt kind of feeling.
Speaker 2 (00:41:46) - But when it comes to sexual or romantic energy is what that is. And it's a problem. It's a problem because it indicates, number one, that you guys are keeping secrets. Number one, that you have a neat number, two, that you have a need that you're not conveying to your partner. Hey, I am feeling lonely. Hey, I don't I need some sexual energy. Hey, I, I'm just, I need you, I need, I need my partner. Where are you at? How can how can we fulfill this together? It's turning that desire outward from the relationship into fulfilling it yourself, but with somebody else's help. Um, that's that's micro cheating, guys. That's not good. It's. It doesn't mean you're a bad person, but it means that you are not on the pathway to a fulfilling or long lasting romantic relationship. You are going to detonate at some point, and micro cheating very often turns into real cheating. It very often. Unfortunately, a lot of my guys come to me, Adam, and first time I hear from them, Adam, you know, I didn't listen to my wife that pornography and OnlyFans would be a problem.
Speaker 2 (00:42:43) - And then I just got back from visiting a prostitute, and I don't know what to do with my marriage at this point. I can't believe I did this. Okay, let's try to rebuild that. Let's let's figure that one out together. That's it can escalate. You guys don't don't don't pretend it can't. Dopamine is a huge thing. And there's a big slide on dopamine.
Speaker 1 (00:43:01) - Yeah. Yeah we get those calls too. And I would say I don't know that it's even that it can escalate. I think it just inevitably does because the brain gets desensitized and seeks novelty in one way or the other. Right?
Speaker 2 (00:43:12) - Yes, yes. Very few people that dopamine binge are able to withstand it and control it to the level where it won't escalate. That's why pornography you starts out as vanilla and goes to the most dark, crazy, overwhelming amounts of stuff that you could possibly imagine that you would like guys wearing. Like, you know, the the bracelets, like the medical bracelets, but it says erased my browser history in case of death.
Speaker 2 (00:43:33) - Like that level of material. You don't start there from day one. You escalate to there because you need more dopamine than you're getting from the vanilla stuff. Dopamine is a hell of a drug.
Speaker 1 (00:43:43) - Yeah, yeah, seriously. And that's that's what we find is like people, they start to watch more extreme content. And then usually at some point it's no longer like the pixels no longer are enough. And then they end up, you know, in a brothel or whatever it might be doing stuff they never thought they would do. Yep. Um, I have to ask, like, how did how did this all come about for you? Like this, this interest in attachment theory in particular? Um, and, you know, like you the thing I've really appreciated about you and why I actually wanted you on the podcast is because in addition to being the wealth of knowledge, you're actually living it out. Like you mentioned this hilarious story about how your wife has donated, like, hundreds of gallons of breastmilk to these banks because the oxytocin bonding is so strong.
Speaker 1 (00:44:25) - And when it's strong in a woman, producing breast milk is like not a challenge. I told that story to my wife. She just thought it was the most incredible thing. She thought it was so cool. But, um. But I like that you're that you're a practitioner on a personal level in addition to, you know, your professional level. But is there a story behind all this or what? What made this come about that got you into this area in the first place?
Speaker 2 (00:44:45) - Yeah, I grew up with attachment issues myself and, uh, in the Central Valley of California, where it's like, I don't want to call it ground zero for attachment issues. But it was it was devastated. The area was just absolutely devastated. All my friends growing up, all the kids at school, massive attachment issues throughout the families, and I grew up thinking like something in me didn't. It didn't sit well with me. I didn't grow up thinking, this is normal. I grew up thinking, something's wrong here.
Speaker 2 (00:45:08) - Why is this so wrong? Why do people treat each other this way? Why are people acting this way? Why this doesn't make logical sense. Why would people do this? So when I was finally old enough, I started going to college and I said, I'm going to study this and figure this out. I went and got my master's degree in psychology and took about six years. Then I spent another three years apprenticing under different clinicians and teachers, was a nine year educational academic process and years in the field of and working with people I. Initially I specialized in extreme trauma. I thought trauma was the answer because going through school, they barely brushed across attachment issues at one point in attachment theory and then said, you don't really need to know this. It's for babies. If it's a grown up thing, it'll be a personality disorder. There's no way to work on attachment issues or treat it medically anyway, so don't really worry about it. Here's these other diagnoses you need to know, and we don't know where they come from.
Speaker 2 (00:45:58) - They just kind of pop up. So you dream of medication then you sort of manage their symptoms. So right I specialize in trauma to see if that was it. And I went into the worst, most brutal trauma cases that everybody else would turn down. I walked in when other people had given up. I walked in when five other experts had failed that person. And I was able to fix those trauma issues. But what I saw time and again was there was something under there from childhood, this belief that they wouldn't be loved, that no one would ever work with them, that they were utterly alone in this world. And the trauma was layered on top of that. Then I noticed the same thing in my non-severe clients who just had generalized anxiety disorder, or had depression or were coming in with a marriage issues. So I started checking for it everywhere. Then I read a fantastic book up here on my shelf, Doctor Robert Glover's No More Mr. Nice Guy, and his book was like a thunderbolt right into my brain of this is it.
Speaker 2 (00:46:45) - This was the missing piece. And so I set out and I said, I gotta, I gotta do this. I wrote this book above my head. Slaying your fear to hand out free. It's 100 pages to hand out. Free to my patients saying, here's your diagnosis, but here's the problem fix this, come back and we'll work on attachment and the issues together. And it was this overwhelming thing. I started leading talks at my clinic. I started teaching other providers. I and I carried it online. I had to teach it. So when I had children, it was a no brainer. Like, I'm going to raise my kids with the best attachment humanly possible. I'm going to build the marriage that has the best attachment possible, and I'm going to lead the world into healthy attachment as best as I can. Whoever wants to follow me, here I am. I'm here to help.
