5 Harsh Truths About Men I'd Share If You Were My Daughter | Dating Advice for Women

I've got two amazing daughters, and right now they are seven years old and nine years old. There's a really powerful psychological principle that states in order to create real change in our lives, all change begins by accepting what is. That if we're blind to what is, if we're in resistance to what is, then we're ultimately not willing to deal with the circumstance that's right before us. But only when we can accept, okay, this is happening, or this is a dynamic that I need to handle, then that empowers us to actually create real change. Well, I bring this up because someone asked me recently, hey, what are the harsh truths about men, about dating, about love that you want your daughters to know when they grow up? So, I thought about this and I thought, okay, here are the truths that I would want them to know, and instead of just saving it for them, I thought I would share it with you as well. And so, these are things, of course, they're generalities, but these tend to be based in truth principles. So, look for where they apply and how they might serve you, because my goal is that hopefully we can shortcut you to finding the love that you want and avoid some of the pain that so many of us face along the way. So, harsh truth number one, men will not fall in love with you if you sleep with them. And this is something that you probably know qualitatively. Maybe you've had this experience where the two of you slept together and you became more bonded to him than he became to you. And there was a part of you like, hey, doesn't this relationship mean something to you because we slept together? Relationships don't mean more to a man because he sleeps with you. Those things are totally different. There's actually some new phenomenal research of our biochemistry that helps to explain perhaps why this dynamic occurs. Don Masler did a great TEDx talk. We'll link it up so you can watch it. Don talks about the bonding hormones for a man, vasopressin, the bonding hormones for a woman, oxytocin, that during sex have opposite reactions. When a woman orgasms, when she's having sex, oxytocin goes sky high, bonding you to that person. For a man, vasopressin is high in the pursuit of a partnership, but when he has sex and orgasms, vasopressin plummets. So, he doesn't feel that same bond. But there was one other thing that was really fascinating in this talk, and that is that after a man commits, once he's committed, his bonding hormones increase, and then having sex actually does bond him more to you. So, if you wanna check out the entire talk, we'll link it below so you can actually go deeper into the biochemistry, but I found it fascinating that they're actually seeing the difference between how men and women bond during sex. So, the harsh truth is men do not fall in love with you or feel more bonded or have any more emotional interest in the relationship when he has sex with you, that those two things are separate. So, my advice is by the time you have sex, make sure that he's already committed to the relationship and the two of you already have an emotional and mental and spiritual bond. Myth number two is that increasing your effort will cause your man's interest to increase in you. That isn't how it works. One of the greatest gifts that you can actually give to a man in the courting phase is give him the opportunity to pursue you. It's not your effort that increases his interest, it's actually his own, and here's why. The more effort we put into something, the more we value it. So, if we put more effort into pursuing this relationship, we put more effort into pleasing you, we put more effort into making this relationship work, the more we value the relationship itself. Effort equals interest, but it's his effort. So, how do you do that? For you to lean back and create space for him to actually serve you, serve the relationship, for you to have standards for the quality of guy that you wanna date, the quality that the relationship needs to be in order for you to fully commit yourself to this relationship. Two great ways that create a dynamic where he puts effort in. I remember watching this great video where this military guy held a stick out, and he said to the private, private, jump over this stick. And it was like two or three inches above the ground. So, the private jumped over the stick. And he goes, why did you only jump two or three inches? You've got like a 30-inch vertical. And the private said, because that's how high the stick was. Sergeant said, if I had lifted this 20 inches, would you have jumped over? Would you have jumped 20 inches? He was like, you bet, he jumped over it. And he said, everyone remember this, people will rise as high as your standards, and the same is true for men. They will rise as high as your standards. So, keep your standards high, let him invest those levels, and that will actually increase his interest in you and your relationship. Harsh truth number three, a commitment will not improve his behavior. Sometimes it's easy to think, well, he's just acting this way because he hasn't fully committed the relationship. Or when we get married, he's gonna spend more time with me. Or when we get married, then he's gonna be a better partner. Or when we're exclusive, then we'll go on trips together, then we'll do these things. No, if anything, if he's saying, well, I'll get better when we get married, or he'll get married because it pleases you, or those types of things, it's a very, very short-lived behavioral change, and he will gravitate back to the old way of being, and you will be desperately disappointed, because now you have the commitment. Now you're married, and things aren't the way that you want them to be. A commitment should be the celebration of the quality of the relationship you've already created, not a criteria that drives some change you wanna see in the relationship. So only take the relationship to the further commitment when both of you are already showing the quality of that relationship, and both in agreement that that's where you want the relationship to go. Harsh truth number four is that he's not necessarily gonna break up with you if he's unhappy. And this is a harsh truth, because if he's unhappy, and he doesn't wanna be in this relationship, he should have the guts to end it. He should have the courage to come to you, have an open, honest communication, tell you how he really feels, and end it. Unfortunately, some people haven't developed themselves enough to be able to do it. They literally don't have that capacity. And so what some people will do is they will make your life a living hell so you'll break up with them. They'll be grumpy, they'll be complaining, they'll mope around, they'll act as the victim in the relationship making you wrong. They'll completely stop investing in the relationship. Some people go off and cheat, right? And then make sure that you find out about it hoping that you'll break up with them because in that circumstance, they're not the bad guy. They've somehow fallen out of love in this relationship. They wanna end it, but they don't wanna be the asshole. They don't wanna be the jerk. They don't wanna be the bad guy. So they want you to break up with them ultimately because they don't have the depth of quality and character to know how to end the relationship in a mutually respectful way. So you wanna be watching for if this person is unhappy, if this person is completely checked out of the relationship and you can have the quality of character and the courage to go have that open, honest conversation and give them a platform to be able to speak their mind. And number five, a harsh truth about men that I want my daughters to know, I would love for you to know, and that is this. He will raise to your standards, but only if you stick to them. Now, it would be nice if everybody was perfect and we all lived into a perfect way of being all the time, but that's not how relationships go. You've got to hold the standard for the quality of the relationship that you want. My wife, when we started dating, she wanted a relationship where there was no teasing. I grew up in a house that had tons of teasing. It was how we showed affection for one another because we teased one another and we playfully poked and made fun and jabbed and that kind of stuff. My wife was like, no, and I had to completely readjust myself to say, okay, I'm going to raise to this standard. It's like that private jumping over that stick, her saying, look, the standard is here. You want to be with me? We're not teasing each other. I don't like that. Like teasing is where one person's laughing and the other person's not. Let's be playful with one another, where we're both laughing. I've had to adjust, but you've got to respect yourself enough. You've got to have enough self-worth, enough self-esteem to be able to let someone go if they don't raise to your standards. Now, it's not just one-sided. You're contributing to this relationship too. It's mutual respect, mutual love, mutual pouring into, but it takes some guts, man, doesn't it? It takes guts to hold that standard and to say, look, this is the vision that I have for my life. This is the vision that I have for how we treat each other. And we make room for people being imperfect, but we're always seeking to say, okay, this is the standard we're gonna live into. And then you don't compromise. You don't compromise the pacing and what's required for you to actually commit to somebody, be exclusive with them, sleep with them, marry them. It is what you want. When you commit to that vision and you hold that standard, you will call it into being. Those, from my perspective, are harsh truths about love, relationships, men, that ultimately I want my daughters to know and really anybody who wants a thriving relationship. My question for you is, what are some harsh truths that you've learned for possibly the hard way that you could pass on that would bless and benefit somebody else? Go ahead and post that in the comment section below. I appreciate you. Here is to your amazing, expansive love life. Thanks for watching. I'll see you soon.