Speaker 1 (00:47:26) - Man, and you're doing it so well. Um, platforms all across the board. I know you just launched a podcast as well.
Speaker 1 (00:47:31) - Congratulations on that.
Speaker 2 (00:47:32) - Thank you, thank you. Yeah. The I wish you new podcast, uh, with my co-host Sarah Dawn Moore. We are taking attachment and relationships global. We're pulling in the biggest global experts we can from AI experts that talk to us about what that means for relationships, fitness experts, fashion experts, all these incredibly gifted, brilliant minds. And we're talking to them about what the future of relationships should look like to get us back on a healthy path.
Speaker 1 (00:47:57) - Oh man, it's so good if people do want to find out more. Adam, um, in addition to the podcast, anything else that that you recommend they check out?
Speaker 2 (00:48:04) - Oh, yeah. So the podcast is I Wish You knew. It's on every major platform. I am Adam Lane Smith, I'm on Adam Lane smith.com. You'll find my coaching, my private community, the Attachment Bootcamp video course that walks you through the ten step process of fixing your fixing your attachment. Um, I'm on Instagram is at Attachment Adam and I'm on YouTube as at attachment Adam I'm everywhere you want to be.
Speaker 2 (00:48:25) - You are welcome to contact me. I am here to help. Please help me. Help you.
Speaker 1 (00:48:30) - Yeah that's fantastic. And I'm going to ask one last bonus question for myself. Selfishly, uh, as a new father, um, what what have you done? Or what do you recommend to a new father who wants to instill secure attachment in his kids from a young age?
Speaker 5 (00:48:43) - Great question.
Speaker 2 (00:48:44) - I love this one. Um, act as though you are training your replacement in this world and that he needs to know everything you know so that when you are gone, he will be self-sufficient and fully understanding everything you understand. So explain everything to him in detail. Explain your decisions. Don't just say no because I'm your dad. That's why. Explain your decisions. Walk him through the walk your child through the decisions. Walk them through understanding what's happening and why. Help them understand. Treat them as an apprentice adult. You don't treat them like an invalid or a little child that's incapable. Don't treat them like a pet.
Speaker 2 (00:49:22) - Treat them like an apprentice adult who is very someday going to surpass you. Guide them to surpass you. That is the answer. And if you take that tactic, everything will go beautifully.
Speaker 1 (00:49:33) - Man. Wow. Perfect. Well, I have to say you were worth the hype, man. This was an incredible interview, a fountain of knowledge. Thanks for your time today and for speaking to the audience. Really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (00:49:43) - Thank you man, it was an honor to be here I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (00:49:46) - Well, there you have it. I know that that interview did not disappoint. You would not have made it this far if you weren't enjoying what you listen to. And we really have not had anybody on the show with that kind of a slant on attachment theory. So very grateful for Adam, very grateful for his work. Look, if you resonated with what he's talking about, you're hearing him. You're saying this guy is reading my mail, or this guy is speaking into areas of my life where I know I need more help.
Speaker 1 (00:50:13) - Look, go check his stuff out. He's got course content, he offers coaching services, he's got a boot camp. He's got a little bit of everything. And make sure you follow him on your socials as well, because he's putting out a lot of great content there. This guy is the man and he really is changing people's lives. And look, if maybe you heard this conversation and you're realizing, oh my gosh, I need to quit pornography, enough is enough. It's time. I'd love for you to check out our program, Deep Clean, where we help men tackle the roots of porn addiction without internet filters, without willpower and white knuckling and quitting cold turkey, we actually help you quit long term doing it the right way. And if you want to find out some more about what we do, you can click the link in the show notes to book a time. We'd love to speak with you and see if your situation is a good match for our program. So that's everything for today.
Speaker 1 (00:50:59) - I have a special ask, and I do ask this on most interviews, but I want to really take a moment and say, if you found some value in this, maybe you're in a relationship and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I think actually, I want I want what he's talking about. You know, I want healthy attachment for me and for my spouse or my girlfriend or maybe a friend, or maybe it's a parent. Whatever it is, make sure that you share this with them. The first time I listened to Adam Layne Smith, I actually shared that episode with my wife. We listened to it together on a drive, and we took a couple things that we've been applying to our marriage that have been really impactful, and it's all just because we sat down and listened to it together. So don't just do this for yourself. Share it with your significant other. Make sure they get on board as well, and watch your relationship flourish. Okay, that's everything for today guys. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (00:51:46) - Stay clean and we'll talk soon. Bye bye. Hey, everybody, it's Sathiya Again, thanks for listening. To unleash the man within. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about a free e-book that I wrote for you, called The Ultimate Guide to Porn Recovery. It provides a basic framework for the recovery process and a few of my top tips completely free of charge. You can get it now at Wal-Mart Recovery guide.com. That's Waltman recovery guide. Com. Now, if you've been impacted by the podcast and you want to show some support in less than 60s, there are three ways you can do that. First, you can leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. This lets people like you know that the content here is valuable. Secondly, you can share this episode with someone in your life that might benefit from the content. If you're passionate about helping other people experience freedom and success in their lives. This is one of the easiest ways to do that. And lastly, you can subscribe.
Speaker 1 (00:52:47) - I personally only listen to the podcast that I subscribe to. If you're seeking daily encouragement, guidance, and insight in your recovery journey, I highly recommend subscribing to Unleash the Man Within. Thanks for listening. I look forward to connecting with you very, very soon.
Speaker 6 (00:53:03) - The information, opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast by Sathiya Sam and his guests are for general information only and should not be considered medical, clinical or any other form of professional advice. Any reliance on the information provided is done at your own risk.
